They did this dodging teenagers who needed to learn better manners. Also old-timers who’d made the mall their walking track. Not to mention the women with strollers who wielded them in a way that it was clear they thought they’d popped out a kid and the world owed them right of way not only when they should get it, walking down the hall, but when they waltzed out of a store not even looking if they were gonna slam their kid into someone.
Fuck, he hated the mall. It was almost worse than the airport in its lack of “We’re all in this humanity thing together” zone, firmly entrenched in its “I got shit to do and I don’t give a fuck you’re breathing and probably got shit to do too, the world revolves around me” zone.
“Yeah we do,” Maddox agreed.
Diesel had no idea what size ring Holly had and he wasn’t going to ask Dylan. But he was going to make note of it next time he saw Molly’s sister.
That said, he also had no idea how they were going to manage buying their girl a better rock than her sister had and not just because the fuckers were insanely expensive, but because Molly managed their money.
She’d see ten thousand dollars gone, for sure.
She’d even notice a monthly payment.
“How we gonna do that shit?” Diesel asked, skirting two women, both with monstrous strollers that looked more like dog houses on wheels, both of them looking at each other and gabbing, neither of them looking where they were going.
“No clue,” Maddox mumbled, purposefully pressing into Diesel to veer them off the course they were on so they’d take a set of stairs, not a ramp, in order to avoid the flow of traffic—elderly and pushed on wheels—coming their way.
“Have you thought about skincare?”
Diesel turned his head when it came clear someone was in his space asking him an asinine question, and he looked down at the woman who was shoving a small, condom-size packet in his face.
“Even men need to take care of their skin,” she shared, lifting the packet farther toward him as she walked with him.
He stared at her and kept walking.
“He’s not interested,” Maddox answered for him.
“He should be,” she replied. “And you should too.”
Diesel looked to Maddox. “What’s happening?”
Mad started laughing and kept walking.
“It’ll only take a minute for me to show you the miracle of . . .” she called after them.
But they just kept walking and did it not listening, so fortunately she drifted away.
“I hate the fucking mall,” Diesel muttered, which made Maddox laugh harder. Diesel scowled at his man. “When did they start jacking shit on you in the walkways?”
“Um . . . I don’t know. Nineteen ninety-eight?” Maddox answered.
“That should be illegal,” D told him.
Maddox spoke, continuing to grin like he thought Diesel was hilarious. “You need to get out more, my brother, and not just to sports bars.”
“Not if some chick is gonna shove a prophylactic packet of male skincare in my face.”
Maddox started laughing again, D quit grumbling and they walked and rode escalators in silence to Maddox’s truck in the underground parking.
They did this while D mentally made the decision to kick in on whatever ring Maddox picked (obviously), no matter how deep it dug, but he was not going back to the mall to help him pick it.
He could order a vase of roses or pick out a necklace at a booth at a festival.
But he was never going back to the mall.
And it was when he had his ass in the passenger seat and slammed his door that he realized they’d gone out to breakfast. They’d gone to see a movie. They’d gone to look at engagement rings for Molly.
And it had all been good.
It wasn’t awkward. They shared a life. They’d been sharing that life for years. If they didn’t let anything fuck with it, they were comfortable in it. They had things to talk about. Molly’s sister’s bullshit. Who was gonna check the salt in the water softener (Maddox). Who was gonna take Molly’s Escape to get the oil changed (D).
They were just Maddox and Diesel.
Like always.
Mad had started up, pulled out and begun to negotiate toward the ramp that led to the exit when he said, “I could get a loan from my folks. They’d help us out, knowing we’re good for it, especially knowing what it’s for, catching them on the flipside.”
He was talking about Molly’s ring.
And he was right.
His folks would do that.
Maddox’s mother was counting down the days until one of her children got busy and started to give her grandkids. Even though Mad was thirty-four, and his little sister thirty-one, it was only last year they’d downsized from the home where Maddox and his sister grew up to a house in a development with three golf courses.
But they’d gone for a three-bedroom, which was one bedroom they didn’t need but they got it, “So Bob can have his man cave and the grandbabies can have a room when they sleep over,” Erin had said.
She didn’t even care if the kid who came out of Molly was Diesel’s. That was the woman Erin Vega was. Hell, Erin was so grandbaby crazy, she’d talked to them about finding a surrogate before Molly had even entered the picture.
That thought made something tighten in his lower gut, something that hadn’t hit him back when Erin had brought that up, because then it was straight-up not an option in Diesel’s mind.
But Erin had been okay thinking it would only be Mad and D together raising a baby. Same with Mad’s old man, Bob. When Molly had come along, neither of them had acted like they were relieved, just curious, not confused, curious, and like always, welcoming.
And they weren’t hippies or in-your-face liberals or shit like that.
They just wanted their kids to be happy.
Sure, Bob had shared early on over beers with D that, “The first couple boys Mad had around, I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. But whatever. I love the Rolling Stones. My father hated Mick Jagger. Thought he was a skinny, drug-addled waste of space. We got into rip-roarin’s about it. Not once. All the friggin’ time. I mean, he’s a rock ’n’ roll singer, not the leader of a cult I’d joined. But he’s also a genius I admired. Dad didn’t have to like ole Mick, but he didn’t have to get in my face about it. And I remember after one such go ’round tellin’ myself I’d never do that to one of my kids. But have to say, I started to get that way with Maddox having girls, and guys, and then girls, and then guys and me thinkin’ what the hell? But then I realized I don’t have to get it. Just Maddox does.”
Just Maddox does.
Remembering those words, D’s gut felt tighter.
And as for Erin? She simply didn’t care. From the beginning. Like she didn’t care her daughter had blue hair and a year’s worth of tattoo parlor piercings in her body.
“Far’s I can see,” Erin had said the only time she’d mentioned anything like that about her kids, “me and Bob did it up right. Both Maddox and Minnie feel all kinds of all right being just who they are. And what works for my babies works for me.”
D’s gut got even tighter as more thoughts hit him and these thoughts hit him harder.
Not thoughts, exactly.
Memories.
Memories of Tommy Barnes.
A year older than him in high school, both of them on the football team, offensive line. They got on, pals, best buds, went on double dates, hung out all the time.