Chapter 11

(Angel)

Over the Bridge, Into the Night

"So, when are you planning on telling me where we're going?" Angel asked as he took in the view outside, all the sparkling lights of the city growing dimmer the longer they sped down the highway.

"When we get there."

"Bella put you up to this, didn't she?" Angel asked, "She's got everyone stashed somewhere ready to pop out with kazoos and paper horns, yelling happy birthday a whole week early, just so I don't find out about her little surprise party ahead of time again."

"I don't have the slightest clue what you're talking about."

"Oh come on," Angel grumbled, shooting him a sideways look to see that Dion's focus was entirely on the road. "Just admit it. I won't tell her."

"Sorry. I'm completely clueless here."

"Fine, have it your way, but you'd better be ready to be bombarded with colorful extravagance, cause I am yanking you right into the path of whatever they throw at me."

"Like I said, I've got no clue about any party, but now that I know you've got a birthday coming up, I can plan something that does not involve me needing to hose myself down before my sister allows me to cross the threshold of her living room."

"Like she'd notice with how much glitter she tracks in after a night out in the city."

"Oh, she'd notice, just to give me shit about it," Dion insisted.

"Sounds like a running theme between the two of you."

Dion just chuckled, sounding completely resigned to accept whatever fate Bella had in store for him. "That's what siblings are for."

"I'll have to take your word on it."

Now that drew Dion's attention as he shot Angel a look. "You don't have any?"

"I have four, but none of them were ones I was raised with."

Nodding, Dion turned his attention back to the road. "You're talking about your roommates, aren't you?"

"They're the only family I've got, besides Bella and the folks down at the shop."

"Blood or choice, family is family, it's about the people who love you at your best and at your worst," Dion said. "So if they want to celebrate having you in their lives, then you should let them, even if it involves confetti glitter bombs and copious amounts of frosting covered treats."

"Oh my god, talk about buttercream coma," Angel said. "It took me three days to emerge from my bed after last year and another week before I could look at a cupcake and not shudder at the memory of all the decadence I let slip past my lips."

"It sounds like you're saying I need to make a U-turn and go back to the city to get some buttercream as a means of enticing you to slip a little something else past that glossy peach lip-gloss."

Now that gave Angel a moment of pause. If there was really a party up ahead, and thus a ready supply of buttercream coated goodness, would Dion be offering to turn around to go find some? Or maybe that was just a means of throwing him off the scent and getting him to relax until they got wherever it was that his friends were lying in wait for him.

"I can practically see the wheels turning, so let me save you the struggle," Dion said. "There is no party, at least not one that I know anything about. Since Bella has no idea where I'm taking you, since she can't keep a secret to save her life, I can guarantee with one hundred percent certainty that there is no one you know waiting for you with cupcakes and confetti at the end of this road trip."

"Right, okay. I'll play along. Just don't forget what I said about you taking the blunt of it when people start launching glittery scraps of paper in my direction."

"Does it look like I'm worried?"

Okay, so Angel had to admit that the man had impressive control of his emotions. He didn't even blink as he continued driving them towards their destination.

"No, which tells me you've got an amazing poker face."

"I should, considering who taught me to play."

Hmmmm.

Thinking back, Angel recalled the time he and Bella had driven clear across town to bring her Pops a six pack of homebrewed beer after he'd been goaded into putting it on the line one night. According to Bella, he'd retained it in the end, minus the bottle he'd consumed at the table, waving his victory in the face of his opponents the same way Mrs. Beale had consumed the box of imported chocolates she'd won off him a few weeks before. It had reminded him of game night at the house, especially when desserts were on the line.

"Is that your way of warning me never to challenge you?" Angel finally asked as Dion fiddled with the knob on the radio, exchanging the scratchy, fading station they'd been listening to for one that was clear and pulsing with a song Angel absolutely loved to dance to.

He found himself shimmying in his seat, hips squirming against the leather as he rocked to the beat, pleased to see Dion seat dancing right along with him.

"Not a chance," Dion said. "I'd love to see what would happen, especially if clothing is on the line."

"So…mini-cupcakes and clothes, that's what we'd be betting with?"

"Pretty much," Dion replied, shoulders swaying as he grooved out to the song. "You game?"

Giggling, Angel turned the music up a smidge, then made a little raise the roof motion, "Prepare to get naked."

For just a moment, Dion turned away from the road to shoot him a filthy smirk. "You first."

"Oh, you wanna play that game?" Angel remarked, suddenly hit with a novel idea as his hands drifted to the edge of his crop top and he drew it up over his head, the seatbelt making the move far less smooth than he'd hoped for, but it still did its job and got Dion's attention.

"Game on, then," Dion said. "Though if we were already keeping score, you'd be losing."

Shit.

Angel hadn't thought of that. Hell, he'd been about to shove his shorts around his ankles just to see if he could get a rise out of Dion that way. Now he was torn between redressing and reassessing or following through and changing the stakes.

"Of course, if you'd like to save yourself the trouble and concede now, I'll willingly accept your surrender," Dion offered.

Oh hell no.

"That's a lot of talk from someone who doesn't even have a deck of cards on him," Angel remarked.

"Who says I don't?"

"Do you?"

"No, but there are plenty of places to get one between here and where we're going," Dion said. "Mini cupcakes too. What's your favorite flavor and please don't tell me cookies and cream."

"What's your issue with cookies and cream?" Angel asked. "That's gotta be one of the most versatile combos ever, next to fudge brownie and chocolate chip cookie dough."

"I've got no problem with the flavor profile," Dion admitted. "Just seems a little tame for you."

"And how would you know what's tame for me?" Angel asked.

"Well let's see," Dion said, one hand on the wheel, the other elbow on the windowsill, cruise control probably on since Angel hadn't felt a change in motion for several miles. "Could it be the wild and varied stories I've heard about your exploits on the pride parade float, you strutting along in bright pink at the head of a conga line of feathered boa wearing dancers, or the rather entertaining things I've heard about a certain trampoline race incident that landed you in the emergency room?"

"That proves nothing," Angel said as he waved away the words before redonning his crop-top and reclining the seat a little.

"Doesn't it?" Dion asked. "At the very least it proves that you think way outside of the box and aren't afraid of being different, something that is sorely lacking in a lot of people these days. You're unique and if you let me, I'm going to be around long enough to discover just how deep that well of uniqueness flows."

"Mmmmm," Angel sighed, loving the way the words flowed together. "What happens when you reach the bottom of the well?"

"I get to go back through and sample it all again." Dion replied without a moment's hesitation.

The damn man knew just how to push buttons without having to lay a finger on him. Just listening to him talk in that deep, rolling cadence of his was soothing, but if Dion ever decided to read to him, especially from a book of poetry, Angel knew he'd both melt and go up in flames.

"Tell me about the trampoline race," Dion demanded, drawing Angel back out of his thoughts. "How did you come up with that one?"

Giggling, Angel curled on his side as much as the seatbelt would let him, so he could watch Dion and not the streaks of headlights rushing up and down the highway.

"You know the nursery rhyme about the monkey's jumping on the bed?" Angel asked.

"Yes, and if I do remember correctly, that included a doctor's visit as well."

"It also ended in various different ways depending on the version you listen to, including them jumping on a sofa instead of the bed, swinging from a tree, and getting gobbled up by alligators."

"Okay," Dion said, letting the word trail off like he wasn't sure what to think about the direction Angel had taken the conversation.

"You've played frogger right?" Angel asked.

"Yeah…"

"Think about it," Angel prodded.

First his eyebrow crinkled, then Angel watched as his jawline worked back and forth before a bit of laughter burst from him.

"You created a game of human frogger," Dion asked, the disbelief evident in his voice.

"Probably not created," Angel admitted. "I'm sure someone beat us to that by decades, but we sure came up with our own version, combined with bits from Floor is Lava . Didn't Bella tell you about the pallet walls and ramps? Or the springboards Billy set up. Or the mattress crash pads?

"Mattress crash pads?"

"Well, we're not complete animals," Angel said. "If someone is going to backflip off something they at least need a safe place to try to land."

"Was it a missed crash pad that sent you to the hospital?"

"Yes and no," Angel hedged.

"I think I'm narrowing in on the heart of this story," Dion said. "So, who missed and landed on you?"

"H…how," Angel sputtered, sitting up a little and reaching for his iced tea bottle. Blackberry was by far the greatest thing since peach. If they ever created a blackberry-peach, he'd be done for. Unscrewing the cap, he caught sight of Dion grinning as he focused on the road.

"I've got a sibling, remember," Dion pointed out. "I know exactly what yes and no means when it involves any sort of game plus an accident or injury. At least two of the summers I spent in casts were because Bella crash landed on me while we were doing something incredibly stupid, like attempting to ride our bikes down a ramp that ran from the ground to the roof of our house.

"How'd you get the bikes up there in the first place?"

"You mean after trying to ride them up failed?" Dion replied. "We passed them out the second-floor window and accidentally killed a Rhododendron bush in the process."

"Pretty sure they're shrubs and you can't just leave it at that."

"If you can tell me the difference between a bush and a shrub, I'll tell you the rest of the story."

"Okay," Angel said, immediately reaching into his back pocket and withdrawing his cell phone. Within seconds he'd typed the question into the search engine, leaving Dion to groan and pinch the bridge of his nose.

"A shrub is shorter than a tree, but it can be taller than a bush," Angel read. "The leaves and stems of bushes hang low and sometimes touch the ground, while shrubs can be mistaken for trees, depending on the number of stems or trunks they have."

"I walked right into that one, didn't I?"

"Yup."

Chuckling, Dion shook his head. "Way easier than being told to look it up, I guess. Pops used to drive me crazy with that shit. Every time I asked a question, he'd send me to the Encyclopedia and The Old Man wasn't much better. If I asked something he didn't know he'd just tell me to go ask Pops ."

Now Angel was the one laughing. "My Nana loved her encyclopedias too. She said it was a thrill when they showed up in the mail with their shiny gold strips along the edges. She was so proud of them. She'd bought them when my dad was a kid and still had them when she was raising me. The moment I brought home an assignment that involved a report, she'd start baking cookies and sit me down at the kitchen table with whatever editions I needed so I could get started on my research."

"Whoa, so no internet?" Dion said.

"Not when all she had coming in was social security checks," Angel explained.

"What happened to your folks?"

"Date night, a drunk driver, it was their first night out after I was born. They'd dropped me off at Nana's and it was a cop who showed up on her doorstep instead of them. She raised me until she passed away when I was fourteen."

"Who finished looking out for you?"

"For the first two years, this old hobo named Joe, then he got sick and never came out of the hospital," Angel said, shivering a little at the lonely years between losing his Nana and meeting Tiny and Ajay. "He taught me enough that I'd learned how to read people, know who was being honest when they offered to help me and who was just trying to use me for something. There was a lot of that on the streets, but he kept me safe from it, taught me how to fight, and how to survive off whatever I could scavenge."

"You lived on the streets?"

"Yeah."

"Bella never said anything about that."

"She wouldn't, it wasn't her story to tell."

"True, I just, the way she talked about Ajay and Billy and the rest of your friends, I guess I just assumed you'd grown up together and decided that living with one another was better than trying to maintain a bunch of apartments alone."

"You weren't wrong," Angel admitted. "We did grow up together, in all the ways that count, anyway. Tiny was seventeen and constantly being bullied by his old man and brothers, Ajay was sixteen and had just lost his older brother in a training exercise. He was a soldier and after his death Ajay's old man didn't handle it well, he started drinking heavily and doing a lot of yelling and throwing things when he got upset. He hit Ajay with the toaster and cracked a rib and Ajay got scared. He still says it wasn't intentional, that he just got in the way, but he couldn't live there anymore. He and Tiny worked a bunch of afterschool jobs and stuff to afford a little studio apartment and we'd run into each other around the neighborhood.

I was living under the West Street Bridge at the time and the weather was changing. You could just feel that it was gonna be worst the year before, and that was brutal. I hated sleeping at the shelter, but I did it the year before because there was nowhere to hole up that was warm enough to keep the wind at bay, even under layer of clothes. Figured I'd be better off if I scrapped together money for a bus ticket someplace warm. I was halfway to my goal when they offered to let me move in with them."

"Remind me to thank them," Dion said, "If you'd left, I would have missed out on the opportunity to whisk you away for a magical evening of buttercream frosting and losing all your clothes to me.

Holy shit, he was about to make Angel cry with the way he drew his inner romantic from its hiding place and allowed him to believe in the magic of love again.

"Unless you plan for me to ride back home naked, you'll have to devise a way for me to earn them back," Angel said, resisting the urge to try and pounce and hug him while they were still rolling down the highway.

"Oh, I'm sure I'll think of something."

"You owe me a story, too," Angel reminded him.

"Do I?"

"I told you the difference between a shrub and a bush, now you get to explain the dead Rhododendron."

"Fair enough," Dion said. "The first assault upon the Rhododendron took place when we attempted to hoist the bikes up the side of the house with a water hose and a makeshift pully. We couldn't find rope so we figured the hose would be long enough, since it was like three linked together. The first bike reached the top just fine, but we didn't tie the knot tight enough on the second and it fell and landed on the bush."

"Poor shrub."

"Quiet you, or you won't get to hear the rest of it."

"Fineeeee."

Their eyes met for a moment, then Dion tisked, shook his head and returned his focus to the road.

"You're going to land ass up over my knee if you keep it up."

"Who says that's not where I'm trying to be."

Dion paused a moment a chuckled that. "Don't think I won't revisit that when I've got my hands free."

"I sure hope so Paaaapi."

Seeing Dion body quiver and his eyes drift to half-mast was a powerful feeling and Angel reached over to rest his head on Dion's thigh.

"Now, what other atrocities did you subject that poor shrub to?"