Page 224 of Smooth Sailing

They’d hit the mall that morning and got him some extra-long board shorts in army green. Di had wanted him to buy a red pair, but he wasn’t a red guy. Now he was glad he pushed back on that, or they’d match, and that’d be goofy as shit.

But he reckoned this was why she pushed for the red, so they’d be goofy, she’d be cute, at the same time a pain in his ass, something he also found cute.

Mel, Charlie and Georgie were riding noodles too. Bernie was sitting next to Nicole on the edge of what Di told him was called a Baja bench in the pool. The women all had melting frozen drinks in their hands in fancy, but plastic glasses and they were forming a huddle.

Jagger appeared to be asleep on a float that looked like a massive pillow. Dutch and Gerard were in the lounge chairs set on the Baja bench, drinking beers and rapping. Pete was completely conked under a lounger at the side of the pool, and he had company. Shannon was reading a romance novel in the lounger next to Pete’s.

So, yeah.

Another plus for Phoenix, that view right there.

Larry hadn’t come. He apparently was all in for Diana to have her family around her, so Nicole had shocked the shit out of both Di and Hugger when she showed, but it’d probably take a while before Larry was fully down with partying at his wife’s ex’s house.

Said a lot about the man that Nicole was there, though, just as it said a lot about Nicole.

Grudges will fuck you up, it was best to avoid them.

Though, Hugger hoped Di kept hers against her mother for the next twenty-five years.

When he heard the door open behind him, he turned and watched Armitage stroll out.

The man looked to the pool, his face went soft, then he looked to Hugger and came his way.

He got his own beer and stood beside Hugger.

“You’re not a man to mess around,” Hugger noted, tipping the neck of his beer bottle to the pool.

“It would appear you aren’t either,” Armitage replied, then took a drag from his beer. “Diana tells me you’re moving down here.”

“Yup.”

“That’s quite a sacrifice,” Armitage remarked. “Takes you away from your family.”

“My brothers will get it. And Di doesn’t live in New Zealand.”

“No,” Armitage murmured to his bottle of beer. “She doesn’t.” He then took another drag.

Hugger took his own and went on, “Anyway, I lost my ma, she found her dad. And that woman who’s her mother is playing games with her grandma. It’d kill her to be away from either of you right now.”

He felt the man’s eyes, so he turned from watching Diana smiling at something Archie was saying to look at her father.

“You lost your mother?” Armitage asked.

“Yeah.”

“I’m so sorry, Harlan,” Armitage said quietly.

Hugger took another drag and said, “Happened a while ago.”

“You never get over it,” Armitage said.

His gut clenched but he didn’t say anything.

“I had a wonderful mother,” Armitage told him. “She and my dad worked hard all their lives, died too young and didn’t get to enjoy all they worked for. They were both in their sixties when they went, but still, it was too young. I miss them every day, and I hate that for them every day. I would have wanted them to leave this earth having had time to enjoy being on it without expending a lot of blood, sweat and tears.”

Hugger remained silent, feeling this in the marrow of his bones, because it was the same for him.

Armitage’s attention was acute on Hugger when he said, “That’s their due, what they earn from us, not to be forgotten. They live on in us, as long as we have their memories.”

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