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“He’s my best friend, so I can usually look past the eye candy stuff and hug him without grabbing his ass. Usually. It is a superlative ass.”
“Let’s all sit down and say grace so we can eat before things get cold,” Elaine said.
“Mom, Daralyn, grab a seat. I’ve got the biscuits.” Thomas directed his mother to the head of the table, holding her chair for her, and snagged the basket of bread. Daralyn was topping off Rory’s coffee. She gave Thomas a quick nod, but made a questioning gesture to see if anyone else needed more. She returned the pot to the counter and slid into the chair next to Rory.
Brick sat down with Les, their chairs close enough his knee brushed hers. She noticed a similar proximity between the other couples at the table. Marcus’s arm was stretched behind Thomas’s chair. Rory took Daralyn’s hand in his sun-browned one. At their mother’s call for grace, he reached across the table to join his other hand to Les’s. Les’s to Brick’s, Brick’s to Elaine’s. Marcus was next to her, so he and his mother-in-law joined hands while Thomas took Daralyn’s, completing the family circle.
At Thanksgiving, at his mother’s request, Thomas sat at the opposite head of the table, which would have been their father’s spot. But for informal gatherings, he preferred being next to Marcus. The chair at the end of the table, directly across from their mother, remained empty.
Or to look at it the way Les preferred, it held the spirit of the man who would have sat there.
Elaine spoke the short prayer. She picked them out of selections offered in monthly church bulletins. Les didn’t usually pay much attention, but this one made her wonder if her mother had chosen it purposefully.
“We look to you, O Lord, for nourishment for our bodies, grace to build our souls, and love to enhance our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
Grace to build our souls.
After they raised their heads and started to pass around food, Rory grinned at Brick. “I saw Dillon Welsh at the general store the other day. He’s become a semi-decent human being. Has a wife and a kid.”
“Really?” Nostalgia touched her. At Daralyn’s curious look, Les explained, “When I was in ninth grade, he paid attention to me for two glorious weeks. I was sure he was going to ask me to the Valentine’s Day dance.” She grimaced. “But then he asked another girl and never said another word to me. Boys.”
She noticed Brick was studiously cutting his casserole while Thomas and Rory exchanged looks of unmistakable mirth. “What?”
Thomas swallowed a bite of bacon. “Brick’s story to tell.”
Brick shot Rory a narrow look. “No story at all if you hadn’t opened your big mouth.”
“So what’s the story?” Les pressed.
Brick sighed and put down his fork. “I may be part of the reason he never asked you out.”
“What?”
Brick glanced at Elaine, a sign he was choosing appropriate language for family mealtime. “I overheard him in the locker room. You remember JV and varsity shared the gym, and we had overlapping practices that day. He was going to ask you to the dance, but his intentions were to take advantage of your interest in him, for the wrong reasons.”
“Oh.” Les blinked. “Well, that’s mildly hurtful. Though in hindsight, he was a flirt. While most the boys couldn’t put two words together, he’d show up by your desk and say something charming or tug your hair.”
“Then that girl would be moony over him for a month.” Rory made a face. “‘Did Dillon look at me today?’ ‘Is Dillon going to talk to me?’”
“Do you really want to go there with the girls you got moony over?” Les said sweetly. She angled a pointed look toward Brick. “So what happened?”
Rory propped an elbow on the table, using the bacon for emphasis. “He told Dillon if he gave in to his baser impulses, he’d snap his ‘pale, Rob Pattinson wannabe body into twelve pieces. Not eleven, not thirteen. Twelve precise pieces.’ Unquote.”
Daralyn muffled a startled chuckle as Elaine’s brows rose. “Rory wasn’t there to hear it, so I had to step in to defend your honor,” Brick told her. “Otherwise I’m sure he would have handled it the same way.”
“I would have just punched him in the face. I didn’t have the tank physique and silver tongue combo to terrorize with vocabulary alone.” Rory winked.
“You could have waited until he asked me to the dance to threaten him,” Les pointed out. “Tell him he had to show me a nice, respectful time, dote on me like I was the most important thing in his world, and then drop me at my door.”
“Oh, heck no. Then it would have been weeks of ‘Dillon danced with me,’ ‘Will Dillon call me?’ ‘Was Dillon looking at me in the hallway today?’” Rory rolled his eyes.
Les ignored him, but Brick sent her a glinting look. “Sorry. At the time, I didn’t think to consult you on strategy.” He put a biscuit on her plate next to her square of casserole. “Shut up and eat that. Women.”
Though she pretended mock offense, it wasn’t a bad feeling, knowing Brick had been looking out for her, even then. From the delighted female-to-female look Daralyn sent her, her sister-in-law understood, and agreed.
“After breakfast, want to go see if the old tree house is still standing?” Brick asked her.
“The secret tree house? The one Rory told me never to try and find, or he’d burn my favorite books?”
