Sidecar by Amy Lane Read Free Book Online

well get comfy, kid. It’s going to take a while.”
    Casey did, kicking back in the chair and leaning his head against the bed. They’d stopped at McDonald’s after they’d taken Rufus to the vet’s, so he wasn’t hungry, but he couldn’t help contrasting Joe’s easy generosity—“What do you want? That all? I’ll double it.”—with the guy he’d run away from the last time he was there.
    “You’re nice,” he said thoughtfully.
    “Sometimes.”
    “No, you’re really nice. My dad, he’d see someone like you, with all the hair, and the pickup truck, and he’d say mean shit about bikers and hippies, and then he’d find out you’re a nurse and call you a fag—but you’re nice.”
    Joe looked at him, and Casey reflected that his eyes were really large and really brown. “Is that the same dad who drove you out of the house?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Maybe we don’t think so much about the shit he used to say about other people, ’kay?”
    “Even me?”
    “Especially you.”
    God, it put paid to so much. Casey’s dad wouldn’t have liked Joe—wouldn’t have liked his hair, or his bike, or his profession. And he would have been wrong, wrong about all of it. So maybe that shit, that horrible shit about being a worthless fag and a slut and an open asshole and anyone’s meat, maybe that shit was wrong too. To his horror, Casey found his eyes were watering.
    “You can’t call social services,” he whispered. “You can’t. They won’t tell me things like that.”
    “Kid, I can be an incredibly grumpy bastard.”
    “But you’ve got a spare room. I’ll work for you, I will. I can help. I’ll make your place real nice, I’ll—”
    “You’d have to go to school.”
    Casey looked away. “After all the shit I’ve done?”
    Joe grunted. “Casey, from the looks of it, a lot of it wasn’t what you’d done but what was done to you. And either way, that shit is yours to keep. You start school, however you do that, and you start over. You be a kid. You don’t tell anyone.”
    Casey sucked in his breath, captivated by the thought. He’d been a jock, because his dad had thrown a ball at him since he was little, but suddenly, he didn’t have to do that anymore. He’d been a cutup, a pain in the ass, a kid who’d rather play the fool than work at his grades. That was how he’d gotten attention. That was why Dillon had wanted to come home with him. That was how he’d gotten his dad to talk at the dinner table. That had been Casey.
    But now? He didn’t have to do that anymore. It was… it was like walking out of that semi and across the great canyon over the clean space had been walking out of the old Casey. He could do anything.
    As long as he didn’t have to go home.
    “I don’t want you to call social services,” he said, and he must have been in his head for quite some time, because Joe grunted like he’d fallen asleep.
    “Well,” Joe conceded, his voice groggy, “it’s not going to happen today.”
    There was a whooshing sound, and the doctor came to dress Joe’s wound some more, and Casey took what he could get.
     
     
    J OE took an injected painkiller instead of an oral one because he still had to drive home, and Casey thought that maybe a driver’s license was something he’d want to get started on. He was sixteen, right? Excellent. He’d put it on his list of things for Joe to help him get. Not once did he think Joe wouldn’t help him out. He’d wonder at that later—how arrogant the young were, and how easily they reaped the rewards of a faith they took for granted. Joe had fed him, clothed him, cleaned him, and spoken to him like he wasn’t stupid or subhuman. Joe would take care of him.
    Casey just had to be very, very good.
    They stopped at a bank with a vacuum tube drive-through, and Joe pulled out some cash, then drove to a Ross department store not far from old-town Auburn. By now, Joe’s pain meds had about worn off, and he was not looking so good.
    He made a