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

want to look for?”
Yeah. Jeff knew about emotional vortices, didn't he?
Jeff didn't care if Margie weighed at least twice as much as he did—she was a sweetie, and every week, she made him laugh. He opened his arms and waggled his fingers, and she stepped awkwardly into his best fairy-Jeff-father hug.
“We all need help sometimes,” he said softly, and was gratified when her hug went from awkward to earnest.
“Yeah, well, I guess if you're twice the woman, you need twice the help,” she muttered, and he hugged her tighter before he let her go.
“I'll make your appointment for two weeks from now. I expect miracles, Margie—don't disappoint me!”
Margie grimaced. “You are a miracle, my darling boy. Let's just hope I don't have some bizarrely shaped, anti-band stomach or that my fat hasn't developed intelligence and a will to take over the world.”
Jeff laughed some more, because he couldn't help it. “If it does take over the world, could it make it so diet dessert doesn't taste like shit? I'm dying for chocolate mousse something, and it is not my week to indulge!”
Now it was Margie's turn to look at him softly. “Well, you let me know when it's your week, and I'll have a bite of that, right?”
A flush stole over Jeff's features. Margie was smart—he'd seen her eyeing the double-glove layer he used when treating patients, and she knew him well enough to inquire after his health when his “vitamin” doses got too hard to hold down. He may not have told her his big HIV secret, but she had probably guessed.
“It's a deal,” he said quietly, and she smiled warmly back. She left then, in a flurry of receipts and pens and lotion samplers from her gigantic purse, but their conversation seemed to echo in Jeff's head for the rest of the workday.
He was just finishing his charting when the phone in his little office rang, and his words to Margie about needing help practically exploded in his head.
“Is this Jeff Beachum?”
Jeff recognized the voice, even if the name was unfamiliar—he pronounced it “Bow-shaam,” and this guy pronounced it “Beech-ump.” Jeff had only heard one other person call him that, in that same hesitant, crisp, military way, and that had been on pretty much the worst day of his life.
“Lieutenant Lucas Blaine,” Jeff said, his mouth drying up, turning to sand, and then exhaling powder. “I remember you.”
“Yeah, uhm….” There was a pause, and Jeff imagined some jarhead fidgeting with a cell phone, wearing fatigues and a grimly bashful look. Lucas had called Jeff to tell him about Kevin, and even then, Jeff couldn't have picked him out of a crowd. They hadn't spoken since.
“See, the thing is,” Lucas continued after about a quarter of a century, “Kevin sent you a letter. You know… a „coming home' letter? The kind we're supposed to have sent home if we're coming home in a box?”
Jeff actually felt his head swim —like the backstroke and everything. He'd hoped for a letter, after Lucas's call, but he hadn't expected one. Kevin had made it more than clear that his parents would rather he died a Marine than live a faggot.
Jeff had told him at the time that he'd rather have him live, period, and Kevin had laughed like it was a given.
“I didn't know that,” Jeff said now, from way under the water in the crazy pool where Lucas had just dumped him. “What happened to it?”
Lucas sighed. “It got sent home in a packet with his letter to his parents—I was supposed to get to it, but I forgot about it that day. I was….” He sounded impatient with himself. “I'm sorry, Mr. Beech-ump, but I was wounded that day too.”
Twenty-five-year-old Jeff might not have given a fuck. Thirty-oneyear-old Jeff found that he did. “I'm sorry about that, Lucas. I didn't know.”
“It's my fault,” Lucas muttered again. “I'm sorry. It's my goddamned fault. I didn't mean to let Kevin down. And….” His sigh was so gusty that it actually echoed in the earpiece. “Kevin trusted