Page 121 of The Auction
He avoided me easily, although I noticed he winced when he dodged the first blow.
“Calm down,” he said.
I swung again. “I’ll calm down!” I shouted at him. “I’ll calm down when you’re dead! I get your fucking pension if that happens.”
“Pretty sure you don’t, if you’re the one to kill me.”
“Peasy and I will bury the body just fine!” I screamed, swinging again. He caught the end of the shovel with his right hand, winced again, and pulled it out of my hands.
I didn’t hesitate. I formed my right hand into a fist and swung at his face.
I heard a crack and wasn’t sure if it was his nose or my fingers, but it didn’t matter. It sounded good.
“Ow!” I screamed. “Motherfucker, that hurts,” I said, cradling my right hand.
“Tell me about it,” he said, pinching off the tip of his nose. “I told you hitting me would only get us both hurt.”
I bent over my stomach and tried to flex my hand. It hurt, but I could move it, so likelyit wasn’t broken.
“You need ice,” he said, walking around me toward the porch. “I need ice, too.”
He was around the corner of the house before I came to my senses. I started chasing after him. “Don’t you go inside the house, you’re not welcome there. I’ll throw the ice out to you.”
“Patch! You miss me, buddy?”
“Don’t you talk to him! I’m getting full custody in the settlement!”
“Buddy, I think your mom might have gone batshit while I was gone.”
I followed him into the house, my traitorous cat already perched on his shoulder, as Creed made his way to the kitchen.
He was favoring his right side.
I’d have to be blind not to notice that.
He pulled out the bin full of ice cubes and stuffed a Ziploc bag for me and one for himself. He walked over to the kitchen table and sat down with the heaviest sigh I’d ever heard. Like he’d just dropped a hundred pounds of weight. He pressed the bag of ice to the bridge of his nose and man spread his thighs.
“Jules, come here.”
“No, way,” I told him, wrapping the bag of ice around my knuckles.
“Jules,” he said again, and dropped the bag of ice on the table. “Please.”
“Fine, but it doesn’t mean anything,” I grumbled.
I sat on his left thigh, assuming something was wrong with the right side of his body, and he wrapped his arms around me. I held my body as stiff as I could until he buried his face against my neck and started inhaling me like I was oxygen.
Because the silence was getting a little awkward, I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and squeezed him.
He made a sound then, it might have been a sob, but he didn’t lift his head so I couldn’t confirm if there were tears.
Maybe I had more of that mom schooling in me than I realized, because the words just came to me.
“It’s okay, big guy. You’re alright now. You’re home. I’m not really going to kill you.”
Eventually, he lifted his head and I slid off him.
“Shower. Then talk. Yeah?” he said.
