Page 32 of Crossing the Line
So it was helpful that Hank had let him come over to practice.
Hank explained it in two different ways. "If you don't know the basics and you end up mashing a finger, I'm going to get my ass kicked by my wife. And I think my insurance carrier would throw a hammer at my head."
Bixby had laughed at that, but he'd sobered at the rest of it.
"And Jenny's rooting for you."
"Rooting for me?"
"Well,weare rooting for youboth." With the lip of his soda can almost touching his lip, Hank had gone on to explain. "When you two broke up," he shook his head, looking as sad as Bixby was feeling himself, "we were surprised. A lot of people were. You two were always together. Bread and butter. Peas and carrots. When we saw you, we saw Janice.
"Then overnight you weren't together. Jenny and I didn't understand how that happened."
Bixby opened his mouth to explain, but he didn't really have one.
Hank's smile made him feel marginally better. "I'm guessing you don't have a reason either."
Bixby shook his head. "To be honest, I think I might have had a mental break from reality back then. It's the only way I can explain why I'd do something as stupid as divorce Janice. I mean, we fought-"
Hank had almost choked on his soda. "Who doesn't? There were times that Jenny and I felt like we were practicing for a new Olympic sport, but eventually we realized that how we fought,the way we slugged it out verbally when things got tough wasn't exactly the healthiest way to resolve things."
"On the other end of it," Bixby shrugged, "I think Janice and I might swallow our own feelings. I know when we lived in the same house and worked together during the day it was almost sanity-stealing for us to resolve things by a tacit agreement not to talk about it ever again."
That's where they'd ended the conversation because, as they explained it, two strapping men talking about their feelings was a little odd, even for them.
But because they'd stopped talking about it then, Bixby kind of blamed both of them for why he'd been ruminated over the conversation the week before.
Now, standing in Janice's side of the backyard, wearing the pair of jeans that he only put on when it was time to do the deep cleaning on the butcher shop and a long sleeve, neon yellow, t-shirt like they used on construction sites, looking better than he felt as their earlier conversation came back to him.
He'd never really talked to Janice about the stress he was feeling.
He certainly didn't tell her about the doubts that he'd had.
Her back door opened, and he turned his head and nailed his thumb with the hammer.
The curse that reached his ears wasn't even his own.
"What have you done?"
He dropped the hammer and turned his back to the door, looking down at his thumb.
There wasn't any blood, which was good.
Janice wasnota person who dealt with blood, probably why she was not a fan of the butcher side of the market.
If he was bleeding, he wasn't going to let her see it.
"Bixby?" He felt her hands grab his arm and damn it, his muscles tensed and he growled at himself.
It felt like he'd just flexed for her. Not intentionally, but there were a lot of things that his body did around Janice that he didn't plan to do.
Instinct some might say.
Shamelessness was his own thought.
He'd always leaned into her admiration. If she looked at him like she liked what she saw he'd always preened a little.
Ah, nature.
