Winter Ball (10 page)

“But Skip,” Richie said, his voice muffled, “it’s too nice.”

“Just use it,” Skip directed. “If it doesn’t wash, I’ll buy a new one.”

Richie nodded, looking confused, and Skip sighed. He saw a trip to the ER in their future, which was
not
how he’d planned to use his time tonight. But he couldn’t lift Richie either. “Wait here,” he muttered. “I’ll drive the car down, okay?”

Richie nodded, blinking hard, and Skip stood up and turned his anger directly on the sources—who were currently laughing so hard on each other’s shoulders they supported themselves by leaning against the car.

“You
assholes
!” he roared. The sledgehammer had ended up next to the car, and he grabbed it, his ire giving him some power as he hefted it easily with one hand. “He’s not
weak
, he’s
short
. It’s not weakness, it’s physics, and you two are too piss-stupid to know the difference.” He hauled the sledgehammer over his shoulder and swung hard, and again, and again, pounding hole after hole after hole. Rob and Paul had stopped laughing and were backing away slowly, apparently frightened by Skip’s fury as they hadn’t been by Richie’s bravura and pure common sense.

“Now stop acting like stupid high school bullies and start being his family, you useless pieces of gorilla shit, or
I’m
gonna show you what it’s like!” With that he threw the hammer with all his might, so it shattered through the cracked windscreen of the car with a crash and bounced harmlessly off the corroded floorboards.

He was breathing hard, and he could feel a faint ping in his shoulder that might hurt in the morning, but mostly he was glad he wasn’t holding the sledgehammer anymore so he couldn’t hurl it through their stupid fucking heads.

“Skip?”

Skip turned, dreamlike, and saw that Richie had pushed himself up and wobbled next to him. “You’rb pweddy hard-gore, you-nno?”

Skip sighed, some of his mad leaving, and he threw a gentle arm over Richie’s shoulder. “Yeah? Well, be sure to tell the soccer team. C’mon. Where’s your duffel?”

“’S’inside,” Richie mumbled. “Gaw…
no’
wha’ I wanna do!”

“Yeah, well, remember that next time,” Skip maneuvered him to the passenger seat of his car.

Richie’s dad and stepmom were inside the office, smoking and counting the till. Skip was just going to jog inside and grab Richie’s stuff without a word, but Richie’s dad, Ike, made the mistake of talking to him.

“Wait—who
are
you?”

“I’m Richie’s friend—I’ve been here before,” Skip said briefly, although he’d probably been by the house more often to pick Richie up and go somewhere. Okay—there, behind the desk. He’d spotted it. He brushed by Ike and Kay Scoggins and tried not to choke on the clouds of smoke that rolled off both of them. “He was gonna crash at my place tonight since we’ve got soccer in the morning.”

Ike decided he was going to put his squat fireplug of a body between Skip and that goddamned duffel bag, and Skip realized how much of his anger
hadn’t
cleared when he’d pitched the sledgehammer through the window.

“Well why can’t Richie get his own goddamned duffel bag?” Ike demanded. “He’s got to send his pansy-assed friend to get his shit for him?”

“Richie is
bleeding
in the front of my car because
her
useless fucktarded kids dared him into the emergency room again. It’s a little too late for you to pretend to watch out for your son, isn’t it? You want to actually give a shit about your kid, how about pay him more than minimum going rate for his job and not make him feel like shit for something he can’t do anything about! Jesus!” Because Skip had heard them both razzing on Richie’s height, his red hair, his pug nose—all the things that Skip had just discovered he really really treasured, he’d heard Richie’s father put down.

“Wait,” Kay said, stepping out from behind the desk. She was a whip-thin woman with shoe-black hair who wore bright nylon-and-foam push-up bras under her loose V-necked T-shirts. She liked to lean forward at the desk and squish her cleavage forward because she probably thought that heightened her allure. “What about my kids?”

“Tell them to stay off his back,” Skip snapped, and he must have had some extra force in his voice or something, because he was able to reach past Ike and snag Richie’s bag. “I’ll drop him off at work Monday morning. I don’t trust any of you people to take care of him before then.”

And with that he left, not caring if they remembered him—although he’d been there more than once and had done his best to be civil during those times. Hell, Ike Scoggins had even picked Richie up at Skip’s house once, when Richie had helped Skip move in, but so what?

All he cared about
now
was that Richie was in the front of his car bleeding, and Skip had three nights and two days to make sure he was okay.

RICHIE HAD
Kaiser, just like Skip, and they lucked out. There were no drive-by shootings, multicar pileups, or plague viruses that night, so they got out of there by ten o’clock with a CT scan and a check for a concussion under their belts. Richie’s nose was bandaged with a brace and everything. Skipper had hold of his pain meds and some strict instructions
not
to let him do anything too strenuous like, say, play soccer like a screaming banshee or ride someone’s shoulders up and down the field if his team won.

Skip stopped at an In-N-Out for burgers on the way home, making sure to get Richie the large chocolate shake and animal-style fries. He got himself a double ham, no cheese, no sauce, with a Diet Coke.

Richie sighed as Skip handed him the bag. “You’re not even going to pig out and help me with my fries?” Some of the swelling had gone down since the doc had set his nose, and his voice was muffled but not distorted.

“I might when we get home,” Skip said, admitting that the smell coming off the bag was heavenly. “Right now, I just want to get home and feed Hazel and….”

“And what?” Richie asked, his voice small.

“And hold you, Richie. Damn—I saw that sledgehammer bounce and thought it was going to smash your face completely. You’d be breathing out of a tube right now!” Skip’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, and he shivered. He’d given Richie his sweatshirt to bleed on, and he’d been freezing all night.

“You want to hold me?” Richie asked, his voice brightening even under the swelling and the bandages. “Because seriously, that’s all I’ve wanted all day.”

Skip consciously relaxed his hands and moved his right one to Richie’s knee. “Me too,” he said. “I mean, I wanted the… you know….” His face heated. “But more than that….”

Richie covered Skip’s hand with his own. “Yeah. Yeah. Me too.”

The only thing either one of them said after that was “Turn up the heater, Skip. You’re making me shiver just looking at you.”

That was nice, having Richie look after him too.

THEY ATE
quietly in Skip’s awful kitchen. Then Skip cleaned up and urged Richie to bed. “I’m going to shower first,” he said. The doctor had told Richie to stay out of the hot water until the next morning.

“Ugh,” Richie groaned. “How can you even stand me! I must smell like an armpit—I’ll sleep on the couch!”

“Don’t you dare,” Skip said quickly. “Look, I’ll skip the shower tonight, okay? Just….”

Richie was looking at him through the mask of gauze and bruising under his eyes.

“Just be where I can touch you,” Skip finished, feeling stupid.

They climbed into bed together still wearing their boxers, and Skip spooned Richie while they watched the shows that had been recorded while they’d been at Kaiser.

“You ever notice how these guys get shot and keep running after the bad guys?” Richie mumbled in disgust.

“
So
not how it works,” Skip said with feeling. He tightened his arm around Richie’s middle, feeling the pinged muscle he’d strained when he’d been wielding the sledgehammer.

“Yeah, but I always think it
is
, right before I do something stupid.”

Skip chuckled, and Richie reached for the phone he’d put on the bed stand. “It’s my dad,” he said, looking at the text. “He wants me to come home.”

Skip growled.

“I’m staying at Skip’s this weekend, as planned,” Richie read as he texted. “Doc said I needed rest.”

“Yeah, well, I thought you needed something else,” Skip jibed. “Seriously, way to kill a mood.”

Richie patted the hand Skip had clasped around his middle. “Yeah, yeah. I can still give you a victory hand job, don’t get your panties in a knot.”

Skip chuffed air into the back of Richie’s neck, and Richie laughed softly. Then his phone buzzed.

“Skip, what did you say to my dad?”

Skip grunted. “I may or may not have called your stepbrothers fucktarded pieces of useless gorilla shit,” he confessed. “And I might have said something about them not being assholes to you—after that it’s all getting fuzzy.”

Richie risked a look behind him. “Ouch! Well I’ll just tell him you’re sorry—”

“Don’t press Send on that!” Skip protested. “I’m not even a little bit sorry!”

“But you can’t just leave things like that—this is my family!”

“Family treats you better,” Skip muttered.
If I was family, I’d treat you so much better than that, Richie.

“How would you kn—” Richie stopped and sighed, but Skipper heard the rest anyway.

Stung, he rolled over and tried to concentrate on the car commercial on television. Behind him, he heard Richie texting viciously, and then Richie shoved up so he was sitting and started to talk into the phone like he was in the middle of a conversation.

“Yeah, I know what he said—he was mad, and he was worried about me. He’s my friend, what? He doesn’t get to be worried about me? Yeah, I know it was stupid to—wait.”

Richie’s frantic tap on Skip’s arm got Skip to roll over.

“I didn’t throw the sledgehammer through the car,” Richie said, squinting through all the bandages in confusion. “The guys dared me to hit the hood, and that’s all I remember.”

At Skip’s grimace, Richie’s eyes widened. “I don’t remember that!” he mouthed. Well, he probably didn’t—he’d been pretty spacey until after they left Kaiser.

“I was pissed,” Skip muttered. “They were laughing at you.”

“Yeah,” Richie said into the phone. “The guys were laughing after I got hurt. It flipped a switch in Skipper. He gets protective like that. I’m not making him apologize for shit. I’ll see you Monday, Dad. Maybe you cool off a minute and remember who really
did
get hurt.”

Richie hit End Call with a grunt of disgust. “The guy who showed up to get me because I was a goddamned pussy who didn’t like saying good-bye.
That’s
who got hurt.” He reached out and stroked Skipper’s cheek. “Sorry I was an asshole about your family,” he said, his voice soft.

Skipper shook his head like it was no big deal. “You’re the one with your nose in a sling,” he said, trying to be funny. “Do you need a pain med or—”

“Stop trying to mother me, Christopher,” Richie said gravely, and even the fact that “pher” sounded like “brur” through his broken nose didn’t change that almost magical impact of hearing his real name. Skip stopped moving and Richie pushed his hair back from his forehead. “You take real good care of me. I just… I need to remember you don’t have anyone to take care of you. You… you need someone.”

Skipper smiled a little, a real try this time. “I… you know. If you ever want the job.”

Richie nodded. “Yeah, well, I get the feeling this here is part of the audition.” He ran his fingers through Skip’s yellow hair again, like he enjoyed that. “I’ll try not to fuck it up too much from here on in. Now spoon me again, the show’s almost on.”

Skip did as ordered, appreciating all over again the joys of Richie’s hard, stringy body mashed up against his own.

He must have been tired then—they both must have been tired—because before the fourth act, before the bad guy was revealed and captured, the two of them closed their eyes in the darkened room and fell asleep.

IT WAS
a good thing Carpenter had just been inducted—he ended up playing the entire game as a defender, and Owens moved into Richie’s spot as forward. They got destroyed—of course they got destroyed—but since even McAllister let a few through and Singh could only catch so many attempts, there was nothing they could do about that.

After the game, during the obligatory pizza and beer, Richie told Carpenter that Skip had to bail on his date so he could take care of him. Then he told the whole damned world about Skip throwing a sledgehammer through a car windshield, even though he still didn’t remember what actually happened.

“Skipper?” Galvan said, raising an elegant black eyebrow in a handsomely chiseled Latino face. “
Skipper
threw a sledgehammer through a windshield. Are you sure this wasn’t a hallucination?” Galvan’s eyes twinkled as he manipulated the top of Richie’s head and pretended to be checking both eyes. “People imagine all sorts of things with a concussion!”

Richie shook his head (not too hard—he’d admitted privately to Skip that he had a motherfucker of a headache and not even the pain meds could completely squash it) and waved his hands. “Swear, it wasn’t me who said it—it was my
dad
. Apparently Skipper saw the chimp brothers cracking up while I was bleeding in the dust and lost his fucking mind.”

Skip felt his face heat. “They were being assholes,” he mumbled. That got him a whole lot of laughter, some claps on the back, and offers to buy more beer.

“Good to know you got our backs off the field, Skip,” Owens said, toasting them with a microbrew.

Skip refrained from saying that Richie was sort of a special case, and Jimenez spoke up about how to avoid property damage because you could get sued for that. Well, Jimenez
was
a lawyer. Thomas, their schoolteacher with a scruffy brown beard and a man-bun, started asking him questions about that. Apparently Thomas had some students in trouble.