“From you.”
She snorted.
“I’m serious,” he said. “From you, Charlie. Who else would have spent a whole summer pretending to be Quinn’s girlfriend, just so you could cover for us?”
“That was selfish as hell too, you know,” Charlie said, reaching out and putting her hand over his. “I was sick of the other girls thinking I was a freak for not wanting a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend, before you ask. I’m ace, Aaron. Quinn was as much my beard that summer as I was his. I just didn’t quite know it yet.”
“Oh,” Aaron said, and then shook his head with a laugh. “Jesus. The gay kid, the bi kid, and the ace kid. We were almost a whole rainbow, weren’t we?”
Charlie laughed as well. “I guess we were.”
Aaron’s smile faded. “Quinn was pretty shaken up to hear about your son, I think,” he said at last, not knowing what else to say.
Charlie raised her eyebrows. “Quinn was never supposed to find out. I don’t want him in my son’s life. Not with his family. It’s hard enough keeping Lennox away from most of my dad’s bullshit, without adding the MacGregors to it. He carries a gun, you know? Quinn?”
Aaron wished he could be surprised.
“Whatever he’s back in town for, I don’t want anything to do with it,” Charlie said. Her expression softened. “And neither should you.”
“I don’t.” Aaron shook his head. “It was a mistake.”
“I loved Quinn,” Charlie said, and smiled at Aaron’s look. “As afriend. But he’s not the guy he was, back when we were all kids. And I guess none of us are the same people anymore, but Quinn is…I don’t know. Maybe he’s still a good guy, under everything else, but I don’t want to be near the sort of person who lives the kind of life that he does. It’s too dangerous. And it’swrong. The MacGregors make their money from other people’s misery. I might be poor as hell and working in a shithole diner in a dead-end town, but at least I can sleep at night.”
“Yeah,” Aaron said softly. He wondered if Quinn could. He wondered what it would have felt like if Quinn had stayed last night, instead of leaving. They’d never woken up together, not even back when they were teenagers. They’d been too scared of getting caught back then, and now…Aaron didn’t know. He only knew it had been a mistake getting tangled up with Quinn again, because everything Charlie said about him was true.
“You should come around and visit with me and Lennox,” Charlie said. “For dinner, or something. We live in the green duplex on Connor Street, you remember it?”
“I think so.” Aaron wasn’t sure how he felt about being invited in Charlie’s life, the one she shared with her son, when she’d shut the door firmly in Quinn’s face. But it was like he’d told Quinn: Quinn wasn’t a dad, he was a sperm donor. And it’s not like he could blame Charlie for wanting nothing to do with Quinn. Not when Quinn had admitted he was back in town for family business.
“So,” Charlie said, “you here for breakfast, or what?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Aaron picked up the menu and scanned it. “Bacon and eggs look great. And a black coffee.”
“I’m on it,” Charlie said, and stood. “It’s good to have you back, Aaron, even if you’re not sticking around. I’ve missed you.”
“Me too,” Aaron said, and watched her walk toward the kitchen out the back.
He’d missed Quinn too though, and he didn’t know how to feel about that.
* * * *
Brody turned up at the house in the afternoon, in the rattling old truck that had announced his arrival from halfway down Main Street. Brody had barely changed since high school. He was still tall and gangly, with messy hair and a lazy smile. He still smelled of weed. And he was still as good-natured as he’d always been.
“I don’t have a problem with the MacGregors,” he said as he helped Aaron strip the last wall in the den. Brody worked on the ladder, while Aaron took care of the bits he could reach. “I mean, you want to buy in this town, then you have to deal with them, you know? When weed became legal I was like, ‘Woah, I can go to a dispensary!’ but the closest one is in Fallon, you know, and who wants to drive that far every couple of days? So I still buy off the MacGregors.” He paused, and snorted. “Well, you know, I buy from a guy who still buys off the MacGregors.”
“They’re bad people,” Aaron said, scraping a section of the wall and peeling a strip of wallpaper off. It curled into a spiral as it dropped to the floor.
“I know they are,” Brody said. He chewed his bottom lip for a moment. “But they’re on the level too, you know? Like, you don’t fuck with them, and they won’t fuck with you.”
“I guess my dad was just fucking with them, huh?” Aaron couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his tone.
“Yeah, well Robert MacGregor was a fucking psychopath,” Brody said. “Still is, I’ll bet. The rest of them though, you don’t bother them and they won’t bother you.”
Aaron thought of the way Brody had ignored the cliques in high school, and how he’d been friends with everyone, no matter who they were. In high school it had seemed like a virtue, and Aaron had admired it. Not so much anymore.
Then again, Aaron wasn’t sure he had any grounds to be angry at Brody’s attitude. It wasn’t Brody that Quinn MacGregor had blown last night.
“So, how’s the junkyard business going?” he asked to change the subject, and Brody beamed and began to tell him.
