“I have to be in control all the time. Which is BS. Plus, she said I need to help people or some shit.”
Silence settled around the table, and his friends all tried to look busy. Not easy, when they were holding cards and sitting still. Beers were lifted, and chips crunched. No one looked at him.
“Whose turn is it, for fuck’s sake?” Tex said, sounding desperate.
“Yours, you loser,” Jake replied.
“Damn sad about Mikey’s grandmother,” Brad said. “Nearly broke my heart seeing him crying like that. Gonna be tough for those boys.”
“We’ll get him and Connor through,” Declan said from his kitchen.
“Are you all really ignoring what I said?” Newman stood and slapped his hands on the table. “Because I didn’t think that was how this friendship stuff worked?”
He was feeling unreasonable, a rarity for him. Newman was usually everything that was reasonable. He could be mean, even intimidating when the moment called for it, but he was rarely unreasonable.
“What’s the problem here, pretty boy?” Buster said, lowering his glasses to look at Newman over the top. “You want us to tell you you’re a control freak who has a really decent side to him, because he’s the first man we go to when we want help?”
“Couldn’t have worded it better.” Jake raised his bottle.
“I’m not a control freak.” Newman took the bottle Tex had placed before his brother, and drank. “I like order, nothing wrong with that.”
“You are not serious?” Cubby looked at him. “You don’t even walk out your door without a diary note telling you where you’re going.”
This produced howls of laughter.
“I thought I was relaxed?”
The anger had gone as quick as it had come. They were his friends, and he had no right to be angry, even if he disagreed with them.
“You appear relaxed,” Tex said. “All that running about at night, and loping through town like you have all the time in the world. But you never really go anywhere without a purpose, Newman.”
They knew him better than he knew himself. It was a humbling thought.
“She said I help people to feel needed.” He said the words before giving them too much thought, and realized this mistake when he saw the knowing looks around the table. Maybe he should have stopped at four beers; the seventh was loosening his tongue.
“Who?”
“We’re not really playing that game, are we, Cub? I mean, not after Tex saw him kissing her in the Roar,” Buster said.
“She says it’s a throwback to my childhood.”
“Is it?” Jake asked gently.
Newman shrugged. “Maybe.”
“So you gonna stop doing shit for us now? ’Cause that’ll probably break my heart,” Buster said. “I was going to ask you to run the shop next Tuesday.”
They were all laughing seconds later.
“Issues,” Brad said. “We all got them. The hell is ironing them out so you get to be some semblance of normal.”
They all lifted their bottles to that piece of wisdom from the youngest among them, and then the hot dogs arrived and everything else was shelved… for now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“SoJohn’s agreed. He’s arriving next week, Thursday, and bringing a few of his people to help.”
Hope was having a soda after her shift at the Howler. Annabelle and Ethan were having dinner, and had called her over.
