Page 11 of Need a Hand?
“Because you thought he wanted to see me, right?” Damian pressed. “You want him to be happy. You thought me coming by and maybe fixing up his house and maybe more than that would make him happy. And right now, since you’re here and bitching me out, I’m guessing he’s got to be miserable.”
“He’s not miserable,” Mary Jane snapped. “Or if he is miserable, it’s just because his fucking wrist is broken because some dumbfuck ran him over with—”
“Mary Jane, I swear to God, if you say the words ‘ran him over with a fire truck’one more fucking timeI’m going to give that dude who was checking you out at the desk in there your phone number and tell him you’re into threesomes.”
“Whatever,” Mary Jane muttered, cheeks going almost as red as Damian’s did. “Actually I am into threesomes, just FYI. And that guy’s hot. So, like, go ahead. But I get your point.”
Damian blinked, totally unable to process any of that. “You’re—what—I mean, I’m like ninety-nine percent gold-star gay and that’s actuallyreallyhot. Shit, forget I said that. Okay. Um, thanks. For, uh. Getting my point?”
Mary Jane looked at him for a long minute, her head cocked, chewing thoughtfully on her lower lip. If Bubbles had been watching, he’d have literally died of lust.
“Okay. Let’s say Petey’s miserable. What are you going to do about it?”
“Um. I’m not sure most of my ideas are like, something to share with his sister?”
“Ewww.” Her nose wrinkled up. “Not okay, Damian.”
He mentally fist-pumped. Yes! He’d been upgraded from asshole to Rosetti all the way to Damian, and that had to be a good sign.
“Well, you asked! Anyway, that stuff would be after having, you know, a nice conversation. And dinner. Or at least coffee.” Damian summoned up every bit of sincerity he had, channeling the time he’d convinced his mom that no, he really hadn’t been ditching his first-period class three times a week to smoke pot. It had even been the truth. He’d been ditching class to play Call of Duty. “Mary Jane, honest to God, I already knew he wasn’t going to sue, and I wouldn’t fuck a guy unless I was attracted to him anyway. No job is worth that kind of bullshit.”
“That guy you’re talking about fucking is my little brother,” Mary Jane grumbled, but a lot of the tension had gone out of her, and she was looking Damian in the face. He raised one eyebrow. “I came out of our mom first, okay? I’m allowed to play the big sister card.”
“I have a legit big sister, five years. Fuck that.” But he grinned at her when he said it, and she, wonder of wonders, actually smiled back.
“So if I actually go back to Petey and tell him to give you another chance. And no, I’m not going to fucking tell him I came here to see you, so stop giving me that look, and you’d better not tell him either if you want to keep your balls. If I do that—you’re not going to fuck it up, right?”
Damian didn’t want to get back on Mary Jane’s bad side, now that he seemed to have somehow clawed his way out of the doghouse. Not just that, but—he really didn’t want to fuck it up. Whatever that would mean.
On the other hand, he didn’t want to lie.
He took a deep breath, catching a faint, tantalizing hint of the ocean from the evening fog starting to billow overhead and ripple past the tops of the trees on the edge of the parking lot. It felt cleansing, and he held it in for a minute.
“I’m going to do my very best,” he finally said. “I can’t promise that we’ll like, get married, or even do more than fuck around and enjoy it. But I won’t be an asshole. I like him. I can promise that.”
“Okay, I believe you.” Mary Jane leveled him with a laser-focused glare out of those gleaming dark eyes. “So here’s what’s going to happen.”
Chapter Seven
It took Damiannearly an hour to drive downtown, find parking, and get through the lines at Starbucks and the deli Mary Jane had recommended; the lunchtime rush had hit while he spent way, way too much time fucking with his hair and changing his shirt eight times.
But it’d be so worth it once he got to Peter’s place. Mary Jane had texted him after she talked to Peter, and she’d helped Damian pick a day he was off work and Peter would for sure be home. She said her brother didn’t hate him, too. So, Peter was home, Damian was going to see him, and it was totally, no-question worth it. He would’ve waited in much longer lines if it meant he had Peter’s favorite sandwich and coffee order in hand.
Mary Jane might actually be kind of awesome. And Damian, unlikesomepeople, could admit when he was wrong without throwing a tantrum about it.
Damian parked in Peter’s driveway this time, making a mental note to do something about the weeds growing through the cracks in the concrete. This place seriously needed some TLC, and Damian wasn’t even sure he wanted Mary Jane to pay him for it. He kind of just wanted to…do something nice for Peter. And if that meant he got to hang around more, that’d be cool too.
First things first, though. He still had to get through the door.
Cardboard drinks carrier and paper bag from the deli carefully balanced in one hand, Damian knocked, resisting the urge to try to fiddle with his hair or his shirt one last time.
He expected to wait a bit, since the last time he’d come by around the same time of day Peter had been waking up, it looked like.
But he heard Peter’s voice echoing faintly from inside the house: “It’s open, come in and give me a minute!” Had Mary Jane told Peter to expect him? And Peter sounded so relaxed and pleased, like Damian belonged here.
With a warm feeling in his chest, Damian pushed the door open, and then he stopped and blinked, adjusting to the darker interior after the bright midday sunlight.
Jesus, the weeds in the driveway were the least of Peter’s household concerns. At least three pizza boxes stacked on the coffee table bore a burden of old coffee mugs, bowls with the dregs of breakfast cereal in the bottom, and crumpled paper napkins. Clothes lay strewn across the couch and floor, and the rug between the couch and the coffee table needed to be vacuumed even by Damian’s pretty low standards.
