Page 12 of Drifting Hearts
Ethan Bennett was in a relationship with a man his son’s age. Mickey was a bartender at The Anchor, another one of Shane’s rescue projects. It had worked in everyone’s favor, though. Shane got a good bartender—once Mickey caught on, Mickey got a job, and Ethan looked happier than I’d seen him in years.
“What can I get you?” Ethan asked.
“Can I get an order of chicken strips and fries, gravy on the side? And a cheeseburger with onion rings? And that’s to go, please.”
Ethan put my order in and told me it would be about ten minutes. I had a feeling that Ethan bumped me to the head of the line.
“Coffee while you wait?”
“Not today, thanks.”
“What brings you by, and who do you have hiding in your truck?” Ethan asked. As a diner owner, I sometimes swore he had a degree in gossip and casual observation. He’d make a hell of an interrogator should he ever choose to change career paths.
“Nothing gets by you.”
“Not a thing.”
“That’s Clayton,” I told him.
Ethan nodded, obviously he’d heard enough from Shane by now that I didn’t have to fill him in on the backstory. Ethan was just as soft-hearted as Shane. Though with how content both men were now, it was hard to hold it against them. Ethan was more Shane’s friendthan mine, but I’d been around long enough to know that Ethan was happier now than anyone had ever seen him.
“How’s he doing?” His interest seemed genuine enough.
“He’s angry. We’ll find out soon how he’s healing up. When the casts come off, he starts physical therapy.”
Ethan leaned on the counter. “Sure is nice of you to do all this for him.”
“I’m not doing shit for him. It’s for Shane because he and his boyfriend have bleeding hearts.”
“Shane can’t help it. He sees a problem and he wants to solve it. He sees someone in trouble and he wants to help them.”
I knew that better than anyone else. Shane had always been the first one up to help someone else. Animal, human, plant—it didn’t matter to Shane. As a kid, he’d trap the spiders and set them free outside instead of squishing them. Before the elderly couple next to us moved to be closer to their grandchildren, he’d shovel their driveway and mow their lawn. Only accepting payment in cookies, cake, and lemonade when it was hot out.
Ethan disappeared into the back and when he returned, he had a brown paper bag. I pulled out my card and paid for the food then returned to the truck where Clayton waited.
“I got chicken strips and fries, and a burger and onion rings. Pick what you want and I’ll eat the other order.” I unbagged the food and Clayton took the chicken strips. He carefully balanced the order on his lap before opening the cardboard container. Our city had recently pushed to eliminate styrofoam take-out containers and replaced them with compostable ones.
“What’s this?” Clayton asked.
“It’s gravy. For your fries.”
“Gravy?”
“It’s a potato. You’ve had gravy on potatoes before, haven’t you?” I grabbed my burger, unwrapped the foil covering it, and took a bite. I watched Clayton from the corner of my eye as he tentatively picked up a fry and dunked one end in the gravy. He eyed it dubiously. “I’ve never seen anyone so suspicious of a potato before.”
He burned me with a dirty look and popped the fry into his mouth. “Happy?”
“Deliriously.” Part of me wasn’t sure what I was doing or what possessed me to continue to be pleasant to him. Even I was shocked at the next words that came out of my mouth. “Did you have anywhere else you wanted to go while you’re of the house?”
Clayton turned and stared at me like I’d sprouted a second head. “You’re offering to take me somewhere? Like, deep in the woods maybe to bury my body? Was this my last meal or something?” He glanced out the window, then looked back at me. “Pretty sure Hell didn’t freeze over.”
“This wasn’t your last meal.”
Clayton stabbed a few fries into the gravy. “There’s nowhere I need to be, so back to your mom’s is fine.”
I noticed that Clayton avoided calling it home and I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. The last thing I wanted was to start feeling bad for him. I’d caught myself sympathizing with him a couple times already. He was basically a criminal. He’d just never been charged with anything, but at the end of the day, he’d still stolen a lot of money from Archer. It wasn’t my place to be angry about that, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t like to see people take advantage of Shane. That’s why I took it upon myself to keep Clayton away from Shane as much as possible.
If he had no contact with Shane, he couldn’t make him feel bad and squeeze yet more money out of him. Shane was an easy target and though he had good reason to dislike Clayton, he also had Archerand his feelings to consider. Archer and Shane were cut from the same cloth regarding Clayton because, in spite of everything he’d put Archer through, neither one of them wanted anything awful to happen to Clayton.
