Forever Promised (34 page)

Deacon nodded. “I know it. I’m sure Amy has already bought the entire snow wardrobe for the lot of you. Jon-Jon’s toes aren’t going to see sunshine until it’s warm enough to keep them pink.”

Jon smiled appreciatively. Who wouldn’t? Pink baby toes were fucking adorable, there were no two ways about it. “Where we going, Cochise?”

“To 7-Eleven to get coffee, first.” There hadn’t been any made, and Deacon had guessed Jon wouldn’t appreciate waiting in the cold for it to drip out. Deacon pulled into the parking lot of the 7-Eleven, and they both ran in, surprising the hell out of the bored night clerk, who had run in from the bathroom when he’d heard the bell. The man reeked of pot—and so did the 7-Eleven.

It was weird how their voices echoed around the little store as they asked each other stupid stuff—“Cream? Sugar? Do you want hot chocolate in yours?”

Jon did, actually, and Deacon tried not to make gagging noises. Jon also wanted ice cream in his, so Deacon went up to the guy—midtwenties, long stringy hair, still reeking of weed—and asked him for lottery tickets to distract him.

The guy squinted at Deacon under a fluorescent light that flickered and strobed, and then said, “I really couldn’t give a shit about two ounces of ice cream. Are you sure you want the tickets?”

Jon guffawed across the store, and Deacon laughed and bought two anyway, as well as the coffees, and a big bag of M&M’s.

“Why are we getting chocolate?” Jon asked as they grabbed their shit and exited.

“If I’m going to be up
before
crotch-of-the-fucking-dawn a.m., I’d better get something out of it,” Deacon shot back, and Jon shrugged.

“Well, you
could
have had chocolate coffee ice cream with a Bailey’s-flavored creamer in it,” he said with dignity, and Deacon shoved a handful of M&M’s in his mouth and tried not to think too hard about what his friend was drinking.

“I could have had my thumb dislocated too, which also would have made me throw up, but I could have kept my dignity,” he complained in disgust, and Jon’s cackle was worth the spots still dancing in front of their eyes from the bad fluorescent lights.

“Where are we going? You still haven’t told me.”

Deacon grunted. One of the best things about his and Jon’s friendship was that Jon did most of the talking. From kindergarten to the present, Deacon had always been able to listen to his friend chatter—half the time his stories weren’t accurate, but since the changes made them funnier, Deacon didn’t care. His one-liners were legendary, and he probably could have performed standup on a regular basis if he wasn’t the one who laughed until he couldn’t stand.

But Deacon had told Crick his friend needed talking down, and that meant Deacon actually had to open his mouth and talk. The injustice needed another handful of M&M’s to be palatable in any form.

Deacon finished chewing and said, “The day they told us Crick was wounded, I rode out to Promise Rock. Did I ever tell you that?”

“No,” Jon said, quietly enough that Deacon knew he’d picked up on how this wasn’t garden variety conversation.

“Yeah. See, Benny, she got really freaked out. I’d taken the gun with me because of the rattlesnakes, right? You remember, right after the flood, the fuckers were everywhere? Anyway, she thought….”

He heard Jon swallow. “I know what she thought,” Jon said quietly. “You were a mess.”

Deacon had to concede he had been.

He took a right at M Street to drive to The Pulpit, and prepared himself for the almost invisible turnoff to the service road that ran between Deacon’s property and Promise House property. Deacon had a key to the gate so they didn’t always have to take the horses out to Promise Rock, which had been nice of Shane. He’d also maintained the side road, which was good—Deacon had once broken an axle racing down that road trying to keep Crick from doing something stupid. He’d failed, and Crick had ended up going to Iraq anyway, so it was nice to see that some things changed for the better, even if stopping Crick from being stupid was no longer an item Deacon needed on his to-do list.

“But see, she didn’t need to worry that day,” he said. He made the turn carefully, because maintained or not, the road was still dirt, and the empty truck could fishtail with the biggest flounder in the stream.

“No?”

Deacon couldn’t look at him, because he had to pick his way over the road—it was easy to veer into the weeds if you weren’t careful, because there weren’t any lights or reflectors out here. In fact, the closest streetlight was about two miles away, back by the 7-Eleven, and if he turned around on a clear night, he could see it. Not tonight, though. The fog was still thick in places, passing in clumps as the wind blew it.

So he couldn’t look at Jon to read his expression, but he did know what that one careful syllable meant.

“No,” he answered quietly. “I had too much to live for, even then. And Crick has too much to live for to not go on without me.”

Jon grunted. “That’s good to know,” he said.

“It doesn’t just go away because you don’t see that person every day,” Deacon said, wishing words were easier for him. “It wouldn’t go away if one of us died. It won’t go away if you’re not two miles down the road. It doesn’t just go away. Not for me, anyway.”

“Me neither,” Jon said, but he didn’t sound certain. They were both quiet then as Deacon negotiated the road, and after about ten minutes, he pulled up to the gate. The fog from the irrigation stream was too dense for them to see, so he just let the engine idle for the heater, and put the truck in park.

“So,” Deacon said quietly, “I came out here that day. I came out here, and I remembered you and Amy and Parrish and Benny and Parry. And Crick. And out here, it was okay that it was all memories. That’s what this place is. It’s a promise that there will be more memories. It’s a promise that love will live on.”

“I know that,” Jon muttered. “I’ve officiated four weddings here.”

“And been to your own. And you’ll be back for Benny and Drew’s wedding. And, God willing, for Parry Angel’s too. It’s not going away, Jon.”

Deacon could hear Jon’s swallow across the car.

“I just don’t….” Swallow. “I don’t ever want to be just some guy you knew. I don’t ever want to say to myself, ‘Gee, I wonder what happened to Deacon. He used to be my whole world, but now we never talk.’”

Deacon sighed. There were no guarantees. They both knew that. “It may be like that someday,” he admitted. The thought made his throat raw. “I hope not. I don’t have so many friends I can forget the one who hasn’t left me in twenty-seven years. I like to think we’ll see each other Christmases and weddings and birthdays. We’ll e-mail and Twitter and Skype and all that shit, and fifty years ago, we would have written letters like they do in textbooks. I promise you, Jon, I’m not going to let my best friend go without trying to keep him close.”

Jon sighed from his end of the cab. “I promise you, Deacon, I won’t let you go either.”

Deacon risked a look at him, sipping his impossible dessert thing and looking sleepy and a little less like a runaway bride.

“You’re my brother, and I love you,” he said, and Jon smiled and looked at him in the eyes.

“You’re my brother, and I love you,” he replied. “And if you ever tell another human being about this lame, stupid, sorry conversation, I’ll hire ninja assassins to kill you in your sleep.”

“Understood. You ready to go to bed yet? I would wager we both have people who would be willing to warm our feet up when we get back.”

Jon grunted. “You got your iPod plugged into the radio?”

“Yeah.”

“Here, let me see it.”

Deacon handed it over, and after a minimum of fuss, Jon set it down and Deacon turned up the sound.

Three Doors Down’s “Kryptonite” filled the cab of the truck, and Deacon rolled his eyes. The summer after high school graduation, they had played that song until they’d both known it by heart.

“Asshole.”

Jon started out singing about how he didn’t care what happened, as long as “you’ll be my friend in the end.”

Deacon laughed and caved to the inevitable. “If I go crazy, will you still call me Superman….”

He lost track of how many times Jon repeated that damned song, and they sang it at the top of their lungs. But sometime before the sky turned gray and the fog started to get thicker, silence fell and Jon said, “We can go now, Deacon. It’s okay. I’m out of the crazy.”

Deacon nodded and backed the truck around. “For now,” he conceded. “I’m sure in the morning, you’ll be a complete moron again.”

“You should talk. You’re going to hurt yourself as soon as the plane takes off, you know that?”

“Why wait until then? I’m sure I’ll burn myself cooking breakfast. Jeff’ll be there. He can bandage me right up.”

Jon started to giggle. “And if you sprain your ankle, Shane can pick you up like a girl, and this time we’ll get
pictures.
”

“Nice. We can make it easy on him. We’ll have him pick up Benny and photoshop you in. Crick can have them on ten different websites before you land in DC.”

Jon chortled. “Great! I’ll send it to my new boss, and we can come home!”

Deacon couldn’t banter back. “Just as long as you know you can always come home,” he said.

Jon made a suspicious sniffling sound. “I need some fucking sleep.”

“Or you just need some—”

“Don’t say it,” Jon warned, and the banter was back on.

When Deacon pulled up in front of the hotel, Jon hopped out and paused before closing the door. Deacon was afraid he’d have to talk again—but not Jon. “Yeah,” he said, looking Deacon in the eyes.

“Yeah.”

“See you in the morning, Deacon.”

“Try to be on time—the airport with kids ain’t a picnic.”

“Yeah, yeah. ’Night.”

The door slammed shut, and Deacon turned the pickup around and drove home. He wouldn’t remember until Jon and the kids left the next morning that Jon had taken his spare hat, mitts, and scarf, but Crick was probably planning a new set for Christmas, so that was okay.

He’d need a nap the next day after dropping everybody off, and the much-planned morning brunch would be a blur. (Jon confessed that it had been for him too, when he called to tell them they’d all arrived safe in DC.) Deacon didn’t care. As he slid next to Crick for a scant hour of sleep, he knew he might still wake up in cold sweats but that Jon and Amy leaving him wouldn’t be on his list of things to fear.

They’d never leave him. The memory of them would always be at Promise Rock.

A
MY
was sort of wonderful, Jon thought four days later. Their stuff had arrived, she’d put an army of movers to work, and in very short order they had a home, one with their familiar stuff in it, one that made sense and that was nearly completely unpacked.

The agreement was Amy would work for the firm for two days a week as Jon’s assistant, at least at the beginning, so that she could make sure the kids were going to be okay. The plan for Monday was she’d spend that day getting the kids set up in school and day care, and Jon was going to visit the office for the preliminary tour and intros. He’d spent a long time the night before sitting on Lila’s bed and reading her the storybook Parry Angel had written her, the one about the two princesses who played together and never forgot each other, and Lila had stopped crying after three days of a wobbly chin, and promised him she’d try to be happy at school the next day. Jon-Jon hadn’t let a thing disturb him from his chow and his crib, and for that, Jon could only be grateful.

Amy kissed him warmly as he left, bundled in his coat and the scarf, hat, and gloves he’d unrepentantly stolen from Deacon’s truck.

“You’re not going to wear the leather gloves?” she asked, wrapping her robe against the terrible chill from the open door. Her piquant little face was still frowzy with sleep, and the caveman part of him sort of wished she could send him off every day like this, but that was only because he hadn’t yet missed her company and her sharp professionalism in the office.

“No,” he said, grinning. “I stole these fair and square, and the leather ones are just a reason to give them back.”

“Oh,” she said, nodding like she understood. She probably did. He was pretty sure there wasn’t much his wife didn’t know, and what there was, she could learn if she had the schematics and a screwdriver.

He arrived at the office after a forty-five-minute commute that involved a train and a bus, both of which were unfamiliar to him as a California driver, and he was grateful Amy would be there at least two days a week for the company. The office building was small and old—on his first fact-finding trips out, he’d come to understand that small and old actually meant prestigious in this neck of the woods, and so did dark and intimidating. He tried to switch the word “intimidating” to “stuffy,” but it didn’t make him any less tongue-tied when his new boss, an older man with creases in his smoker’s face that rivaled the irrigation ditches of a healthy Martian colony, introduced him to the office almost as soon as he walked in.

The whole firm was gathered around a table, a group of experienced veterans of the civil rights war, and Jon suddenly felt totally outclassed.

“So, Mr. Levins,” said one of the men sitting down. He was a partner in the firm, and although he was younger than Mr. Cosgrove, he was still about twenty years older than Jon. “Give us some background on how you came to work here—tell us anything you think is relevant, and then we can start with the Monday briefing, okay?”

Jon nodded, and although this wasn’t entirely unexpected, for a moment he thought his mouth (the only thing that had never stopped working for him) would finally let him down. He was the youngest person in the room. Most of these people had been fighting for civil rights since before he’d graduated from high school, and most of them were part of the LGBTQ community. Who in the fuck was he to come in and take his place in their ranks? He tugged nervously at his Looney Tunes tie and realized he’d left the gloves on, the ones Crick had made Deacon. He pulled them off and smiled at the room.

“Hi. My name is Jon Levins,” he said, remembering this was one of his best skills. “When I was five years old, Deacon Parrish Winters made me his best friend. I idolized that kid through grade school, through junior high, through high school—he’s the best friend I’ve ever had. He’s my brother. The love of his life is a man. You would not
believe
what they’ve had to endure to be together.”