“She’s golden, really. She just wanted a little weed before bed. Helps the arthritis pain. Trust me, I’ve seen her take care of a rabid raccoon trying to get into the commune henhouse with a rusty garden rake and a turnip.”
The glow of the fire from the brazier revealed his stunned expression. “You’ve had one hell of a unique upbringing, haven’t you?”
That made me smile. Widely. “I’ll tell you about it sometime.” I patted the grass beside me. “Come sit with me. Let’s chill for a bit longer and maybe get another kiss?”
“And that’s my cue to leave,” Simon grunted, heaving his massive self upward from the dewy grass. “I’ll go find Alchemy.” I made a circle with my thumb and index finger then pretended to take a toke. “Asshole,” he mumbled then went off to find my grandmother.
I lay there on my back, Maddie within reach, plucking out a Fleetwood Mac song on my guitar. It, like Maddie Boo, was never far from my touch.
“Do you do drugs?” Joe asked, rolling to his side, and resting his head on his hand.
“No, not really. I used to smoke pretty hard, but then I realized that I was slipping into Liberty territory and then I quit. The Raptors test me weekly because I guess they think I’m heavy into horse or something, being a metal musician.”
“What’s Liberty territory?”
I strummed out a few new chords for the ballad that refused to go away. Maddie slept peacefully under the stars, a fine mosquito mesh draped over the top of her playpen. Joe really did think of everything.
“Liberty Penn. You know.”
When he didn’t reply I stopped playing and rolled my head in his direction. “Sorry, I don’t really do heavy metal music. Is that a band?”
I laid the Gibson aside and turned on my side, mimicking his position. “You’re incredibly adorable. You really don’t know who Liberty Penn is?”
“No, sorry.”
“It’s cool. Well, he’s my father. He was this massive superstar in the country and western biz about thirty years ago. You must have heard some of his songs. They were everywhere. Themes for football games, commercials.” He shook his head. “Damn, you do spend a lot of time with your head in the stars.” I flicked the end of his nose playfully, which made him wrinkle it, which made him even more adorable. “Well, he kind of took this massive downward spiral after his last world tour. Got so drunk he thought he could fly. Jumped off a roof, broke like a bazillion bones. Healed from that, went into rehab, joined AA, cut another album, more critical acclaim, and tried to hang himself in Alchemy’s old sweat lodge a year later. I was three. We walked in to find him cinching the noose around his neck. It was… I remember bits. Like… I can see him on the chair and the rope, but I had no idea what he was doing. I think I thought it was a game, like a swing or something.”
“Dear God,” Joe whispered. “I’m just… I don’t even have the words and I generally have lots of words.”
“Meh, it’s okay. Really, I’ve dealt with it all. His lust for destruction, my mother’s overdose death when I was four months old, all that shit has been therapied and discussed for years. I’m even pretty much over the fact that he moved to Bolivia with some chick named Helen and has a second family. Six or seven kids that I’ve never met. He used to send pictures with birthday cards but they stopped when I was ten. Yeah, well. Anyway, so my grandmother kept me. She’s cool. Tends to light up a bit more than she should, but she’s got arthritis and some shit going on with the nerves in her hands so the weed eases the pain.”
Joe lay there staring at me. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Lay in the grass and listen to some sexy-ass rocker goalie drag out his familial skeletons?”
“Well, that too.” He sniffled a bit, a funny sort of snicker that made me chuckle. “This. I’m not familiar with this. The feelings that I’m having when you talk. They’re…” He closed his eyes and exhaled. When he opened them I rolled in to press my lips to his.
He melted into the touch of our lips yet I could feel his unease. The uncertainty kept me at bay. If he had been any other dude we’d be going at it by now but Joe was… well, he was Joe. He was becoming important to me. More than just as an employee. In a hundred, no, a thousand different ways.
“I don’t do this,” Joseph murmured into the kiss. “You’re my boss, I have life goals. I work hard. I don’t even know how to process this…” He waved between us, and after a moment’s pause he sighed. What he saw in my answering expression I don’t know, but he scrambled up and strode into the house, taking the baby monitor with him and mumbling words I couldn’t hear.
Ten
Joseph
Well, that went really well.
I checked on Maddie, lost myself in the soft rise and fall of her chest for a while then spent time contemplating the creation of the rings of Saturn, which was my go-to story for when I was stressed. When even that didn’t help I sat on the edge of my bed and called Natalie.
“What’s wrong?” she asked sleepily.
It made me check the time to see it was past midnight. “I’m sorry to call so late.”
“S’all right, hang on.” I heard rustling, and cursing and a bang, and then she was back. “I’m glad you called, I broke up with Mick, turns out he’s just your everyday asshole.”
“Sorry, sis.” I didn’t want to add
