Good Bones (16 page)

Andy barked once more, sharply, and then leaped. The jogger was borne to the ground. The acrid scent of urine filled the air and then, just a split second later, the rich salty odor of blood. The man couldn’t even scream. He gurgled and batted weakly at the wolf upon him, but only for a moment. Then he was still, and Andy was burying his sharp muzzle inside the man. Dylan licked his lips, took a cautious step forward—and then turned and ran.

If Andy had chased him then, he probably would have caught him. Andy was much stronger, more accustomed to this form. And he was alpha. But Andy was too occupied with his kill to bother. So Dylan ran home as fast as he could, and when he got there he ran through his still-open door and jumped up to push it shut behind him. A wolf couldn’t manage a doorknob, but Andy could still smash through a window, so Dylan had again taken refuge in the pantry, pushing closed the salvaged steel door.

In the cold light of the morning, with Andy gone, Dylan had considered calling the police. But what could he tell them? If he talked about werewolves he’d end up in a loony bin at best, in some kind of… research facility at worst. Instead, he had done nothing except call in sick and spend the day reading and rereading the accounts of the dog attack, the horror and self-loathing periodically forcing him into the bathroom to puke.

The next day he transferred the reinforced door from the pantry to his spare bedroom and the monthly lock-in began.

Chapter 13

D
YLAN
took another sip from the glass etched with a twirly mustache and smiled at his sister-in-law. “Thanks for dinner, Kay. It was great.” She’d made lasagna, which she knew was one of his favorites.

Kay curled her legs under herself on the couch. “What’ve you been eating out there anyway?”

“It’s not the end of the world, Kay. They have food.”

“Roots and berries?” she asked with a grin. “C’mon, Dyl. You don’t look like you’re wasting away, but I know there’s no drive-through.”

“I’m not completely helpless, you know.”

“Not completely. But you don’t have a kitchen, and even if you did, a guy can only live off grilled cheese and nuked pizza for so long.”

With a sinking feeling in his gut, Dylan realized he’d walked into a trap. Kay had claimed they couldn’t possibly eat the pie she’d baked without ice cream and then feigned surprise when she discovered that someone had eaten the last of the Dreyer’s. But that had clearly been a ploy to get Rick out of the house so she would have Dylan all to herself. He wondered if she had written all her questions down ahead of time so she wouldn’t forget any of them. “I kind of have… um… an arrangement going,” he mumbled.

That was the wrong way to say it; he could see that immediately. Kay’s thin eyebrows flew up, and her green eyes went round. “An arrangement?”

He stared down desperately at his lemonade, but it wasn’t helpful at all. “It’s… my neighbor. Chris.”

“The guy who’s helping you with the remodel.”

“Right. And it turns out he likes to cook, and since he’s right next door, well, it kind of made sense.”

“You’re paying him to be your chef?”

Why hadn’t he just told her he was living off sandwiches? “Not exactly. But we split the grocery costs, and he doesn’t mind. He says it’s not any more work to cook for two.”

She looked at him so sharply that he had a deep stab of sympathy for the child she and Rick were trying so hard to conceive. Poor kid was never going to get away with anything. But then she must have decided to move on to the next item on her list, because she shifted slightly, rearranged a pillow, and set her lemonade glass atop a coaster on the coffee table. “Are you okay, Dylan?” she asked. “You look kind of beat.”

He looked, he figured, like a guy who had been shot down at work, accosted by a homicidal ex-boyfriend in a parking garage, and tortured by visions of murder and cowardice during his evening commute. “It’s been a long day,” he said.

“Is the commute getting to you?”

“No, that’s okay. My truck’s pretty comfy. It even has an mp3 jack.” Which was pretty useless until he got another iPhone, he remembered. But Kay looked like she was waiting for more details. He decided to fill her in on the easier part of his problems. “The clients didn’t like the plans I presented today.”

“No way! You do such good work! Bastards.” She looked slightly outraged on his behalf, which made him smile. Yes, occasionally time with Kay made him thankful for being gay—he didn’t understand how Rick could live with such intensity and such constant talk about
feelings
—but she accepted him with all his flaws and had even become his fierce advocate.

“They just wanted something different,” he explained, and then described that afternoon’s scene at the office.

When he was done, Kay tapped her front tooth thoughtfully with a fingernail. “I can see where the futon queens were coming from, maybe. Your houses are beautiful. But they’re kind of… safe, aren’t they? Safe as houses.” She giggled. “Safe’s a good thing, Dylan, but sometimes you have to color outside the lines.”

He was still thinking about her words and trying to formulate a reply when the door from the garage slammed shut. Rick entered a moment later with a paper bag in his hand. “This better be really good pie,” he said.

Kay unfolded herself from the couch and walked across the room so she could grab the sack away. “Never question my pie, honey.” She gave Rick a loud smooch on the cheek. “While I’m warming it up you can get Dylan to spill about his new squeeze.”

Dylan sputtered and almost choked on his lemonade. Rick shrugged and took Kay’s spot on the couch. “New squeeze?”

“Traitor!”

“Let’s face it, little brother. My allegiances have shifted. If it comes down to you or the little woman, she’s gonna win every time. And not just ’cause I’m sleeping with her.”

“I heard that!” Kay called from the kitchen, and Rick made a
See what I mean
face.

“So… who’s the lucky guy?” Rick asked. “Or, you know, sheep.”

Dylan suppressed the urge to stick out his tongue. “Hah. Besides, it’s goats we have the hots for in Columbia County.”

“Tell him or you don’t get any pie,” yelled Kay. That was a scary threat, because her pie was really good.

Dylan sighed. “I don’t have a… a… someone. I was just telling Kay that Chris has been sharing his dinners.”

“‘Sharing his dinners.’ Is that some kind of gay euphemism that I don’t really want defined?” asked Rick with a smirk.

“No, Dickhead. It means the same for us as it means for you breeders. Chris cooks food, like noodles and chicken and stuff, and we eat it. That’s it. Because I don’t have a kitchen.”

Rick picked up Kay’s lemonade glass and drained it in one long swallow. “Chris is a pretty handy guy to have around, isn’t he?”

“So?”

“Nothing. Just saying.”

Dylan glared at his brother silently, and Rick picked up the remote control and clicked on the TV. That gave them both the excuse to stare at the screen as Rick scrolled through the guide. After a few seconds he put on
The Daily Show
. They listened as Jon Stewart interviewed some guy who wrote a book about foreign policy. The guy was pretty funny, Dylan thought, and he wondered if they practiced the banter ahead of time. He briefly imagined himself sitting in the guest’s chair, laughing with Jon Stewart about the funny aspects of being a werewolf. Not that there were too many of those.

“You are a pair of idiots,” Kay announced when she returned to the living room. She was carrying a tray decorated with green and yellow cartoon owls. Dylan took one pie-filled plate off the tray and Rick took another. Kay set down the tray and squeezed between the brothers, her own plate and fork firmly in hand.

Dylan didn’t usually have much of a sweet tooth, but there was no way not to love boysenberries and cream cheese with a healthy scoop of vanilla bean ice cream melting over the top. “Oh my God,” Dylan moaned with his mouth full. “Why are you in HR and not a baker?”

“’Cause I’d weigh five hundred pounds if I was around goodies all the time.” She grabbed the remote off Rick’s leg and turned off the TV. “I wanna hear about this Chris guy.”

“Why? He’s just… just a guy.”

Kay eyed Dylan’s plate like she might be considering taking it away, so he clutched it possessively and shoveled a huge forkful into his mouth. “You have a thing for him,” she said firmly.

“I do not!”

“Every time I bring him up you get this little fuzzy look in those big hazel eyes of yours.”

“I don’t—There’s no fuzzy!” Dylan looked at his brother for backup, but Rick only grinned and shrugged. No rescue there. “He’s…. We kind of spend a lot of time together ’cause it’s just the two of us out there, and we’ve been doing all that work together. So I guess… yeah, I guess we’re friends.”

Until he said those words, Dylan had been assuming that Chris was a fuck buddy and a coworker, but that was all. Now he knew that the assumption was wrong—Chris really was his friend. Someone whom he enjoyed hanging out with even when they weren’t screwing or laying tile. He liked Chris’s sarcastic sense of humor, the way he liked to tease. He liked the way Chris could wear his country rube persona so comfortably and yet surprise with his little digs and offhand comments that reminded Dylan that Chris was actually a very intelligent man. And then there was the way he was so generous with his time and energy—he only took a paycheck when Dylan insisted, and for much less than he was worth—and so good-natured about Dylan’s various issues. Dylan also admired how Chris didn’t wallow in self-pity or seethe in anger over his crappy upbringing or the difficulties he’d had as a young adult. And he was so goddamn sexy with his crooked smile and clear blue eyes and his tan skin, so soft over hard muscles, and….

Dylan looked at Kay’s triumphant face. He felt as if he’d been bashed over the head with a sledgehammer like a cartoon coyote.

“Told you,” Kay said.

The delicious pie suddenly tasted like sawdust, and Dylan had to struggle to swallow the rest down. Still feeling in a daze, he accepted a stack of Tupperwared leftovers, thanked Kay and Rick, and stumbled to his truck.

Chapter 14

“I
THOUGHT
you were gonna do the upstairs first,” Chris said, peering uncertainly into the half bath on the ground floor.

“Change of plans.” Dylan had indeed planned to tackle the master bath first, but that would have meant spending the day with Chris very close to his bed. Up until last night, Chris near his bed—or, better yet, Chris
in
his bed—would have seemed like an excellent idea, albeit counterproductive to remodeling progress. But today Dylan was still trying to absorb the previous night’s realization, a process that was not going well. He would have begged off doing any work at all and just sent Chris home, except that would have raised questions he couldn’t truthfully answer.

Chris seemed oblivious to the turmoil in Dylan’s head. “If we rip this out you ain’t gonna have any water at all on this floor until the kitchen sink and shit get here. Gonna be a pain in the ass when you want to clean up after work or wash out your coffee cups.”

“I’ll survive.”

Chris looked at him a moment and then shrugged. “Whatever, dude.”

Dylan pushed past him into the little room and knelt to begin unscrewing the bolts that fastened the toilet in place.

They worked mostly in silence, first removing the fixtures, then peeling away the vinyl floor. Dylan had decided on the spur of the moment that if they were going to be redoing this bathroom first, he might as well add a shower stall. That required enlarging the room itself, so while Chris scraped glue off the floor, Dylan dismantled one of the walls.

“Hey, dude. What’s up?”

Dylan had his head down as he tried to pull a piece of stubborn lumber free. He looked over at Chris, who was stretching out a kink in his back. “What do you mean?” Dylan asked. His voice sounded odd through the mask he was wearing.

“Dunno. You’ve been kinda… off all morning. Like you got somethin’ on your mind.”

What didn’t Dylan have on his mind? He felt as though his brain was like his old Prius, normally practical and efficient but currently weighed down by a much too heavy load. He sighed and hoped the mask hid his guilty expression. “The meeting yesterday didn’t go well.”