Read Laugh for Free Online Page B

she’s never been anywhere.”
    “Exactly. She
hasn’t
been anywhere. She doesn’t have a lot of life experience. Hefin’s older. He was married. Kind of nice for him to take a young girlfriend wherever he wants to go.”
    “What the fuck, Sam?”
    “What?”
    “You’re making Des sound like an idiot. Plus, where the fuck have you been, anyway? I bet you don’t even have a passport. You haven’t done anything but go to school and push pills and you’ve done all that within twenty-five miles of the hospital room you were born in.”
    Sam
didn’t
have a passport. And PJ could go fuck himself.
    They both ignored each other, recently practiced in the art of avoiding a fight. Sam yanked out his phone, which worked like a cue for PJ to pull out an inch-thick score and a pencil.
    Good.
    Sam tapped his phone open. Lacey had reluctantly given it back to him last weekend after he finished with Nina and he could prove that Nina would let him come back the next week. Which was good, too, because Sam was far from done with Nina Paz. As promised, she’d fed him at her café, spicy sautéed greens that he had thought about with longing all week.
    Then she really had taken him along to talk to a man in an eastside neighborhood who made and cured hard sausage and wanted a commission with Nina.
    He had done nothing but stay quiet and sample the spicy
kulen.
Watched her draw a shy Hungarian sausage maker out of his shell until he was falling over himself to tell her everything, make her laugh.
    He knew the feeling.
    Lacey texted him.
    You’re meeting Nina today?
    Yes. At the diner with PJ
,
first.
    How is he?
    Sam looked at PJ, who had looked up from his score and was staring at him.
Pissed at me.
    “Is that Lacey?” PJ asked quietly.
    Sam nodded.
Should go
, he typed.
Check in later.
    Tell Paul hi. Behave yrself with Nina.
    “Lacey said to say hi to
Paul.
” Sam tried to catch PJ’s eye, but PJ had a weird look on his face and was staring into his coffee.
    “Is that what she said? Did she actually use my name?” PJ suddenly looked pained, like he had revealed too much to Sam.
    Sam wanted to reach across the table and grip PJ’s arm, make him look into his eyes—the way he did when PJ was a little boy and wouldn’t confess to a mess in the bathroom or stealing extra cookies.
    He wanted PJ to remember that Sam was his older fucking brother.
    “Are you still hung up on her?” Sam felt his mood go a little black. “She was your
babysitter.
”
    PJ looked up then, and his face was blank, but his big blue eyes, their mom’s eyes, were hard. “You know what, asshole? It’s been real.”
    PJ stood up, and hitched his cello out of the booth. He swung it onto his back and dug into his front pocket and threw a five on the table. Walked away.
    Sam pulled out his phone. Slid it on. Stared at it until it blinked to black on its own.
    * * *
    “Just, grab it. Wait, not by the—There you go. Got it!” Nina laughed, and Sam straightened up slowly, gripping the chicken as firmly as he dared.
    “I’ve got it.” Sam held out the chicken, feeling oddly tender toward it as its tiny heart beat triple time against his palm.
    Nina grinned, her hands on her hips, her shiny braids curling around her breasts, and Sam realized he would do anything to keep that grin on her face. “You sure do. You’ve got that chicken but good.”
    “Now what?” The chicken had kind of melted in Sam’s hands, resigned, and its trust had made him feel weirdly affectionate toward it.
    He wanted to pet it, smooth back the black-and-white feathers along its back he had ruffled. But he didn’t dare let go of it. Chickens, it turned out, were really fucking hard to catch.
    Nina bent over and in one try scooped up a chicken racing by her legs.
    “Okay, we bring these ladies over here”—Nina walked over to a drop-down table built out of the chicken coop—“and while you keep one hand around her legs, use the other hand to follow some of her larger