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“Your Lyra looks just like her but doesn’t give off that ‘warning’ vibe. She seems like a good girl.”
“She is. She’s amazing. I love her, Pop.”
Pop went still at his side, so Zach turned to him again. He was simply studying him. Zach had the weird thought that he needed to apologize. Recognizing its weirdness, he didn’t act on the impulse.
“You’ve never been in love before, have you?”
“No. But I know what I feel.”
“I know you do. Maybe more because you’ve waited. It’s good to know yourself before you try to mesh with somebody else. That’s what this Laughlin move really is, isn’t it?”
Feeling a need to proceed carefully now, Zach asked, “What do you mean?”
Just then, Jake, hanging out at the back of the yard with Duncan, Chris, and a few of the younger kids of their generation, laughed loudly, and Pop looked back there for a moment.
Zach and Jay had texted a few times since he’d returned to Laughlin, and they’d greeted each other with a hug on the street tonight, but if anyone in his family could be said to be holding a grudge over Zach’s decision to transfer his patch, it would be his little brother. Jay was treating him like some guy he knew, and not like the brother who’d saved his ass his whole life.
They’d work it out in time.
Pop turned back to Zach. He took a long pull from his bottle before he said, “I mean, the transfer’s not about Lyra. It’s about figurin’ yourself out. It’s about gettin’ out from under the weight at home. Right?”
Zach didn’t know how to answer. His throat had gone suddenly dry, so he took a drink from his bottle and tried to get the beer down past the rock that had swelled at the back of his mouth.
“It’s okay, son. Your mom and me, we’ve talked it out for hours these past couple months. We get it. Jake’s got some growin’ up to do, and it wasn’t gonna get done with you holdin’ his hand. I know you love your brother. Your mom knows.Jakeknows, even if he’s tellin’ himself somethin’ else right now. And I love that boy hard, just like I love you. But it’s not easy bein’ his brother, is it?”
Zach still could not find a word in his head.
“Not easy being my kid, either. Not while you’re wearin’ the Bull.”
“Pop—”
Pop put his hand up. “I’m tellin’ you I get it. You need to make some room for yourself and stop gettin’ squeezed from both sides. Of course you do.”
His father really did understand, and he was saying Mom understood, too. It wasn’t just that they were accepting him despite not understanding; it wasn’t that they thought he’d left for a girl. They really got it. They really understood.
All of a sudden, that rock wanted to be tears, andfuckthat. Zach put his bottle to his mouth again and drank until the impulse passed. He drained the bottle.
“I love you, Pop,” was all he finally said, because he saw it was the only thing he needed to say.
Zach’s father put a hand on the back of his head and drew him close until they were forehead to forehead; then they simply held there.
For all his life, that had been his old man’s way of hugging him closer than two arms could manage.
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~oOo~
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Eight Ball stood atthe head of two collapsible plastic banquet tables arranged end to end. Around that humble table stood thirteen men from Tulsa—the eleven active Bulls, their prospect, and Zach’s father—and the seven men who would be the founding members of the Laughlin charter.
They were in what would become the party room of the Laughlin clubhouse. Their real table, when they had one, would be in the room they’d designated for their chapel, when it was ready.
For now, two cheap banquet tables would do.
“We’re starting a new tradition today,” Eight said. “Apollo’s been callin’ it a ‘charter initiation ceremony,’ and I guess that fits. I’m not much one to stand on ceremony, but important things should be done right, and I can’t think of much that’s more important than what we’re doing here.” He chuckled, “I guess I kinda feel like a dad sending his kid off to college. Never did that, and I got a few years before Ajax heads off that way, but the way it feels hits me weird. I don’t know how to say it.”
“Bittersweet,” Maverick offered.
