The Same Place (The Lamb and the Lion #2) - Gregory Ashe Page 0,144
the big reason was that for some reason, and I had to have been four or five, I got fixated on having an inflatable swimming pool, the kind you can have in your backyard. I just thought they looked like so much fun. I don’t know if I ever told my mom I wanted one. But that’s what she’s got now: the house she wanted, the yard she wanted, the kids she wanted.”
“Jem.”
“She even got the motherfucking pool.”
“Jem, it’s not that she didn’t want you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jem said, wiping his face on the pillow. “None of it matters. I think I better go to sleep again.”
He lay back against the pillow, which was now damp, and closed his eyes. Tean was still there; Jem could feel him, waiting.
“I guess with the dog,” Jem said. “With Antony, I mean, back at LouElla’s house, I guess when you’re a kid, you think your mom is going to protect you. Then for a long time, I thought I was over that. I thought I could take care of myself. Jesus, I even thought I could take care of you. But when it came down to it, when that dog was lunging at me, snapping, poof. I might as well have been five years old again.” He opened his eyes. The room was darker; the sun had moved again. “Big surprise, she wasn’t there when I needed her yesterday either.”
“No,” Tean whispered.
“But you were.”
Nodding, Tean wiped his face some more. “Maybe you don’t need to take care of yourself for a while. Maybe you can let someone else do that. That’s part of loving someone: taking care of them.”
Jem closed his eyes again. The Valium snow was falling on him, deeper and deeper. “I can remember what it felt like to be next to her. She let me sleep with her sometimes.” He smiled in spite of himself. “She’d scratch my back.”
He must have already been at the edge of sleep because he didn’t hear the footsteps. The shifting mattress pulled him back for a moment, and he grumbled as Tean pressed against him, both of them moving around until Tean was sitting with his back to the wall and Jem was stretched out, snugged up against Tean’s side. The last thing he remembered was fingers running over his back lightly and slowly.
39
Each day was a little bit better, but Tean left Scipio with his parents for now. They assured him that the Lab was having a great time trying to catch a mole in the yard. That was a relief; in spite of Jem’s insistence, Tean wasn’t ready to bring him back into contact with a dog. Not yet. The Xanax had gone down the toilet, which Tean knew wasn’t the responsible way to dispose of a prescription but had seemed the best option in a bad situation, and after the first two days—and after several uncomfortable conversations—Jem had eased up on the Valium.
They were eating In-N-Out burgers at the dinette table when the knock came. Tean wiped his mouth and hands—animal style was messy, no matter how much you tried to keep clean—and waved Jem back into his seat. He got up and answered the door.
Hannah was standing there. She was wearing a DWR polo and jeans, and she’d had her hair cut. No makeup, which was a good thing because Hannah wouldn’t have been Hannah with makeup. Tucking the chestnut-colored hair behind her ears, she said, “Hi.”
“Hi,” Tean said. “Oh my gosh, you’re out. That’s fantastic. Come in.”
She shook her head. Then Tean noticed Caleb standing farther down the hall. “I just wanted to give Jem his money and say thank you.”
“You didn’t need to do that,” Jem said. He had moved up behind Tean without Tean noticing, and he shook his head when Hannah held out the check. “Really, I promise. I’m just glad we could help.”
“Please take it,” Hannah said. “I’ll never be able to pay you both back for helping me, but at least let me try. Besides, you’re good at what you do, and my dad always said that you should pay a man what he’s worth. This doesn’t come close to what you’re worth; consider it a down payment.” Then her mouth quivered. “I’ve heard myself repeating a lot of my parents’ little sayings over the last few days. That’s probably a coping mechanism since they won’t ever talk to me again.”