Page 82 of Boston
“What does that mean?”
“Oh, come on, Boston,” he said. “You’re all easy-going and casual conversation. Nothing upsets you. Nothing riles you up.”
“I get riled up,” Boston said. “I take offense to that.”
They sat there for a moment, and then they both laughed.
“Yeah, I can tell you’re really upset.” Cash blew out his breath and sobered again. “I almost did something real stupid too,” he said in a much quieter voice. “With a woman, after the fight.”
Boston’s heart stopped again.
“Yeah.” Cash nodded, his expression unreadable now. “God shouted at me real loud that night. Thankfully, I got out of there before I did something completely idiotic.”
“Well, I’m happy about that, then,” Boston said.
“Me too,” Cash said. “Because I don’t think I deserved to have His Spirit warn me like that.”
“Of course you do,” Boston said. “A fight with your daddy doesn’t make you a bad person. Heck, I haven’t even spoken to my father in oh, nine months.”
Cash drew in another breath and laid his head back against the couch. “But you talk to your daddy here.”
“Sometimes,” Boston said, knowing he needed to do better.
“All right, I can’t talk this much without a drink,” Cash said. “What you got?”
Boston chuckled as his cousin got to his feet. “I hope you know this is no amateur hour. I stocked that fridge with all your favorites.”
“All my favorites?” Cash opened the fridge, whooped, and then pulled out a bottle of Teton Ridge root beer. “You got my favorite brand.”
Boston got to his feet too. “I told you this wasn’t no amateur hour. Get me the grape one, would you?”
Cash bent back into the fridge and got the soda that Boston had bought for himself.
“You know this took a special trip to town,” he said. “Forty-nine minutes,oneway.”
“You’ll survive,” Cash said. “Did you take your pretty girlfriend with you?”
“No,” Boston said. “She had a couple of meetings and couldn’t go.”
Cash grinned at him and twisted off the bottle cap with his bare hands. Boston used a bottle opener and took a hearty swig of his soda. The fruity carbonation was about the best thing he’d ever put in his mouth.
“I do need your help with something though,” Boston said casually.
“Oh, yeah, what’s that?”
“Cora’s got this favorite place she likes to visit, and she wants me to guess it,” he said. “I’m up to five clues now, and I have no idea where it is.”
“I’m sure I could help with that,” Cash said, grinning. “Seeing as how I don’t live here and haven’t for seven years.”
Boston chuckled with him, and this time he sobered first. “I think you’re an amazing person, Cash,” he said. “No matter if you disagree with your daddy, or yell at him, or do whatever with girls, I don’t care. You’re my best friend, and I love you.”
Cash’s eyes turned glassy again, and he nodded, then grabbed onto Boston and hauled him in for a hug. He held him tighter than he ever had before, and he said, “I love you too, Boston. Really, you have no idea what it’s like to have someone like you who’s safe, who doesn’t judge me.”
“Never,” Boston said. They parted, and Cash nodded and looked away as he wiped his eyes for the second time that day.
“All right, tell me the clues, and then tell me you got a dinner reservation at the steakhouse here.”
“Reservation at seven,” Boston said. “That was the earliest we could get. I figured you wouldn’t mind, since you’re usually out all night anyway.”
