“To be honest, you pretty much sorted the problem out all by yourself. All I did was yawn in your ear and spout some goop about infant nervous systems, but any time. I gave you my personal number for a reason. I was kind of hoping you’d call for other reasons…”
Oh. No, we couldn’t round back to this again. Man, he was a flirt. Baker was right about that. The man knew how to sweet talk.
“I’m not sure what to say to that. We kissed. And I would like to kiss you again.”
“Okay, sounds good to me so far,” he said. Something in the background sounded like running water. “I’d like that as well. Shall we set up a date for more kissing?”
Lady wrootched around on the bed, pushing her feet into my side. I moved over a few inches, but that was all I could give her on a twin bed. I lay there, eyes closed, working over in my mind whether kissing Aiden more would be a good thing or abad thing. Mostly good. I was pretty sure of that, but there were things that could make it bad. Bella and I had agreed on no entanglements with anyone we met.
“Do you consider kissing forming an entanglement?” I asked as I moved to my side to stare at the millions of stars in the dark southwestern sky.
My hand slid into Lady’s fur, my fingers moving gently over her too easily felt ribs. We’d get her back to a good weight. That was a promise. Stroking her was a way of self-calming. I’d read about the good effects of petting animals. Right now, I need to settle a little. My pulse was rising just thinking about kissing Aiden.
“Wow, uhm, no, not really.” He exhaled softly as if sitting down. Maybe back on the couch I’d slept on, that we’d kissed on. Damn it. My dick was getting hard. Nope, none of that with the dog pressed close. I wiggled my lower half until my cock was pressed into the mattress. Lady never moved. She just snored lightly, her back legs twitching slightly. “I don’t look at any kind of physical interaction as a form of entanglement. People can have lots of sex and not get attached.”
Right. Yes. He was a player. “Okay.”
“Is that all you wanted to ask? It feels like there’s something you want to discuss but are too nervous to bring up?”
“No.” My fingers continued to comb through her fur. Fur that needed a bath, but that would have to wait until her stitches were out. She didn’t smell bad, though. Not really. Not like the beagle that used to live next door to us when I was a kid. Now that dog was a real stinker. Mr. Crabtree was old and rarely washed old Ralph. “Yes.” Aiden snickered softly. “Why don’t you have a dog or a cat?”
“Oh. That was a quick lane change.”
“Sorry. My thoughts go fast at times. Mom always said it was because I had so many wonderful things to think about that theygot tangled up in my head at times. Which was a motherly way of saying my ADHD brain was working overtime. Did your mom say things like that too?”
“No, my mom…” He breathed out a long, slow breath. “To circle back to your first question, which will lead into your second, I did have a dog. A little cocker named Julius. He was my mother’s, but she was unable to care for him properly, so I took him. He passed about eighteen months ago from old age. His heart just gave out one night.”
“Aw, I like that name. Julius. Sounds regal and Roman. Did you know Julius Ceaser was once kidnapped by pirates? It’s true. Then he returned and executed them at a later date. This was after he told them to raise his ransom.”
“I did not know that.”
“Yeah, I had a Roman phase when I was in junior high school. I watched all kinds of old movies about him and then started reading about the Roman Empire. I’d come home with my backpack filled with books from the library. Mom teased me a lot about being a bookworm, but she liked that I read so much. So, your dog was Julius. Was your mom too feeble to care for him? We had a neighbor who had a stinky beagle. I think he was too old to bathe him. Both Mr. Crabtree and his dog smelled bad, so maybe he couldn’t take good care of himself either.”
“Perhaps not. My mother wasn’t too feeble to take care of her dog. She was too high most of the time. Then she was in and out of rehab. My aunt Wendy tracked her down in Toledo. Julius was with her in some rundown crack house, skinny and with an eye infection. I’d been in my senior year of school when this happened, so Wendy kept Julius until I graduated and could settle down into a practice. Then I took over his care. Mom refused to come home with her sister and then fled. Ended up in a rehab in St. Louis that didn’t take. One of about ten now at last count.”
“Wow.” I let my hand still on Lady’s side. “I’m really sorry about your mom. Is she better?”
“Not really. I’ve not spoken to her since Julius died. She called me from a gas station in Toronto, asking for money, which wasn’t happening. That train left that station years ago. I told her I wasn’t giving her cash for dope and that her dog had passed. She called me a greedy fuck and hung up.”
“Wow.” I let it all sink in. “Sorry. I know I’m repeating myself.”
“It’s okay. Most people who haven’t dealt with addicts firsthand don’t know what to say. This all got really deep, really fast,” he halfheartedly joked. “I guess what they say about sharing your darkest secrets at the midnight hour with someone you trust is true.”
He trusted me? That seemed like a big entanglement sort of confession. Should I share some of the trauma of my past year with him? Would anything I told him fall under patient/doctor confidentiality? Or was that only for humans? God, it would be nice to have someone other than Bella to talk to about it all. Still, maybe best not to share. It might put him in danger. Bella and I had sworn to each other that her secret was her secret and only she could decide who was told.
“Ford? Are you still awake?”
“Sorry, yes.” I moved to my back, my boner gone thankfully. Lady snuggled in more tightly to my side. “I was processing. Sometimes it takes me a minute. My brain snags a lot. Someday you should meet my mom. She’s great. My stepdad is too. My real dad was nice to me, then he ran off, which is a pattern with him, it seems. I ride out to where he’s buried to talk to him sometimes when I’m alone. I don’t take the other guys with me as they all seem to really hate him a lot. I don’t hate him. I’m disappointed in him, but he stuck around with me for longer than any of my brothers, so I don’t want to rub it in. But if youmeet my mother, she’ll call you sweetie and make you food. She’s Italian.”
That made him laugh. “I would love to meet your mother and stepfather someday. Do you feel odd that you got so much time with Cash when the other boys got little to nothing out of him?”
“Yeah, I…yeah. I try not to talk about him in front of them. They all really hate him for abandoning their mothers, and I get that, but…I don’t know.” My fingers slid into soft fur once more, carding through it in a steady little rhythm. “I don’t hate him. Not really. Mom found Paul within a year of Cash taking off, so we really didn’t suffer much. I guess I did emotionally, but Paul stepped in to be a father right away, and that was that. But yeah, I don’t talk with my brothers about Cash Bastian. When they go off, I sort of nod and grunt. Guess I was the only one who had a different experience with him.”
“I am sorry he ran off on you, on all of you. I know what that’s like. My father was some random junkie. A man with no name who introduced sperm to an egg one night in a flophouse, so I only had one parent to disappoint me. Thankfully, Aunt Wendy was there to take me in when things were bad. She and my uncle have been amazing.”
We both fell into silence for a moment. “Are you okay?”
“Sure, yeah. You?”
