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"It's in your face. You've got enough misery in those brown eyes to break a mother's heart. Sometimes it's easier to tell a caring stranger than the people who are too close. "
"What kind of girl wants a man who doesn't love her?" Walter asked, brows drawing down.
"A girl that's been abused by the people she should have trusted most," Thomas said flatly. "Her dad and her uncle. They shared her, since she was six. "
"Oh my God. " Cathy put her hand to her mouth.
"The father's dead, the uncle took off a few years back, so she's got no one but my family. My mother took her under her wing at fifteen. She thinks it's divine destiny.
Daralyn worked in the store one summer and I'm the only man she trusts. She doesn't want. . . a normal relationship. Ever. She wants a friend to keep her company, protect her. And I do love her, like that. I can do that.
"My brother's in a wheelchair. I know he could do more, he's milking it, but if I'd been there. . . And my father, his heart attack. My mother feels. . . And I'd. . . " He couldn't go on, was appalled he'd just blurted this all out. The sensation of being unable to breathe was closing in, but he had to say the last words because they were the ones erupting into flame in a line from his gut to esophagus, the ones he'd also been unable to say to anyone.
"And I'd rather cut out my own heart than hurt Marcus, but he's the only one I think will be okay. I mean, look at him. He'll never lack for someone to love him. He's got money, power, everything he does turns to gold. How can I give myself that when my mother is still crying herself to sleep, and the bills are coming in?"
"So is the issue your family needing you, or you not being able to believe someone like Marcus can need you as much?" Cathy asked quietly.
"Maybe he needs you more. "
Thomas turned, surprised at both comments. Sometime during his diatribe, Walter had risen, gone to the sink. Now he leaned on it, chewing on a toothpick, studying Thomas. He'd given the sketches a cursory look, obviously uncomfortable with the male/male subject material, turning them quickly over to Cathy, but now there was nothing evasive in his expression. Wryly, Thomas was starting to get the feeling that still waters ran deep in Walter, that his slow talking and watchful demeanor masked a man who did a lot of thinking.
"Your family trusts you enough to show they need you. That tells me they know they can count on you, that they're pretty solid about your love for them. Yeah, that one outside is pretty and put together like one of those fancy ads, but did you notice how my Cathy has a spot of juice on her dress? Her hair's a little messed up today too. "
"Walter Briggs. " She began to push at her hair, but he straightened and caught one of her hands, stilling her. All the while keeping his gaze pinned on Thomas. "When you know you're worth loving, you can be a little imperfect. Hell, look at me - a lot imperfect. It makes all the difference in the world when you believe someone loves you enough that they don't overlook the spot and the messed up hair. They just add it to the things about you that make them love you all the more.
"He's too damn perfect. You were thinking he left this room because it reminds him you're going home and what you're going home to. Maybe. " Walter shrugged. "But maybe it's also that he's looking at something he thinks he's never going to have. He said his family is in this room. That's you and only you. And you're not staying. So he's got nothing but those perfect looks that can't in a million years make him believe he deserves a good-hearted man like you. "
"But I can't abandon - "
"Young people don't listen. They think it's all about the grandiose gesture. " Walter made an impatient gesture of his hand even as Cathy made a soothing noise in her throat to calm him down. "That's all about ego. You don't have to abandon anything.
It's about doing what's really hard, day to day. Someone willing to put up with tantrums on both sides and say, 'you're both my family, and we're going to make this work'.
"You don't think he'll stick with you if it gets that messy. From where I'm sitting, it appears you have your heads up your butts. You're as afraid to bring him into your world because it means he might really decide you are some hick, as he is to ask to be invited, for fear of being rejected. "
He settled back against the sink, pointed at Thomas with his toothpick as if it were the finger of God.
"Get over it, the both of you. If you do, maybe you'll be sitting at a breakfast table together like me and Cathy forty years from now, thinking you're the luckiest people ever been born. "
Chapter Twelve
Marcus knew Thomas had been surprised to see him actually smoking the cigarette he'd bummed out of a pack Walter left on a barrel outside the side door. It was something he hadn't done in awhile, but the acrid burn had suited his mood. Marcus also knew that his foul mood was spawned more by watching Thomas with Cathy than watching him with Walter.
It mattered to Thomas. His mother's love, her approval. The sense she was behind him. Do my parents love me? The Achilles heel that every child was infected with at birth like a virus, and spent adulthood trying to overcome in order to be who they were meant to be.
They stayed at the rental house for the next couple days, with no plans for excursions. Marcus encouraged Thomas to spend the time roaming the property acreage for inspiration. Apparently today Thomas had enough crowding into his head, for he'd never got further than the outside deck. He'd sketched most of the morning and part of the afternoon, sometimes standing at the rail, sometimes sprawled over the lounger.
Now he was sitting on the deck, letting his feet hang down off the side of the deck, using the middle railing to prop his sketchbook. As he tore off sheets, he used several empty coffee mugs he'd taken out there to guard against them being blown away by the breeze.
Marcus stayed inside, working in the living room on phone calls and paperwork, but positioning himself where he could watch Thomas through the glass doors.
Thomas was listening to a track by Staind. While the insulated glass blocked out all but the reverberation, Marcus felt the poignant, hopeless, visceral anger to it. Totally fucked up except when you got to be with the person who made it all unfucked up. But you could spend a life functioning while being fucked up. Until it killed you.
Thomas would be going home in a day or two, and maybe that was good. The shadows kept rising. Marcus didn't have time to get trapped in a morbid fog. He had gallery showings. . . things to do. Plenty of opportunities for. . . something. He sat there, staring out the glass at Thomas until the cell rang, breaking his concentration.
"Julie, how are you?"
"I'm stalking your fine ass, of course. Heard you're in the Berkshires, and guess what? Girlfriend crisis, so I am too. What do you think of. . . "
