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Now he realized that he’d been spotted and recognized. The workmen kept their voices low, but the looks they directed at him sizzled with hostility. Others began to notice. Griff could feel a dozen pairs of eyes fixed on him.
Jason, who’d been chatting nonstop, barely pausing long enough to fill his mouth with food, became aware of the charged atmosphere. His chatter slowed down and then stopped altogether. He looked toward the three men, then across at Griff, his eyes clouded with concern.
“It’s okay, Jason.”
But it wasn’t. Because when the men got their carryout orders and were on their way to the exit, they had to pass the booth in which Griff and Jason sat. As the last one filed past, he said, “You suck, Burkett.” Then he hawked up a gob of phlegm and spat it at Griff. It missed, smacking into the vinyl upholstery inches from Griff’s shoulder.
Their departure left a vacuum. No one moved. Griff figured everyone was waiting to see what he would do. What he wanted to do was follow the guy out and kick his ass up into his hard hat. Had he been alone, he would have.
But with Jason there, he couldn’t. He didn’t mind the embarrassing scene for himself nearly as much as he minded it for the boy, who was sitting with his head down, his hands in his lap beneath the table.
Soon the clerks and other customers resumed their business. Everyone but Jason. “You finished?” Griff asked.
The boy raised his head. “It’s not fair!”
Griff was surprised to see that he wasn’t embarrassed but angry. “What’s not fair?”
“What that man did just now. What people say about you.”
Griff pushed aside his plate and propped his forearms on the edge of the table. “Listen to me, Jason. Spitting like that was disgusting. It only made him look like an asshole, but what I did five years ago was much, much worse.” He looked through the window at the three, who were climbing back into their utility truck. “How much do you think that guy earns in a year?”
Jason raised his shoulder in a disinterested shrug.
“A fraction of what I made when I was playing football. A tiny fraction. That guy works hard and doesn’t earn as much as I spent on having my tailored shirts laundered. He doesn’t hate me for making more money than him. What he hates is that I was living the life every guy dreams of, and I threw it away. I took money for cheating. I was stupid and selfish, and I broke the law. There’s no getting around that.”
“But you’re not bad now.”
He was screwing a paraplegic’s wife for money. That was pretty damn bad. The only thing worse would be to want to screw her whether he was being paid to or not.
He’d tried not to think at all about what had happened. When he did, he tried passing it off as physiological cause and effect, sexual mechanics that, with all the gears oiled and working, had produced a predictable result.
Or as caprice. A fluke. Stars had collided, but it wouldn’t happen again for another millio
n years.
But in whatever terms he tried to explain it, it stayed on his mind. Constantly. Every time he thought about her teeth sinking into the bottom of his thumb, he got hard, his gut tightened with longing, and all he wanted was to be inside her again.
“I’m nobody’s hero, Jason. Don’t make me into one. You want a hero, look at your dad.”
“My dad?” Jason scoffed. “What’s he do that’s heroic?”
“He loves your mom. He loves you. He takes care of you, worries about you.”
Jason, still sullen, said, “That’s nothing.”
“That’s huge.” Then, to keep from sounding too preachy, he added, “But he can’t throw a football for shit. And don’t tell him I said shit in front of you.”
“He says it all the time.”
Griff laughed. “Then he’s my hero.”
Jason started smiling again.
The following day started out like every other. Griff got out of bed and went into the bathroom. As soon as he’d peed, he consulted the calendar he’d tacked to the wall. This was his routine now. He was marking off the days, for crissake.
He’d bought a computer and taught himself to use it. After extensive Internet research, he thought he had a fairly comprehensive overview of the female reproductive system and how it worked, more than he had learned from basic biology in school.
Some of the message boards he’d logged on to gave him more information than he wanted—did he really need to know about mucus plugs and yolk sacs?—but he’d learned a lot about timing and what happened within that twenty-eight-day cycle. He’d learned what an LH surge was.
