Bounty(52)

“On the whole, Tom Cruise has a lot to answer for,” Deke muttered and I turned laughing eyes and smiling lips to him.

He looked at my mouth, his jaw got visibly tight before he looked away and loosened it to take another bite of his sandwich.

“Lost a game of pool,” Bubba reminded me of that part of his story before I could come to some internal understanding of why Deke’s jaw got tight while looking at me.

Probably a good thing.

“Why on earth would you bet stripping down to your skivvies and dancing to Seger in a bar on a game of pool?” I asked Bubba.

Bubba grinned at me. “’Cause I didn’t think I’d lose and the woman I was playin’ looked a fuckuva lot better in her skivvies and I know this ’cause it was Krys.”

I burst out laughing.

“Those crazy times are over,” Bubba continued when my laughter died down, doing this with his eyes sparkling. “Don’t miss ’em. Just glad I got some good stories to tell my babies and then the grandbabies they give me when that time comes.”

“Always best to have a stock of those, the more embarrassing the better,” I replied.

“Reckon that means Bubba’s gonna be the best daddy and granddaddy there is,” Deke noted.

“Bet your ass,” Bubba agreed proudly.

I started laughing again. Bubba laughed with me. Deke just allowed his lips to quirk.

Since his lip quirk caused a clit spasm, this was both delicious and frustrating.

We kept eating. Bubba told more stories. Each one was wilder than the last, indicating he’d embarrass the hell out of his children when the time came, at the same time providing fodder they should do as their daddy had done.

Suck the most out of life as you could while you had it.

Then we were finished with sandwiches, chips and Shambles’s daily contribution to our lunch (Reese’s Pieces peanut butter cookies, peanut butter being the day’s theme). The guys got down to starting back up with work and I got down to the limited business of cleaning up lunch.

It was Thursday, a week after hot dogs and s’mores with Deke.

We had Bubba for that day and the next in order to drywall the higher areas of the walls and start on the ceilings.

The men didn’t figure they’d get the whole thing done in those two days but they weren’t messing around.

As for Deke, the Friday after we had our cookout, the first thing he’d done when he came back to my house to work was give me a few outlets in the main area, and after doing this, he brought in three rickety (but working) standing lamps which he’d plugged in.

He’d then ordered me, “Keep this on at night, Jus. You don’t need to break your ankle if you gotta move through this space and folks out there who might be around need to see this house’s got someone in it. Yeah?”

I had noted that outlets and light in that area were kind of a priority, but I hadn’t mentioned it since everything was and I didn’t want to mess with his mojo and ask for something that was not in the contractor rota.

But he gave it to me anyway.

Deke looking out for me.

Pleasure and pain.

That was what my days were made up of.

The pleasure part being, after giving me outlets, Deke spending the time in between then and now actually making serious progress on giving me walls. The whole downstairs was done. And he was taping because he needed an extra man to help him get the sheets of drywall upstairs so he could begin on that.

The pain part came the day he told me, when we had him, Bubba would be helping with that too. To which I’d told Deke I could help him get the drywall upstairs.

He’d then asked me to help him lift one bundle, which was two sheets.

He was a powerhouse and lifted his end like he could also hurtle the double sheet through the air onto the upstairs landing. But even so, we barely got it up before I set my end down and announced that I’d like to enjoy my house when it was done and do it without a hernia.

The pain was in the gift he gave me after I’d said that. That gift was him bursting out laughing, filling my crazy space with the deep, abiding beauty of his mirth in a way it seemed to tunnel through the drywall he’d put up, the foam insulation he’d blown in, to settle there for eternity. All I had to do to call it up was walk to a wall he’d given me, press my ear to it, and Deke’s rich laughter would sound in my ear like the waves in a seashell.

Not done with the Deke-style generosity he had no clue he was sharing with me, he’d then walked to me, cupped the back of my neck in his big hand and swayed my whole body with it for a few beats, saying, “You’re damn funny, gypsy.”

See?

Pleasure and pain.

That hadn’t been it.

No.