Winter Ball (9 page)

He pulled his phone out of his pocket while they were in line and was surprised to see Richie’s text box open.

Hey. How’s your day?

Sweet! It felt like the clouds and the fog had parted and the sun had spilled down on Carmichael after all.

Not bad. Convinced Carpenter to do drills with us Thursday and maybe sub on Saturday.

:(

The emoji caught Skip by surprise.

I thought we had plans on Saturday.

Well I told him I had a date afterward. He won’t be expecting me to hang around.

:)
Good. I’m glad I get to be your date.

:)
Me too. But Carpenter is okay, right?

As long as he’s not spending the night at any time during the weekend, life is all good.

Skip had to make his order then, so he signed off, and he and Carpenter talked during lunch about what drills he’d be best at.

But at the end of lunch, as they were walking back—a little slower, because they were both a little full—Carpenter changed the subject.

“So who were you texting, you know, when we were in line?”

Skip was proud—he didn’t flush, he didn’t fluster, and hell, his heartbeat didn’t hardly speed up. “Richie—just double-checking about you playing on the team. He said yeah, that’s fine.”

“Hm,” Carpenter mumbled, almost to himself. “Okay. Glad to know you cleared it with your boy.”

“Yeah, well, you know. Richie’s good people. He’s happy you’re on board.”

He didn’t hear Carpenter’s reply, and it was just as well. They were a little late back from their break, and they had to hustle to their cubicles or they’d get in trouble. That was fine, though—hustling Carpenter to the sandwich place for the exercise had been Skip’s principle motivation in going. Skip didn’t have many people in his life. He liked to keep everybody healthy.

THAT NIGHT
Skip found another excuse to text Richie—something about Hazel missing him—and they had a good half-hour conversation. The next morning he woke up to find a smiling, sleepy-eyed picture on his phone—Richie’s wake-up pic. Skip returned the favor, and Richie’s next pic wasn’t nearly so family friendly.

OH MY GOD!

What? You saw it before!

Not on my phone! Jesus, it scared me. Looking at me with its one big eye!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

You laugh, but I’ve been dreaming about that thing. Having it show up on my phone was a little too real.

Not real enough, though, because I’m not there!

Skip sighed.
How about you stay Thursday night too?

I wish. My stepmom’s setting me up with a family friend. I’ve got to go pretend that’s a possibility.

Skip almost dropped the phone.

Skip?

Skip you there?

His phone rang, and this time he
did
drop it. By the time he recovered, Richie was in midramble.

“Skip, I’m not gonna
date
her. I just—Kay set this up and we’re just all eating dinner after soccer practice, okay?”

Skip took a deep breath. “I don’t want you dating anybody else,” he said shortly, feeling that jealousy rising again. “I… I mean, I get your stepmom doesn’t know, and you don’t want to tell her—”

“Not while I’m still living here,” Richie said hurriedly, and Skip took another deep breath. Richie had been saving to move out from his parents’ garage loft for the past year. It didn’t help that his parents charged standard rent to their own son, but he was getting it done.

“So… after you move out?” Skip asked, feeling pathetic.

“Yeah, Skip. If you and me… I mean… you know. Right now it’s just this weekend.”

The third deep breath must have been the charm, because Skip calmed down.

“Yeah,” he said, feeling his heartbeat slow. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to go all psycho on you.”

“No,” Richie said softly. “Not psycho. You just wanted to know… wanted to know where we are, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” Skip said, not sure if they had a better idea now or not.

“How’s this,” Richie said, sounding practical. “I
liked
how we didn’t have to worry about rubbers. I think we should stay in that place. Does that work for you?”

“Yeah, okay.” Because that was a good place. Even Skip knew that. “I can deal.”

“Good. Now bail, or we’re both gonna be late for work.”

“’Kay. Bye, Richie. See ya Thursday.”

“See ya Thursday.”

Skip hung up and got in the shower feeling particularly unsatisfied. See you Thursday? When they weren’t going to spend any time alone together?

Well where was the fun in that?

Still, it didn’t stop them from texting every day—and it didn’t stop Skip’s heart from glowing like an amber autumn sun when he saw Richie’s name lit up on his phone.

THURSDAY WAS
pure torture, in its way.

On the one hand, the team was
awesome
with Carpenter. They gave him some drills and some things to work on at home, and they worked on a rotation schedule, so Carpenter could spell one of the defenders, and then the defenders could go out and spell the midfielders or the strikers. It wasn’t a perfect system—people might only get three minutes to catch their breath in the half—but it sure did beat what they had in place now, which was nothing, because they had just the bare amount to play.

McAllister, being the big, hulking Irishman that he was, seemed to have taken Carpenter under his wing, but not entirely in a good way.

“Pushy bastard,” Clay muttered under his breath after McAllister painstakingly explained a play that pretty much any kid out of the under-eight leagues would get.

But Jefferson heard him and rounded in on Mac. “You know, he’s big, he’s not brain-dead. I’m sure he’s got the play down by now, okay?”

McAllister rolled his eyes and turned his back, and Skip knew that was the best they’d get out of the guy. “Ignore him,” he said low to Carpenter. “He wants you to give him a break during the game, he needs to remember you’re not stupid.”

“I heard that!” McAllister complained, and Skip looked at him and nodded like he was talking to a child.

“Yeah? ’Cause Carpenter heard you loud and clear too!”

Mac had the grace to look embarrassed. “Sorry, man,” he muttered. “Skip’s right, you’re not stupid.”

Practice evened out a bit after that, and Richie sort of moved in to take over where Mac had left off. Richie was a better teacher, giving Clay some room to do bigger things, and they were all rewarded when he blocked a few shots nobody expected him to get.

By the time they were done, Skip felt twice as worked out from running around the field to make sure everybody got their fair share of the practice, but the team was good with Carpenter, he was good with the team, and he was dripping sweat and happy at the same time.

Skip was going to call it a win.

But when Scoggins started trotting up to the parking lot for his car and waved at the team like Skip was just another guy, he didn’t feel quite like he was winning much at all.

THAT NIGHT
he got a text from Richie at bedtime.

Going to bed alone. Promise.

Skip smiled. He actually hadn’t worried about that—not after Richie had reassured him. Richie was hot-tempered, wily, and not awesome at communication, but he wasn’t a liar or a cheat.

I believe you.

How’s Carpenter?

Still wheezing—but happy. You were a good teacher.

He’s a good guy. Wanna pick me up tomorrow? Right after work.

Yeah, sure. Car broke?

Nope.

Skip frowned. The junkyard was out in Rancho Cordova, and Richie’s parents lived in a house not far from the car yard itself. Skip didn’t mind driving there—certainly not with Richie as his carrot on a stick—but since Richie had to drive down past Carmichael to get to the soccer field any—

His phone buzzed, bringing him back to the present.

Driving away sucked. Maybe it’ll be easier if you drop me off.

Skip stared at his phone, mouth open.

Oh.

I doubt it. But I’ll take my turn.

Thanks, Skip. See you tomorrow.

See you tomorrow.

RANCHO CORDOVA
had been improved upon in the past few years. Skip remembered when he was a kid and everything past Folsom Boulevard was a Bad Place to Be. But a lot of the industrial parks had been turned into rec centers since then, and a lot of the shitty apartment complexes had been knocked down and replaced with high-end college-oriented restaurants.

But a pick-n-pull was not going to be a flower mart, no matter how much the town itself had spiffed up. The business, located out on Grant Line Boulevard, was just as remote and isolated now as it had been when Skip had first visited back in tech school.

The November sun lay thick like dust on the corpses of defunct vehicles, and Skip tried hard not to think about the ones that had gone in because of severe body damage. Had everyone survived in that one? That one? The one with the top caved in? Were the doorknobs and locks worth towing the totally demolished SUV in from wherever it had been destroyed?

The first time he’d come out here, he’d been trying to keep his mother’s Oldsmobile alive, just until he got through school and could afford a car that wasn’t as old as he was. Richie had helped him replace the fuel pump, the carburetor, the fuel line, the brake shoes, and pretty much every belt the damned car had. Skip liked to think he was decent with cars now, but that didn’t stop his memories from filling in the blank spots of heat and cooking metal and dust and exhaust, all of which populated the pick-n-pull, even in the lengthened shadows of an autumn evening.

Richie’d texted him and said he was still at work, which meant Skip took the first left off of Grant Line after the Jacksonville split and drove in the half-mile corridor, surrounded by the blue-plastic glow of the paneling in the hurricane fencing. Eel wire topped the eight-foot fence, and Richie had once told Skip that the alarms and floodlights went off about three times a month, revealing blood on top of the eel wire and figures fleeing into the vacant fields around the junkyard at night.

When Skip got past the blue-green of the driveway, he came to the small “portable” office building where Richie worked, and oh, hey, there were the happiness chimps, standing with Richie by a new addition to the lot.

Skip parked by the small paved apron in front of the office and hustled down to where all the excitement was. Anything that involved Richie’s stepbrothers, Paul and Rob, was going to be bad. In tech school Richie had needed to wear a cast for six weeks because Paul and Rob thought it was a
great
idea to ride an old chassis like a skateboard.
They’d
steered it just fine with their feet, and why couldn’t Richie—who weighed a good hundred pounds less than either of the big gorillas—make that thing not hit the fucking forklift on its way down the hill?

Both guys were a good six foot five, 250 pounds of bulky muscle, and they’d been beating the shit out of Richie since he was a lean and stringy twelve-year-old.

They’d graduated, Skip thought darkly. They didn’t beat him up anymore. Now they just baited him, challenged him to do stuff that was dangerous or out of his range. Richie was small, but he was strong and smart—right up until Rob or Paul said something asinine like “Hey, Richie—gotta do
this
to sit at the grown-ups table!” and Richie, who was supposed to be old enough to know better, fell for that shit like a dog fell for a ball thrown over the house. The damned dog
knew
where the ball had gone,
knew
what the other side of the house looked like, but it just kept staring up at the roofline, waiting for something to change.

The guys were both brownish—sun-streaked brown hair, skin tanned to leather, and eyes like swamp water—and Skip knew that before Richie got his tech certificate he’d burnt his fair skin again and again because maybe simply ignoring his redheaded complexion would make him tan like Paul and Rob.

Now they worked in different areas, the chimp brothers outside helping the customers find the right cars in the labyrinthine organization of car carcasses, and Richie inside the office doing the invoices or inside the garage bay maintaining the hydraulic and electronic equipment they used.

Right now
all
of them were standing in front of an old muscle car that even to Skip’s untrained eye had a bent frame and metalwork that could never be repaired.

Chimp One—Paul, the oldest at twenty-eight—stood, hip cocked, an insufferable smirk on his square-jawed face as he dangled a sledgehammer from his battered paw. “I’m saying, a hood this battered, anyone can pound a hole in it—even rat-tail dogs like you, Richie!”

Richie had his arms crossed and was shaking his head at his stepbrothers like he wasn’t going to do this again. “I still think you’re insane, but here. Gimme the hammer and I’ll try it.”

Oh
fuck
.

“Richie, goddammit—” Skip started, striding across the pavement and onto the plain dirt part that held the cars. Richie cast him an oblique look and squared his jaw, and Skip started running instead.

He was too late. Richie was too short, and his strength wasn’t in his torso—the sledgehammer bounced off the “sweet spot” and Richie lost control of it. His hands shot backward and he clocked himself in the face. Even Skip could hear the crunch of his broken nose.

Richie let go of the hammer, stumbled backward, and landed on his ass in the dirt, holding his bleeding nose as what Skip imagined to be a whole other ocean of pain washed over him.

Paul and Rob were laughing their asses off.

Skip crouched down by Richie and tore off his zippered work sweater. He folded it twice and gave it to Richie to hold up to his nose.