Authors: Amy Lane
Sidecar (35 page)
On his way out, he heard Levi turn down the TV in his room. He was supposed to be studying, which was why he hadn’t gone out to dinner with them, but Casey wasn’t going to chew him out unless he saw a failed test. The kid did good—worked hard, harder than the other kids, because the insults to his little noggin when he’d been born didn’t just go away with love.
“Casey?” Levi came to his doorway, and Casey looked up at him and smiled. He’d hit six feet tall that summer, and his body was all arms and legs and oversized feet. He’d said often that he wanted to be as tall as Joe. It could happen.
“Heya, Levi. How’s the studying?”
Levi grimaced and ran his hand over his shaved head and the blond-brown kinky stubble that remained. For a while, it had been cornrows and beads and Casey rebraiding it a different way every week because Joe was at a loss for that one. Thank
God
Levi had decided he liked it better short. They’d bought a set of clippers and told him to knock himself out. “Algebra II. You wouldn’t… you know. Want to come help me with it?”
God, it was hard to ask for things at seventeen, wasn’t it?
“I’d love to,” Casey said, standing on his toes and running his hand over that shaved head. God, he’d held this kid when he was a bald, screaming baby; he surely had the right to palm that big goofy teenager’s head now, right?
Levi grinned, his teeth big and even (braces!) and white in his latte-colored, high cheek-boned face. He had a long jaw and a slightly flattened nose. No beauty contests in his future, probably, but that smile—God. Melted Casey, and had Joe wrapped around the kid’s little finger, ever since his very first one.
“We brought home a stray, though,” Casey said, looking at Levi meaningfully, and Levi nodded. This wasn’t their first one, and Levi knew the drill. “We’ve got to get him showered and deloused before he goes to bed.”
Levi grimaced. “Oh God. Doesn’t Roy take care of that when we get them?” Lice. They’d all had ’em.
“Yeah, but we found this one. Your dad’s calling Roy right now.”
Levi nodded. “How bad?” One thing he’d learned growing up in Joe’s house was that as hard as it was working through the ADHD, the dyslexia, the communication handicaps and slight hearing loss that his hellific infancy had bestowed on him, there was always someone out there who was worse off than he was. Casey had often thought that Levi could have been another statistic. He’d been an angry middle schooler, a screaming mess of a grade-schooler, and a walking teacher’s meeting through much of his freshman year. But difficult or easy, he was Joe and Casey’s kid. They took him to programs, monitored his homework, remembered his medication, and worked on his behavior modification with his full participation. And sometime in his freshmen year, they’d taken in yet another stray—a girl about his age who had cried nonstop for three weeks, and who had confided in Levi like she had confided in nobody since she’d first been placed in the Daniels home.
Casey was never sure what her story was. She’d been gone within a month to a halfway house with a shrink in residence, because Joe and Casey were afraid for her, and Levi was afraid she’d hurt herself, and that was enough for them. What he did know was that shortly after Cynthia left, Levi had walked up the stairs to their bedroom one night, when they’d both been up reading, and said, “I really love you guys. Dad, Casey? All the shit… I mean, I know I’m not a great student, but you know I love being with you, right?”
Casey and Joe had nodded dumbly, and Levi had turned around and gone down to his room, and they hadn’t had one call to the principal’s office or to meet a teacher or
anything
besides his yearly IEP meeting for his disability plan since.
Levi had grown up, and grown up fast, and Casey and Joe were beyond grateful.
They’d made sacrifices for this—neither of them regretted it, but they were there. Casey had only worked at Intel for a year. For a year, Joe worked nights and Casey worked days, and they played tag-team to watch Levi, because they did
not
jump through all those hoops to put him in childcare. But the commute—and the time away from Joe—was too damned hard. Casey had quit Intel and become an independent consultant as soon as Joe got DSL. He did okay that way—well enough to pay off the Volvo and for the family to go on some good vacations (lots of trips to that place in Los Angeles to see the mouse with the big ears—Levi
still
would rather go to Disneyland with them than anywhere else on the planet), and well enough to save for Levi’s college so he wouldn’t have to work. So decent, yes, but they weren’t rich. Casey wasn’t going to set the world on fire as an engineer; Joe wasn’t going to have a cushy retirement until much later than he’d planned. But it didn’t matter, because now, when Casey told Levi they had a new stranger, a new kid his age, who was going to share their home and their table and their dogs and their cats (a new generation of each, because time marched on) and, yes, Joe and Casey’s time, Levi would say exactly what he was saying now.
“Okay. You want me to show him the ropes?”
And Casey smiled. “God, Levi—you’re an awesome kid. You know that, right? I love you so much it’s gross.”
Levi smiled again. “Well, hell, Casey, I hope so. I’ve been practicing my suck-up for
years
!”
Casey smiled, stood on tiptoe, and kissed his son on the cheek. “Let’s go check on Austin, okay? Joe’s giving his info to Roy.”
Joe was hanging up as Casey and Levi rounded the corner, and Austin looked up to see them and seemed relieved.
“Roy says you’re good to stay for a week or two,” Joe said. “Maybe longer, if you fit.”
“Anyone ever stay forever?” Austin asked, looking around their little home. There were pictures on the walls—lots of them. Levi as a baby, asleep on Joe’s chest; Levi as a five-year-old at Disneyland, hugging Mickey Mouse; the three of them standing at Lake Tahoe on a camping trip, taken by Joe’s nephew, Eli. There were pictures of Alvin and Wendy and their three kids, and Eli and his girlfriend, and even one of Joe, Casey, and Levi with Joe’s parents, taken shortly before their deaths in 2005. They’d died within a week of each other, and the whole family had gathered to mourn. There were pictures of Levi with fosterlings, camping, playing with the dogs, swimming in Sugar Pine, and pictures taken by Levi of the fosterlings with Joe and Casey at high school graduations and birthday parties. All of them—the entire collage of them down the hallway, behind the couch in the living room, around the big-screen plasma television—were framed, and beautiful, and them.
“Yeah,” Joe said gently. “But if you fit, we’ll probably only keep you until you’re ready to go away to college.”
“I’ll be eighteen before I graduate,” Austin said, looking wistfully at all those pictures, and Joe shrugged.
“Means you age out of foster care, not out of Casey and Joe’s radar. Austin, this is Levi, our son. He’s going to show you to the bathroom and help you make yourself at home in the guest room. We’ll try and get you some clothes that fit in the morning, okay?”
Levi stuck out his hand, and Austin followed him down the hall, the two of them talking quietly about pop singers as they disappeared. Levi liked Miguel, Lil Wayne, and Usher and Casey and Joe let him have them. Joe liked to say that he didn’t have to get Levi’s taste in music as long as Levi didn’t give Joe and Casey crap for theirs. It was a deal—but that didn’t mean they didn’t give some of Levi’s songs a play on family trips, because that was only fair.
So Levi liked R&B, and Austin liked country, and they disappeared down the hallway, hammering out a code for being in each other’s lives for an indefinite length of time, leaving Joe and Casey alone.
Casey watched them with a lump in his throat, and then he wrapped his arms around Joe’s middle. It was a little harder to do each year, but it was always worth it.
“You think he’ll be okay?” Casey asked gruffly, and Joe kissed him on his short graying hair.
“I think he’ll be great,” Joe said, and then his other arm came around and Casey was engulfed in that familiar, all-encompassing hug. “He’s just like you, baby. He’s a fighter.”
“And I had you.”
“And he’s got both of us. And Levi. We’re unbeatable.”
Casey grinned a little. “Team Daniels. We’re number one.” He followed that up with a sniffle, because the last twenty-five years had been damned short.
“God, you’re sweet,” Joe said softly.
“Don’t fuck with me, Josiah. I’m having a moment.”
“So am I. Every moment I’m with you.”
Casey gave it up and let a few tears come. “You suck.”
“Not tonight. Tomorrow, when the kids are asleep. I promise.”
Casey laughed through his tears, because he had to. Because that was the two of them, and that was how they would always be.
About the Author
A
MY
L
ANE
is a mother of four and a compulsive knitter who writes because she can’t silence the voices in her head. She adores cats, knitting socks, and hawt menz, and she dislikes moths, cat boxes, and knuckle-headed macspazzmatrons. She is rarely found cooking, cleaning, or doing domestic chores, but she has been known to knit up an emergency hat/blanket/pair of socks for any occasion whatsoever or sometimes for no reason at all. She writes in the shower, while commuting, while taxiing children to soccer/dance/karate/oh my! and has learned from necessity to type like the wind. She lives in a spider-infested, crumbling house in a shoddy suburb and counts on her beloved Mate, Mack, to keep her tethered to reality—which he does while keeping her cell phone charged as a bonus. She's been married for twenty-plus years and still believes in Twu Wuv, with a capital Twu and a capital Wuv, and she doesn't see any reason at all for that to change.
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ANE