Page 102 of Sean's Sunshine
AH, SUNDAYmorning.
They had things to do, Jackson was well aware. Joey was coming by tomorrow to deep clean the house, but he and Ellery needed to tidy up and do laundry before they got company. Ellery had some sort of idea about the two of them “picking out a menu” for a caterer and buying extra food for the entire week after Thanksgiving, since Jackson’s brother was going to be in town for a couple of days and Ellery’s parents and sister withherfamily were going to be in townforever. Or a week, from Wednesday to Wednesday. Whatever. Jackson understood Chanukah would be included in those days, and he and Ellery had gone shopping accordingly with the understanding that a small gift and a card would also be welcome at Christmas.
Jackson had greeted this clarification of holiday tradition with narrowed eyes.
“You do realize that one year, my Christmas gift to Jade and Kaden was that I might live to the next year, right?”
Ellery had blinked. “And yet this year that’s a given, and you get to expand your horizons. How fortunate for all of us. No, you’re not excused.”
“Is this an excuse for your mother to send me goofy cards with reindeer on them and some sort of reminder of the childhood I should have had and she would like to give me as a gift?”
“Do you object?” Ellery asked, and now he looked sober and serious, because that was also what his mother had given Jackson for the last two birthdays.
“No,” Jackson said, rubbing his chest. “It’s just, I have the feeling that every time she does that, some therapist gets his wings. It’s weird.”
“Well, if you believed in therapy, I’m sure you could have funded an entire mental health wing by now,” Ellery told him, and Jackson was quite done with that conversation, thank you, so he stopped grousing about Christmas.
And started “planning,” which mostly consisted of Ellery saying, “And now we have to do this. Which option doyouwant?” and Jackson staring at him in horror while trying to decide if vegan turkey would get him disowned by Jade and Kaden if it was only an option and not the main course.
He wasexhausted.
So now, lying in his now-customary position of mostly on his stomach but a little on his side—a leftover from when he’d still had stitches in his back—he was thinking that he didn’t want to get up. He wanted to hide his head under the pillow and never think about what sort of sauce should be served with vegan turkey or wonder if his brother had an allergy to red wine ever again.
“Jackson,” Ellery murmured.
“Jackson’s on hold. Please try again,” he mumbled.
“Very cute. Jackson!”
“I don’t know whether the kids prefer banana cream pie,” Jackson wailed. “Iprefer banana cream pie. Get pumpkin for yourself!” And with that he grabbed the extra pillow and plastered it over his head, thinking if he was lucky, he’d suffocate and not have to “plan” anymore.
“Jackson!”Ellery snapped, ripping the pillow off his head. “Can you not hear what’s going on in the next room?”
Jackson frowned. His dreams were often violent, with crashes and angry noises. The sounds coming from the living room and dining room were on par with that, with the addition of what sounded like two mountain lions in full roar.
“World War Three?” he mumbled. “The actual fuck are they doing in there?”
“Destroying my house!” Ellery wailed. “Could you go stop them?”
Jackson turned to Ellery Cramer, Esquire, Attorney at Law, the man who had saved him body and soul, the man he would die for, the man he would live for.
“I thought you loved me.”
“I do. And ifyouloveme, you will go stop whatever’s going on in the next room.”
Jackson narrowed his eyes. “If I do that, can I go play pickup with the kids from the flophouse and the kids from the duplex?”
“That’s a thing?” Ellery asked in surprise.
“It was going to be,” Jackson said. “I was talking to Sean about it, and he and Billy seemed to think the flophouse kids—this generation anyway—wanted to stay tight, and the kids in the duplex miss their old gangs, but you know—”
“They’re actually gangs,” Ellery said dryly.
“Well, yeah.” It was hard to stay away from a bad thing if you didn’t have a good thing to replace it. It was why a lot of junkies took up handicrafts in rehab. “We thought, maybe, add Henry in the mix, it would be a good thing.”
There was a mountain lion scream from the other room and a crash from what Jackson hoped was a lesser grocery-store vase and not the really nice cut green crystal vase Sean and his work partner, Andres, had gotten them for their engagement.
“You were going to miss the game?” Ellery asked, his eyes big and limpid, and he must have been really taken by this because he didn’t notice what sounded like ripping. Oh God, please let that not be the drapes.