“Uncle Asher, Uncle Asher!”
Oh God, one more hour of rest, please, is that too much to ask? One more hour, and then I swear, I’ll get up and take the kid to the park or the zoo or the aquarium or the movies or wherever the hell it is that he’s gonna beg for me to take him today. I’ll get him McDonald’s, an ice-cream sundae, a slice of his favorite pizza, anything for sixty more minutes of sleep. And yet still the bouncing continued, as well as the loud repeating of my name. Apparently, silence wasn’t making the point and the kid wasn’t gonna go away without some sort of verbal acknowledgement from me. I groaned, and he began his singsong chant again. When the hell did they grow outta that shit, anyway?
“Uncle Asher, Uncle Asher, Uncle Asher, Uncle Asher!”
Every word punctuated with a bounce, goddammit all; whoever said you had to die to be in hell was a bloody fool.
“Rory!” I roared, realizing as he toppled from the bed and landed on the floor with a thud that I’d likely scared the hell out of him.
Silence, oh blessed, blessed silence.
“Uncle Asher?” he asked hesitantly now, and much, much quieter. I groaned, as the silence had been far too fleeting.
“Rory, is the apartment on fire?” I asked, refusing to pull the pillow away from my face and acknowledge the sunlight that I knew was shining into the room.
“No.”
“Are the cops at the door?”
“No,” he responded with a bit of a sigh.
“Is the whor... err, my girlfriend at the door?” I asked, hoping he hadn’t caught my little slip.
“Uh-uh,” he said solemnly. Well, that was a good thing, anyway; I was beginning to not be as fond of her as I’d once been.
“So, is the Super at the door demanding rent?” I asked, figuring that was a bit of a long shot since I’d paid the rent at the start of the week.
“Nope,” he said, and I could feel him climb up and sit on the edge of the bed.
“Has the zombie apocalypse started?”
“Uhh no, but wouldn’t that be awesome?”
I chuckled into the pillow. Awesome wasn’t quite the word I’d use, but hell, if several people I knew managed to get themselves turned into walking corpses at the very least I could shoot them in the head and actually get away with it.
“Have aliens landed on the roof?” I asked him, and now he was laughing.
“Don’t they only land in cornfields?” he replied, and I groaned and let out a long-suffering sigh.
“So let me get this straight. There’s no mass hysteria, no flames, no one at the door, and no zombies on the streets, and yet you’re waking me up a whole hour before I told you it was okay?”
“Well, yeah, but you gotta get up or you’re gonna be in trouble,” Rory said in a quiet voice that sort of scared me. It certainly got the pillow from over my face, and I opened my eyes, blinking at the soaking-wet form of him sitting on my bed. Why was he soaking wet and fully dressed and getting water all over the place? And did I really want to know?
“What did you do?” I groaned. I don’t wanna know, I don’t wanna know, I don’t wanna know, a voice inside my head practically screamed as I could hear what sounded like running water hitting the floor in the other room. I threw the sheet aside and bolted toward the sound—too fast, because as soon as I hit the next room I went skidding across the damned linoleum floor and crashing into the kitchen cupboards.
“You worry too much,” Asher whispered to Conner, whose plate was piled high with a little bit of everything.
Conner chuckled. “When it comes to you, I don’t think that’s possible.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” Asher grumbled as he popped the tab on his soda and took a long drink. The cold felt good on his parched throat.
Rory was dismantling his cheeseburger, so Asher reached over and put it back together.
“Come on, I like it that way,” Rory protested.
“And that’s fine at home, where we can chuck you in the shower after you’ve covered yourself in ketchup and pickle juice. Unless you wanna take a bath in the duck pond, you’ll keep it all together.”
“Fine.” Rory pouted until Alexia reached over and tousled his hair; then he was all flailing hands and squeals of protest as he tried to brush it back down.
Asher grinned. “Now you look like a porcupine.”
Scowling at his uncle, Rory gave up trying to fix his hair. His eyes lit up as they landed on the can of whipped cream sitting in a bowl of ice on the table. Before anyone could stop him, he’d snatched it up and sprayed Asher, leaving his face a sticky mess. Silence descended over the table for half a second, before everyone cracked up.
“Now you look like a, um….” Rory turned to Alexia. “What was that monkey we saw at the zoo?”
“Saki monkey,” Alexia told him, nearly falling out of her chair. “And you do, Asher, oh my God, I wish I had my sketchbook.”
A couple of subtle clicks told him that sketchbook or no, this moment would not be soon forgotten. Asher blinked and reached up to wipe his face, only to have Conner catch his hand and stop him.
Conner ran a finger through the sticky cream on Asher’s cheek, then sucked it from his finger. “You make a good dessert.”
Asher’s eyes widened and he felt his neck flush. Suddenly it was far too warm for a fall day and his jeans were feeling too tight.
Conner smiled and dipped a paper towel in a Dixie cup of water to wipe off the remaining mess.
“Now you’re helpful,” Asher muttered, but held still and let Conner finish cleaning him up. Not like he really wanted to move; he was waiting for his jeans to feel less restricting, shocked that such a simple act had affected him so much. Of course, it was hard for him to look at Conner at all without feeling some level of desire.
