Read Promise Rock 03 - Living Promises (MM) for Free Online

make this whole PT thing take off?”
Margie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, Doctor Jeff. If I lost the extra human hanging around my neck—I figured.”
Jeff smiled at her softly. Weight problems sucked. He knew it. It was one thing for him to spend hours at the gym or to measure his calories with a scale and a calculator—he had the time. But Margie? Margie still had three kids in school. Her time after work was a maddening whirlwind of soccer fields, dance studios, and Aca-Deca meetings. Margie was lucky if she could order McDonald's and remember not to get the extra-large fries.
“Well, darling, you know I worry. Who else is going to keep me apprised on the doings of the depraved youth of America, right?”
Margie grinned and waggled her blonde eyebrows wickedly, then turned away and started to pack up her purse with a rather studied air. “Um, that reminds me, Dr. Jeff—I won't be making my appointment for next week. I'll be back the week after.”
“Yeah?” Jeff cocked his head. “What's doin'?”
Margie shrugged and kept her back turned. She mumbled something that sounded like “ohw paedgent mercury.” Jeff blinked and asked her to repeat it, and on the fourth try, he was able to make out the words “outpatient surgery.”
Jeff stared at her blankly. “For what?”
Margie still wouldn't look at him. The sides of the walls—which he'd decorated with seascapes and kittens, and the floor and the ceiling— those she looked at. Finally she looked at him, her shoulders hunched defensively, and her chin quivering alarmingly.
“C'mon, honey—what's doin'?” he asked, as gently as he could.
“No big deal,” Margie said, trying to keep her jaw stoic. “Just, you know, a Lap-band. The stomach-stapling thing, right?”
Jeff blinked, not sure where the verklempt woman came in with the everyday procedure. “Isn't that a good thing, sweetheart?”
Margie shrugged again and looked away. “You know, doll, it's just embarrassing. You want to lose it all by yourself. It's… it's humiliating to find yourself in this… this emotional vortex, and you can't pull your way out of it, you know?” She shook her head and shrugged and tried to wave away the tears, and Jeff had a sudden memory of Crick's voice on the phone.
He'd been slouched on the couch with Constantine on his lap, and wondering—without framing the thought, mind you—if maybe Constantine wouldn't be happier with the Mr. and Mrs. Doc Herberts forever. His favorite show, CSI, had just gone to reruns, and, dammit, his last cigarette had made him throw up, and so had his last cookie and his last hamburger and his last anything-the-fuck-else that made life worth living and his little personal pharmaceutical/biology experiment worth the potential outcome.
And to make matters worse, a group of teenage boys had practically run over him on skateboards as he'd left the supermarket that day, calling him an “old faggot” as they did.
Now the “faggot” part he could have lived with—but the “old?” That was just too fucking much.
And then the phone rang, and he didn't recognize the number, and then when he picked it up….
“So, hey. This is Crick, the poor bastard you tortured the other day, you remember?”
Holy shit. The gangly kid with the motor mouth and the horrific injuries and the smoking hot boyfriend and not a trace of self-pity. The one he'd talked to for the whole session, and whom he had thought about—not even in a sexual way—for the next two days. The kid had been fun. He'd been funny. He'd been one of the best things about Jeff's week.
“Yeah, sweetcakes, how could I forget?”
“So, um, Deacon's busy, I'm still a walking liability, and, um… hey. Do you want to go shopping or something? God, Deacon can't shop for shit, and I feel so damned slow when it's Benny and the baby. You think?”
Jeff had almost cried. “Oh babydoll, I think you're gonna regret that. Do you know how many malls I can haul your gimpy ass around? What did you