Bounty (Page 45)

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.

More pain (and pleasure) came when Max called on the Monday telling me he was arranging for Joe Callahan to come earlier to put in my security system.

Max had shared this by saying, “Deke’s not a big fan of you up there all alone with not a lot of light, no animal and no security. So I’ll arrange things with Cal and get that sorted.”

Deke’s not a big fan…

I agreed to Cal coming earlier. Joe “Cal” Callahan did all my family’s security. As well as Lacey’s. And Lacey’s dad’s. And so on. He was the best in the business and in our business, which included some crazies, the best was what you got no matter the cost (and Cal cost a load, but he was worth it).

It was a good plan and I should have actually asked Cal there before I’d moved in, to be honest.

And I felt the warmth of friendliness Deke was giving by looking out for me.

I just wished that warmth was of another variety.

Needless to say, the boundary that Deke had swept away over hot dogs and s’mores he intended to keep swept away.

But there was still another boundary.

That said, he liked me. He showed it. The banter remained.

He also asked once to check in if I’d heard from my brother and made it clear with his expression after I’d said no that he was there to listen if I did.

And I’d straight up told him over sandwiches about how my girl Bianca had disappeared and how I was making calls to everyone she knew, I knew she knew but I didn’t know (if I could get their numbers), and anyone else that might tell me something.

And coming up with zilch.

Through this I’d shared that I was concerned with her partaking of certain substances, her increased imbibing of certain liquids and the fact that she had quickly dwindling resources (this I didn’t share being the trust fund her mother and father gave her, something with her behavior the last few years her dad had been staunch about not augmenting).

And last, that even before this descent, she’d begun to seem aimless and lost so even if I was to get her to think about tackling the dope and the drinking, these, as ever, were seated in deeper issues that I did not have the tools to tackle.

I’d obviously not shared that all this began with Bianca around the time Lacey and I started to follow in our parents’ footsteps, gain our own attention, acclaim and fame, and Bianca had gotten herself an agent in order to go out on auditions for television shows and movies.

She’d been asked to do some commercials and had been offered some movies of the straight-to-video variety that had a lot of sex scenes. All of these she’d turned down, declaring no way she was going to do shit like that. She was no model or spokeswoman. And she wasn’t going to be her mother and be all about tits, ass and hair (even though, being all about this, her mother made a ton of money, earning a lot of fame along the way, and she made no bones about how she did it).

Bianca, she’d proclaimed, was a serious actress.

The problem was, she had the lush, big-blonde-haired, big-blue-eyed, big-chested, slim-bodied, fuck-me beauty her mom had with a lot of attitude and rock ‘n’ roll her dad had thrown in.

But she wasn’t a good actress. Lace and I had seen her in a couple of plays that didn’t do so well, the reason was partially her, partially the plays sucking, but that well had dried up due to the it being partially her part.

So I felt a strange sense of guilt I rationally knew I shouldn’t feel (and I knew, since we’d talked about it, that Lacey felt the same) that I was part of the reason she started to turn to the dark side.

I hadn’t shared this with Deke either.

He’d had no advice, just listened and commiserated, his face intent and sharing open concern, but not for Bianca.

For me and my state of mind that I had too much shit on my plate and he didn’t like that for me.

More pleasure and pain.

And last, I’d been showing him stuff my interior designer sent me, as well as other stuff I’d clocked as possibilities to buy to make my house a home (once I had walls, floors and the rest).

I did this as a joke at first.

But Deke shocked the crap out of me by not only being interested, but opinionated.

About everything.

“No one needs a white couch,” he’d shared about one of the pieces the designer was suggesting.

“It’s cream,” I corrected him, looking from my laptop to him.