“Lots of Joyce,” she griped. “But I’m writing my bildungsroman.”
“Really?” I drawled, grinning. “You’re not even seventeen. Don’t you think you have a few more formative years ahead of you?”
She laughed again. “Seriously. But that’s the assignment, so I have to give it a try,” she said. “So how’s work? God, that’s a question I never imagined I’d be asking you.”
Now I laughed. “Well, it’s shitty. The people all know my drug-dealing past, so I’m referred to as ‘Crackhead,’ officially. My bosses are Scary and Crazy Bitch Scarier, apparently, and their daughter is hot, but probably wants to stick a kitchen knife through my heart.”
“Maybe you should write a novel about it when you’re done,” Brenna mused. I thought about it for a minute, but she obviously interpreted my silence as evidence that she had my feelings hurt or something. Good lord, I know I’ve been a fucking cry-ass lately, but I’m not that soft. “I’m just kidding, Saxon,” she said all gently.
“Blix, come on. You’re not going to hurt my feelings.” I remembered how it felt to lay my head in her lap and let her brush her fingers over my hair. I imagined what it would be like to do that again. Then I shook myself out of that train of thought. She wasn’t mine. She really wasn’t mine. She was Jake’s, and even this call was just me bullshitting myself.
“I worry about you,” she said, her voice wavery with emotion. “I think working might be good for you. And don’t worry about the other people there. You’ll grow on them.” Again that laugh. “You’re obnoxious, but you have an unmistakable charm.”
“Thanks.” I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly. “Look, I know you have to finish your run before your depressing nerd class, so I’ll let you go. I just needed a sympathetic ear to bitch into.”
“Well, I’m here. Anytime,” she said earnestly. “Take care of yourself, Saxon.”
“Will do. You do the same.” And we clicked off. It was like severing the last connection to any person who gave a shit about me. I looked at my hand, holding my cell, and the big, silvery scar where I had sliced myself open to become Jake’s blood brother. Which was pretty unnecessary, since we’ve been blood brothers since he was born. Not that I’d been a very good one.
I lay down on my hard mattress and started counting off things in my life that I had fucked up. It was better than sheep, and there wound up being so many things that I was asleep before I knew it, a deep, mercifully dreamless sleep.
Then next morning I woke up to the clatter of pans and the smell of bacon. It was eight o’clock. Aunt Helene must have been making breakfast. I got in the shower and washed with her Dove soap and Suave berry-smelling shampoo and conditioner. I brushed my teeth with her gritty baking soda toothpaste and got dressed in my little closet of a room. I did make my bed and left my dirty laundry in the basket. She didn’t need to pick up after me like I was some little kid.
I hadn’t seen my Aunt Helene since before I learned to ride a bike, but my memories of her were all good. I ducked into the kitchen, and she cried out like her lost kid had just come back from the dead.
“Saxon! Oh, Saxon.” She came at me with her old, flubbery arms open. She crushed me in a tight hug. Granted it was a weird little hug, since she came up to just over my bellybutton. “Look at you!” she cried. “So handsome! So handsome. And strong. Come and sit. You must be hungry, and I made you a big breakfast.”
She wasn’t kidding. Little, tanned, wrinkled Aunt Helene scooped so much food on my plate, I could have eaten for three days. She sat with me, but she only drank a cup of creamy coffee with lots of sugar, like a kid.
“So, what is your work like?” She watched me with her bright eyes.
“Shitty,” I said around a mouthful of perfectly cooked eggs over easy. I washed it down with what had to be fresh-squeezed orange juice. “Sorry. I mean it’s hard work. But I’ll be here ‘til four thirty every day, so I’ll mostly only waste my nights there.”
She patted my hand. “Erikson is a fair man. And his wife? She’s firm, but fair also. You will do well working for them.” She beamed at me, so I made my mouth smile back at her. She was a nice woman, and nice was becoming a hot commodity in my life as it currently stood.
“So, what do you do all day, Aunt Helene?” I asked while she cleared my plate.
“Oh, it’s too boring for a man!” she cried. “Just cleaning up, gardening, cooking. You should go out, find some fun! A handsome devil like you should have a few girls around. Am I right?”
I grinned. “Give me a little time. Let me help though. I like to keep busy.” Wow, how full of shit was I? But this place was a dump. She needed help.
“Well,” she said carefully. “The Erikson boy was going to help do my gutters, but they had to fire a few kids, so he’s been really busy at the diner. Maybe…”
I didn’t have a damn clue how the hell to clean a gutter. But I had an iPhone and it had access to Google.
“I’m on it.” I went outside with my phone in hand.
One ladder with rotten rungs, two near slips off the roof, three tons of fermenting leaves, and four hours later I was covered in scum, panting for breath, and smelled like I had just climbed out of a toilet bowl in a White Castle.
“Why do leaves smell like ass?” I griped, shaking my arms off. And it would have seriously screwed up my mood for the day, except that Aunt Helene was clucking around me, worried about my filthy self and telling me how she’d fried some kind of crazy Polish cookie and that I should get right in the shower.
And it felt good to have someone give a shit about me.
I took a shower and ate some knock-you-off-your-ass fantastic cookies and took a nap, and then it was time to go. Pamela was in the driveway, waving at Aunt Helene and accepting a plastic baggie full of cookies. Jimmy yelled thank you, Cadence waved, and then we were off. The car stayed weirdly quiet with all three of them eating cookies.
“You’re so lucky!” Jimmy wiped crumbs off of his chin. “Your aunt is so nice and she makes the best food.”
Pamela’s smile showed her perfect white teeth. “Seriously, dude. You have it made.”
Cadence glared, nibbled on a cookie, then rolled her eyes at me. “It’s not like he deserves it.”
And I might have agreed. If I didn’t have remnants of gutter sludge under my finger nails. And a mental list of shit I had to pick up from a hardware store. Because Aunt Helene needed my help, so I’d give it to her.
And it hit me then, that maybe I was pretty fucking lucky.
Chapter Three
Jake
When I first saw my dad in the flesh, it was like looking at myself, but from the future.
Gerald Maclean looked just like me, and it occurred to me that fate had been kind of screwed up in that respect. Saxon was his legitimate son, the son of the rich, perfect wife his family had pretty much expected him to marry. But Saxon was as dark as his mother, with that straight, shiny black hair and eyes that were brown-black too. Then there was me, the result of a fling with a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, and I wound up looking so much like my dad there was no denying that I was his.
Even if I wanted to.
Which I did, pretty quickly.
My girlfriend, Brenna, who was incredibly smart and amazing, didn’t know her birth father, and I knew it was irritating her that I wanted her to know more about him. But she was totally misunderstanding why. It really opened your eyes to see where you came from, and how little it really mattered.
I wanted her to see that because I thought she was still a little shallow about things like how you were raised and how much school you went to and what other people thought about you. Her mom had a lot to do with that. Her mom got herself an education and social status and all that late in life, so she hated any reminder of a time when she didn’t have all of it. And she wanted Brenna to have a totally different experience. Like, specifically, she wanted her to marry right, the right kind of person.