Page 66 of Catcher's Lock

“Ellis, this is—”

“Quill.” No way I’m giving this little weasel the ammunition to go running back to Big Top telling everyone the family fuckup is home. Josha gave me a reprieve, and I’m taking advantage of every minute of it. I won’t set foot on the lot until I have to, and since my parents are still a couple days out, the gossip can wait.

“Quill? Like the movie Josha made me watch, with the talking tree and the green queen?”

“Ellis has a crush on Gamora,” Josha explains.

“That bitchslays.”

He showed this guyourmovie? This shit just gets better and better. Although Ellis’s observation isn’t wrong—I had more than a few Gamora fantasies myself as a teen. Doesn’t mean I don’t hate the casual way Josha dropped the comment like a callback to a conversation they’ve had a dozen times.

Did they watch it on a laptop in his bed the way we used to?

“You’ve seen it too? No offense, but you don’t exactly seem likethe ‘saviors of the universe’ type,” my new arch-nemesis observes, with a skeptical glance at my ripped jeans and motorcycle boots.

“Guardians of the Galaxy,” Josha and I say together.

“Right.” The dimple makes another appearance, this time directed at me. “You’ve got more of a pull-your-hair-while-I-face-fuck-you-into-submission kind of vibe.”

My eyebrows shoot toward my hairline, while Josha tries to smother a cough in his shoulder.

“Ellis,” he says once he’s got his face under control. “What are you doing here?”

He doesn’t stay here—thank fucking god.

“You asked me to feed Zombie.”

At the sound of his name, the cat in question saunters into the room sporting his one-eyed pirate leer and aborted exclamation-mark tail. I crouch down and hold out my hand, and he beelines right to me, chirrupy purr rumbling in his chest.

“Hey, you little miscreant,” I murmur, rubbing my thumb over the short fur above his nose as he buries his face in my palm. “Been taking care of your daddy for me?”

“Damn. I thought he hated everyone but you,” Ellis says to Josha, watching, and I can’t help the satisfied smirk that breaks over my face. I’ve always been Zombie’s favorite. It used to drive Josha crazy that the little cat would escape the Garrity trailer every night to come yowl at the door of the Airstream until I let him in.

“We should get the Triumph unloaded,” Josha says, pushing away from the table. “I’ve got my own shop here now where the chicken coop used to be, and most of the tools. We can snag the rest from Big Top tomorrow.”

“Of course he has a motorcycle,” Ellis scoffs, but his stupidsmile never wavers. Why the fuck is he so goddamn cheerful? “Need some help?”

“Sure.”

“No,” I say at the same time, locking eyes with Josha.

“Got it,” Ellis chuckles. “I’ll get out of your hair, then.”

About fucking time.

“So that’s the type of guy you’re into these days?” I ask, leaning against Josha’s truck in front of the glorified shed that now houses my battered Bonnie. Josha leans next to me, swigging from a bottle of the yerba maté shit he’s addicted to. I have a Coke, and I’m pretending not to wish it were a beer.

“Ellis is sweet.”

“Uh-huh. So it’s not because he’s a watered-down version of me?”

He rolls his eyes. “I just said he wassweet. He’s also gay.”

Yeah, that argument is getting a little old. Maybe I don’t meet Josha’s criteria for inclusion in the gay club, but at this point, I’m running out of ways to show him how I feel abouthisdick.Or, at least, ways that don’t require his participation.

“A gay boy who has a crush on Gamora,” I remind him.

“Who doesn’t?”