Page 13 of Regret Me Not
And suddenly the joking fell away. “We’re hoping,” his friend confessed. “Are you happy for us?”
“Only if I’m invited to the birth.” Pierce waited a moment to see if he’d gone too far, but Derrick’s howl of mock outrage reassured him.
“Oh, you dickhead! I love you so! Yes, I’ll tell Miranda right now that’s a priority!”
Pierce’s laugh surprised him—two days ago he would have said it was beyond him.
What a difference a Hal made.
“Don’t tell her that or you’ll never conceive. Now go! Be nice to your wife.” His voice dropped. “And good luck, man. You guys… you’re the best.”
“So are you. Come back to us, ’kay? If I take Miranda to one more Kings’ game, she’ll divorce me.”
“Understood.”
Derrick hung up, and Pierce was left in the empty condo again. But his laughter still rang on the cold tile, and Pierce could hear Hal’s reaction to the conversation he’d just had.
Hey, Hal—I have friends! We’re actually funny together!
He suddenly wanted his young friend to see him when he wasn’t angry and bitter.
He wanted Hal to know he could be fun too, and not just when Looney Tunes was on.
Public Works
“HEY, HAL—who’s that?”
Hal looked up from the rack of jeans he was perusing—in Pierce’s size—and glanced in the same direction Pierce was. “I have no idea.”
The kid—um, young man—Hal’s age sported a brownish man bun and a scarf around his white T-shirted neck and had been cruising Hal with raised eyebrows and a predatory gleam since they’d arrived at the outlet mall. Now as Hal looked over his shoulder, the guy winked and smiled coquettishly.
Hal rolled his eyes and turned back to Pierce. “Now see, if we weren’t in Tommy Hilfiger, he wouldn’t have seen us, and I wouldn’t have to scrape him like a barnacle. So you need to just concede to the inevitable and let me buy you pants that don’t look like dad jeans.”
Pierce let out a little whine. “I thought we’d be at Target or something—at least for the rubber mats and the office chair.”
Hal looked at him unhappily. “Crap. Would you believe I forgot that’s why we came? I was just so damned excited to go somewhere with you.”
Oh no.Pierce grimaced. “Look, I don’t want to piss on your parade, but—”
“But you don’t want to waste time doing something not practical. I get it.” Hal snapped his sunglasses on over his eyes and turned toward the exit, self-recrimination etched in every line of his body.
“No!” Pierce laughed, wondering where that wound had come from. “Not at all. I’m actually having a really good time, even if you apparently think I look like hell.”
“Really?” Hal turned back and slid the sunglasses up to the top of his head again. “Then what is it?”
Pierce shrugged, embarrassed. Hal had kept his promise about giving him a light stretching workout that morning—Pierce had felt invigorated as he’d clumped to the condo, showered, and put on a pair of jeans and a Hawaiian shirt—by far the dressiest things he owned. Hal’s good-natured ribbing about the dad jeans had prompted Pierce to offer to buy some more clothes—and then Hal had offered to buy them for him.
They’d had fun until just this minute. “I… I’ve got maybe two stores in me,” he said apologetically. “If one of them is here and the other one is Target, I’m going to have to get a Lyft into town to go Christmas shopping.”Ugh.“Sorry—I’m just trying to get as much as possible out of my freeloading here.”
Hal smacked his forehead. “Doh! Okay—good. I mean, not good that I totally forgot your agenda like a punk, but good that you made that clear. Gotcha. Tell you what. Let’s get you some clothes—because… dude.”
“Understood,” Pierce said dryly. Cynthia hadn’t liked the way he’d dressed either—but then, she hadn’t made him laugh when they’d gone shopping. If she’d tried to make it fun, even a little, talking about movie stars with consummate bitchery or joking about how a yellow shirt would make him look like Tweety Bird, Pierce might have stepped up his game.
“Then we’ll go out to lunch—they’ve got the best café here. I’m dying to take you. Afterward we’ll go to Target. I know where the rubber matting is—I bought a shit-ton for my place a couple of years ago, and you can find the office chair of your dreams. Then, you work out heavy for the next two days, and we try this again after that?”
Pierce smiled, flattered. “You wouldn’t mind taking me back? I’m, uh”—he gestured to the whole store—“I’m sort of a clod, you know.”
Hal winked. “Yeah, but you’re willing to be trained up. That’s my favorite sort of clod. And seriously, I’m having fun. Just let me know if your leg or your hip gets too stiff. I’ll go look for stuff and bring it to you in the dressing room, okay?”