And then I look at him over my shoulder. “And you’re not old, you know?” I call out.
He looks at me, amusement in his eyes. “Old enough to have gotten set in my views. And that was wrong of me.”
“Thanks.”
The muscles in his arm flex as he holds my suitcase, and I can’t help but stare at the tattoos running down the length. They look slightly faded, like he got them when he was a teen.
What was he like at Cole’s age? It’s hard to picture him as a…. Well, a guy, I guess. He’s so serious. To a fault, almost.
But he’s sincere.
“The next time you need a ride—or anything,” he tells me, “promise you’ll call?”
I nod again and turn back to my seeds, excited for the summer ahead.
Pike
“Two,” I tell Dutch and toss the cards I don’t want back at him.
Shifting his eyes from his own cards, he pushes two more over to me, and I fit them into my palm and examine the new hand. It’s shit, but I do have two sevens, so it’s not a complete loss.
Not that I care. I’m not a competitive man—at least not when it comes to poker—but hosting these get-togethers once a month at my house gives us something to do while we talk. I dart my gaze up to Dutch and then flash my eyes around the table, seeing Todd, one of my foremen, as well as Eddie, John, and Schuster either exchanging or rearranging cards. Everyone puts a few bucks in the middle, and Todd raises us by three more. Everyone takes the bluff…hoping it is a bluff.
“I am not excited about my girls growing up, I’ll tell you that,” Dutch says, flashing me an amused look.
“Why?”
He just shakes his head, sighing. “That noise would drive me nuts. For now, all I have to endure is the occasional sleepover with a gang of giggling eight year olds.”
I chuckle under my breath, the pounding from upstairs starting to feel like walls caving in. I wince. It’s only about nine-thirty. If it’s still this loud in an hour, I’ll tell Cole to turn the music down or the neighborhood will be on my ass. It wasn’t supposed to be a party, but I’d encouraged him and Jordan to have some friends over, so it’s my own fault, I guess.
“It wasn’t so long ago we liked quite a lot of noise,” I mention, tossing him a grin.
The guys laugh, mumbling their agreement. We’d all graduated together, and it was a happy turn of events that a few of us now work together, although John and Schuster don’t, being a cop and a roofer, respectively.
It hadn’t been long since we were a lot like Cole—making messes and having too much fun in our mistakes. I was the first to get thrust into adulthood, but we still kept close over the years. Marriages, kids, a divorce—we’d all been through the ringer, and it was a wake-up call one day when I realized I’d been waiting for my life to start—my real life—only to realize that it had already happened when I wasn’t paying attention.
That train I was waiting to catch raced by me without stopping. There probably wouldn’t be a wife, and I would never know what it would be like to have my kids grow up seeing me every day. At this point, I’m too used to being on my own that I’m like an only child.
And an only-child doesn’t know how to share his things.
Todd raises another dollar, and I’m out, followed by Lin, Dutch, and Eddie. Todd collects the pot, and Dutch shuffles all the cards, dealing again.
The muffled music from upstairs all of a sudden blares louder and clearer, and I hear footfalls on the stairs followed by a slammed door. Bare feet appear on the stairwell, the legs coming more into view the lower they descend.
Jordan bends down, peeking under the basement ceiling at us. “Hey, do you mind if I grab the Otter Pops out of the freezer?”
Everyone glances up at her, turning their heads, and I gesture, barely sparing a glance from my cards. “Yeah, go ahead,” I reply quickly.
Liquid heat runs down my arms, and I stare at my hand, struggling to concentrate, because she’s all I’m aware of now.
She hurries down the rest of the stairs, her footsteps light and quick like she’s trying not to be seen or heard as she dashes over to the wall to my right and lifts the lid of the big freezer.
The room has grown quiet, and I’m not sure if the guys are afraid to talk normally, because there’s a woman in the room or if they’re distracted. I stare at my cards and search my
brain. What were we talking about a minute ago?
Oh, kids. Right.