16. Royal

Chapter 16

Royal

"I don't get why you don't like Maddox," Easton said, opening the door to the RV.

"I never said I didn't." Royal appreciated Easton's nonjudgmental directness, but it didn't mean Royal would own up to the allegation, because that would mean admitting jealousy. And jealousy was the master key to Pandora's pretty, ornate box. Oh, and how that box sparkled with glitter, gems, and all kinds of stardust. He entered the RV after Easton, allowing the door to shut behind him.

"You didn't have to. It's apparent. Everything you say to him is contentious. You're spewing enough pettiness to strangle a mean girl and her right-hand minion."

"Roy contentious?" Marcel mocked, lifting his hat from a table. "Naw! Say it isn't so."

"No one asked you, old man," Royal said with a sneer but without the faintest edge of irritation in his tone, his verdant eyes shining.

Marcel chuckled, unoffended. "The truth be golden." He arranged his hat on his head. "Okay, you two are on your own tonight. Upton's bull rope has somehow gone missing, and we can't get one shipped in time. He, Cody, and I are going to drive down to Houston and pick up one."

Royal scratched his chin. Although he'd shaved that morning, between his rush and dull razor heads, he could feel stubble. "That's quite a drive."

"Well, now, that's why the three of us are going—so we can take turns driving." He swiped the brim of Royal's hat. "Use your head sometimes."

Rolling his eyes, Royal plopped down onto the bench sofa, the pillows giving a small puff beneath his weight.

"Where did he lose his rope?" Easton asked.

Marcel made another face. "Boy, sometimes I think the two of you share a quarter of a brain. If we knew where it was, it wouldn't be missing, now would it?"

"Damn, you don't even give us credit for a whole brain, starting us out in fractions."

Easton blushed. "Yeah, I guess that was a dumb question."

"You don't have to guess. Don't be modest. Be certain and own it fully. It was downright stupid," Marcel responded.

Royal snickered. "It's so touching how benevolently nurturing and endearing your sentiments are to us."

"You've been reading the big boy dictionary again." Marcel grabbed his keys from a table. "We should be back by tomorrow afternoon. Don't forget, you both are doing the breakfast segment on the morning show. East, they want your jacket zipped in the front to show off the logo, and Roy, you're to wear one of the new caps. Right after that is a podcast interview, and then East, you have Walk Down Main Street."

"What's that?"

"Exactly what it sounds like. They're going to get some footage of you walking through the old part of town where a lot of the sponsored businesses are. It shouldn't take long. Buddy will pick you up, since I'm taking the truck. There are a couple of other things, but I wrote it all down and left it on the counter. You two should be all right. Irene will pop in in the morning to see that y'all are all set for breakfast."

"We're not five," Royal muttered with a wicked smile.

Marcel eyed him suspiciously.

Laughing, Easton settled onto the couch beside Royal. "Yes, we'll be fine, Nonc."

Looking around the compartment, Marcel patted his pockets. "I think I got everything."

As he opened the door, Marcel added, "I wasn't sure what time y'all would be in tonight, so I took Spartacus over to Callie's."

Both Easton and Royal groaned in unison.

"Last time she dogsat, she fed him so much junk, he was shitting every ten minutes."

Frowning, Marcel pointed at Royal. "I've told you about watching your language."

Amusement darkened Royal's eyes. "But I'm not lying."

"No, no you're not," Marcel conceded, glancing at his watch. "But it's too late to go get him now. You know Callie goes to bed early. We'll just have to deal with it, be it as it may." He scanned the room a final time. "Okay, c'est tout . Call if you need anything." He exited.

Shaking his head, Easton cast Royal a wry smile. "He acts like we're going to write on the walls in crayons or break into his liquor cabinet."

Royal shrugged, stood, and shuffled to the refrigerator. "Want a brew?"

"Sure, but none of that lite crap. It makes me burp too much."

He opened the door, rested his elbow on the top, bent, peered inside, and snickered silently to himself. For the amount of beer on the bottom shelf, one would think they were a bunch of lushes. Maybe they were, but it had nothing to do with the quantity of alcohol in the fridge. Marcel was teaching himself how to use a grocery app for curbside pickup and had insisted that he hadn't needed any assistance.

"Doggone, the groceries sure are high in this town," the elder had complained. It wasn't until the order arrived that any of them realized that Marcel had clicked Submit four times, quadrupling every item. Not wanting the hassle—and what Royal suspected to be out of embarrassment—Marcel had opted not to pursue a return.

Royal reached over the lite and retrieved two drafts. He handed one to Easton and flopped back down on the couch.

"So, when did you start hanging out with tweenies?"

Royal twisted the cap off his bottle, his eyes widening. "You noticed it too?"

"Well, duh. He was sitting at the table. How was I supposed to miss a whole kid?"

"I meant his age. He says he's fifteen."

Easton blinked twice. "No way! Ten, tops."

"Wow. I gave him twelve. I think Gerald instructed him to lie about it."

" Co faire? "

"Because he's a dick."

"You're going to have to give me more than that."

"He's got him working the stables, and I don't mean a couple of chores. You know policy states everyone needs to be at least fifteen to work any part of this tour unless it's selling merch. Plus, Gerald leaves him unsupervised."

"In all fairness, we got left alone at that age too."

"Not for longer than twenty minutes at a stretch, and never at night or in a strange town. Pixie sticks, we're grown and Marcel still has people checking in on us. We make a living riding thousand-pound animals that could snap us in half, and he doesn't trust us with a datdurn waffle iron. Heaven forbid we use his George Foreman grill."

Easton smirked. "Checking on you , and you did set the curtains on fire."

"Oh, bite me. That toaster was whack." He took a slow swig of beer, lifted his long legs, and propped his booted feet on a footstool, crossing them at the ankles. "All these years, I never would have pegged Gerald to be this type of guy."

"People change, Roy."

"Overnight?"

"Who said it was overnight? Some changes are gradual, so subtle that you never notice until one day, they're bitch-slapping you in the face."

"Eh." Royal shrugged, unconvinced.

"Or maybe you never really knew him."

"You think that's possible? To be around someone for years and not know them?"

"Sure. Why do you think divorces happen?"

"Uh, because people grow apart."

"Sometimes," Easton agreed, nodding. "Other times, it may be they found each other before they found themselves."

" Quoi? Unpack that."

"It's like some ancient person—Aristotle, Lao Tzu, Chef Boyardee—said. You can't know others until you know yourself. If you don't know what you want, you can't communicate that to others, and others can't give you what they don't know about. Maybe Gerald has never shown you the real Gerald because he doesn't know who that is."

"So, you're saying Gerald treats his child like shit because he doesn't know any better, and therefore, the rest of the world doesn't know either. I call horseshit. Any parent should know that their children want to be loved."

"Relationships are complicated. Bad parents can still love their kids. Junkies know drugs destroy their life, yet they still take them. Plus, you're mixing apples and oranges. Your question was how you couldn't know about Gerald's parenting, not how Gerald treats his son."

"Same thing."

"No, it isn't.

"Yes, it is."

"People see what they want to see."

"Where'd you hear that?"

"I read it on the back of a cereal box."

Royal lowered his beer from his lips. "Say what?"

"I heard it from Dr. Truvy during one of those psychiatric sessions they mandated I attend to determine if my prefrontal cortex was firing enough for me to ride."

Royal snorted. "Who of us isn't misfiring up there, with a twinge of megalomania?"

"That's what I said, but that's not the point. If we walk into a hospital and see someone in a white lab coat and scrubs, we'll probably assume that person is a doctor. That may or may not be true. It could be someone who works in a scientific lab, a nail tech, or even someone who just needs a jacket to keep warm. The person didn't lie because we made assumptions without asking the proper questions. Any mistakes in judgment would be on us for not doing our due diligence. That person didn't make us think what we thought. Sure, it could be an intentional mislead, or it could be the person throwing on the first coat he found without giving it a second thought. At the end of the day, it is our responsibility to seek the truth. We don't get to act like victims if we fail to do our part. You never asked Gerald what kind of parent he was."

"But—"

"You didn't know because you didn't ask. He's likely always treated his kid the same. Why are you suddenly interested?"

"I'm not." Royal stroked his finger along the chilled glass bottle, its coolness beginning to parallel the dropping temperature of his blood as his nerves tensed. "I mean, I'm not going to let a kid go around hungry. Duchess always said it's kinder to shoot a dog in the head than allow it to starve to death. I can't shoot a kid." He smiled equally as charismatic as it was self-deprecating.

"You couldn't shoot a dog either."

"I merely feel sorry for him, you know. And it sucks that no one has done or said anything. I mean, someone else must know. I can't be the only one."

Easton relaxed into the worn cushions of the sofa and considered a moment before responding. "Well, you could try reporting Gerald, but what will come of that? I'm sure promoters aren't paying Jerry. So, there's no real evidence of him working. He'll look like a son earning an allowance. Without visible scars or a confession, the police probably won't intervene. And with us moving every other day, by the time the ink dries on CPS papers, we will have been in six other states."

Like it or not, Easton made valid points. "You're right. Moreover, putting that kind of information out there without irrefutable proof fuels the fire for picketers to drag us even more and accuse all of us of child trafficking or some shit. We're damned if we do and damned if we don't."

"At least now he has us looking out for him."

"Us?"

"We both know you're going to be watching out for him now, and I'm not going to let you do it alone. So, yeah—us."

Royal tilted his bottle and clinked it against Easton's. "Cheers."

"Cheers."

This was the type of evening Royal enjoyed—chilling with his homeboy. Though they had spent many hours in the past on this sofa and others shooting the shit, it felt both familiar and new simultaneously. Rolling his head back against the rear of the couch, he studied Easton's profile as Easton removed his hat and hung it on the hook above their heads without looking up, a testimony to how many times he'd performed the simple act. In the cool glow of the sconce-style wall LED lights, his hair appeared more copper than the mahogany Royal knew it to be. He'd neglected cutting it for several weeks, and now his natural waves were becoming evident. He swept his hand through it, giving it more volume where it had been pressed flat from his hat and creating a messy look that took others hours to perfect.

The light also toyed with the color of Easton's eyes—a solar burst of hues that both reflected and amplified light—framed by dark lashes. The explosion of gold surrounding his pupils overpowered the cornflower blue of his irises. Science called the condition central heterochromia. Royal called it beautiful.

Easton raised his beer, and Royal tracked the bottle until it reached his companion's lips. In response, Royal's lips parted slightly as Easton tipped the bottle and closed his lips around the rim. Peas, beans, and cabbage greens! His eyes snagged and lingered on the bob of Easton's Adam's apple as he swallowed. Barely, Royal managed to suppress a gasp but was powerless against the breath stalling like an unbroken mule in his chest.

"You know," Easton said softly, "you never explained your issue with Maddox."

Well, fuck! "Not that again."

"He seems nice. All he wants is a friend."

Horse pucky! "Uh-huh."

Easton stared at him evenly. "It isn't like you to not give someone a chance. Well, it is, but it's also not. Usually, you would have come around by now for a fellow rider."

"I wouldn't trust him if his tongue was stamped and signed by a notary and six Supreme Court justices, all right? Frankly, I'd rather hold hands with the devil. His spirit animal is probably a roach—one of those big, burly flying ones—and he's as shady as the fine print on an extended warranty."

"Why, Roy? Why don't you trust him?"

Royal sighed, a portentous feeling mounting in him causing him to be uneasy. "You're really pushing this, aren't you?"

"Why are you getting defensive?"

"I'm not." He was.

"If you think something's not right about him, don't you think you should tell me so I can look out for it too?"

Dammit, don't be logical. "No," Royal retorted a tad too sharply.

"No?" Easton's brows arched, and he turned to face Royal, his eyes burning holes into Royal's soul.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Are you serious right now? You're supposed to have my back."

"I do. You should trust me."

"You want to discuss trust, and you don't trust me enough to tell me?"

Ah, merde!

"I… I…." Royal pressed his lips together so tightly that they lost color. This had become a chess match of words, and in his mind, he could map out the next moves. He'd affirm that he indeed had his friend's back, and Easton would argue that withholding his concerns wasn't having his back. And back and forth they would tango, the dance floor shrinking with each move until his king was captured. Hell, he was mixing metaphors of chess and ballroom dancing, which demonstrated just how fucked he was. "He seems oily enough to pour on a salad."

"That's not fair."

"What do you know about this guy?" he asked in desperation. "He popped up out of nowhere. So, you want to hang out with him without knowing anything?"

"That's kinda how it works, Roy. You get to know people by spending time with them. It's how you form friendships."

"He wants to be more than your friend," Royal blurted before his brain caught up with his tongue.

Fuck! What we have here is a January 30 King Charles I situation. Checkmate!