Free Hand (Irons and Works Book 1) Read online

  “DeDe?” Maisy asked, pulling Derek out of his thoughts as she tugged on the bottom of his shirt.

  He grinned down at here. “Yes, sweetpea?”

  “Can we pway outside?”

  He shrugged. “Why not. You wanna walk down the street to the pond and feed the ducks?”

  She jumped with excitement, then tripped over her own feet in a haste to reach her shoes. “Yeah! Yeah I wanna…I wanna go!”

  3.

  Derek convinced Maisy to leave the ducks after an hour, and only when he promised that Jasmine would be at the studio when they got there. He parked his car around the back, then carried her inside through the employee entrance and found Katherine in her private room prepping for what looked like her next client.

  Her head popped up from where she was cling-wrapping her supply table and she grinned. “Hey, baby girl! You come to see me?”

  “Yeah,” Maisy said, wriggling out of Derek’s arms. He kept a hold on her so she couldn’t dart into the clean space, but Katherine quickly shed her gloves and walked out to lift the toddler into her arms, kissing her cheeks.

  “Are you and DeDe gonna take Jazz and uncle Sage to lunch?”

  “I want chicken nuggets,” Maisy said dutifully.

  Derek rolled his eyes with a grin before taking the girl back into his arms. “And maybe something green?” he added. “Is my brother here?”

  Kat nodded, jutting her chin at the swinging door which led to the open floor. “He’s out there getting Jasmine’s bag ready. Tony’s at the doctor’s today so Sage is literally saving my life.”

  Derek frowned with worry. “Is he okay?”

  “Yes,” she said with a sniff. “He has an ingrown toenail and didn’t fucking listen to me two weeks ago when it started getting disgusting, and now he gets to suffer through the pain of removal because he apparently knows better than his wife.”

  Derek backed away. “Staying the hell out of that one.”

  Kat laughed. “Wise. Anyway, I checked your schedule and it looks like I’m good to take the girls off your hands at two. You got someone at three, right?”

  Derek nodded. “Yeah, it’s just a consult, then I have some line work to get done on one of my regulars which I think will be about two hours? Then I have my shading appointment at five-thirty, and that’s going to take up the rest of my afternoon. Why, you need me?”

  “Nah,” she said, waving him off. “Tony will probably want to come fill in once he’s done. You know how he gets when someone fucks with his routine.”

  “He has only himself to blame,” Derek said dutifully.

  Kat winked at him before waving him off, and he walked through the doors, still holding Maisy’s hand. A head of soft lavender hair knocking against short, black spiked locks told him Emily and her husband Marcus were working on their sketch sheet together, and he spotted Mat bent over his drawing table next to his already wrapped tool bench.

  “Hey, man,” Derek said to Mat, dropping a hand on his shoulder.

  Mat looked up with a grin, reaching out with a hand to tickle Maisy under her chin. “Hey little one. Did you miss me?”

  “No,” she said plainly.

  Mat’s eyes widened with shock, making him looked like a kicked puppy which Derek found far too endearing. He and Mat were probably closest, as they had apprenticed together and shared a very similar style and some of their clients. Mat wasn’t the typical sort Derek was used to—soft-spoken and non-confrontational. But he’d grown on him like stubborn moss, and apart from Sam, was the person Derek trusted most with his own issues.

  It helped Mat had his own. Years back, Mat’s car had been crushed by a drunk driver and he’d been in a coma for six months. He’d come out of it only to find himself needing to relearn nearly everything. And not everything had come back. During his hospital stay he’d managed to get back on his feet and regain his ability to speak, but he found himself still unable to understand written words and numbers—he claimed they all looked like an alien alphabet, and no amount of therapy had been able to get him back to where he’d been. The one thing he could do, though, was draw, and it had been a huge part of his therapy in the rehab center.

  He had been married at the time too, but the stress had been too much for his wife who ended up leaving just as he was being released to live on his own. He’d moved to Fairfield after his divorce—needing to be away from a bigger city, but needing the comfort of knowing he could blend into a crowd. That was where he met Tony and Kat, and the rest was history. Tony and Kat’s shop was perfect for a tatted-up artist whose brain wouldn’t allow him to do his own accounting or book his own appointments, and he had fit into Irons and Works almost like he’d been around from the beginning. Mat mostly kept his personal life to himself, and no one pushed him to move on, though Derek couldn’t help but worry that his friend was starting to buckle under the weight of loneliness. It wasn’t his place though, so he kept his worry to himself.

  “She’s just in a mood,” he told him. He gave Maisy a nudge toward the swinging half-door which led to the lobby. “Go on and see Sage,” he told her. “He has Jazzy waiting for you.”

  Maisy perked up and hurtled herself out of the room and to the lobby where Derek heard his brother greet the toddler with enthusiasm. When he was sure the girl was in safe hands, he turned back to Mat and smiled.

  “Don’t take it personally, dude.”

  “I’m not,” Mat said, though his tone told a different story. “How are you doing? You have that look.”

  Derek sighed, hating how much of his heart he wore on his sleeve, but he made it a habit not to lie to his family at the shop. “I had a rough night. Got stuck in one of those little ATM rooms at the bank after the power went out and had a nasty panic attack.”

  Mat rose, taking Derek by one shoulder. “Shit, are you okay? Do you need me to take some of your clients tonight? I can move stuff around if you need time off.”

  Derek smiled at him. “Thanks, but I’m good. I wasn’t alone, and the guy who got stuck in there with me kept me distracted. And anyway, watching May will help with the rest. Sam got called to fucking Denver to jump through more hoops for these fuckers, so I’ll have her for most of the day.”

  Mat’s brows dipped, his expression going dark. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously,” Derek said from behind a sigh. “They’re making him sit through another psych eval, and he said May’s case-worker—or her boss, or something—wants him to do another like life skills class to prove that he can parent with a disability.”

  “Those fucking fucks,” Mat growled.

  “Trust me, I know.” Derek unclenched his fists when he felt his arm muscles begin to burn with the tension. “But I promised not to say anything. I have a feeling they’re going to send a few more suits in here to make sure we’re not like dealing drugs or sacrificing virgins, so we should be prepared.”

  Mat rolled his eyes. “I’ll tell Tony when he gets in.”

  “Alright.” Derek laughed when Jasmine’s loud squeal pierced the quiet of the room. “I should head out before the princesses start a revolt against how long it’s taking to get their lunch. You working late?”

  “All-nighter. Sage asked me to take walk-ins for him this evening, so I’ll be around.”

  “I’ll bring you something later if you want. Just text me.” Derek cupped the back of Mat’s neck and squeezed before stepping away and heading for the low swinging door. He found his brother holding Jasmine by her ankle, two inches above the soft leather couch cushion, and the little girl was giggling her head off. “If Tony saw that, he’d cut your…walnuts off and give them to you in a jar.”

  Sage laughed as he righted the girl and smacked a kiss on her cheek. “Tony trusts me with his life. Anyway, who’s hungry?” he signed the words with one hand, and both Jasmine and Maisy clapped their hands as he led the way out.

  ***

  Basil pointedly ignored his sister as he lost himself in arrangements. Spring was their busiest ti
me—they had Mother’s Day, graduation, spring weddings, and religious celebrations which kept them working from open to close. Being able to make money like this helped his ire at living in such a quaint little town. It was modern and trendy, but had the small-town feel to it which for him meant the over-enthusiasm of locals who were doing everything in their power to pretend like they were cool with deafness. It always amused him the way that hearing people thought he would benefit in any way from their yelling, or the way they would speak without sound and exaggerate their words, or the way they just couldn’t accept that he didn’t read lips.

  He could catch a few things, but people didn’t want to accept that being Deaf from birth made it a little difficult for him to understand the concept of speech, and frankly he found English confusing and frustrating. There were just too many goddamn words that could easily be said with expression instead, and why all of the plurals and tenses and conjunctions and articles?

  He never really understood his sister’s desire to assimilate. They’d both been raised by Deaf parents, in the Deaf Community, but he figured it had something to do with just how social she was. She hated being left out of any conversation, hated not being included in everything. His parents had always told him not to worry about it, that she’d find her own way, and he tried not to feel betrayed when she began living her life mostly verbal and rarely taking out her hearing aids, and applying to universities on the west coast.

  Frankly, if it hadn’t been for the accident, for the death of their parents and their aunt and uncle, and being left the flower shop, she might have just stayed in LA and made herself a comfortable life there amongst the people she’d grown to love. He couldn’t help but wonder if she resented him for it, when he’d asked her to help him get the shop back up and running.

  He wouldn’t have blamed her. Hell, he resented it enough himself that in the end she’d been right when she pointed out he was going to need help from someone who could communicate with most of the town. And he couldn’t help but appreciate that she’d been the one to stay, because the idea of hiring some stranger to work with him made his stomach twist in ugly ways.

  He just didn’t trust people. He’d dropped his guard once—and only once—and it had left a big enough scar he wasn’t anxious to do it again. Ama was forever giving him shit about it, for the way he shut down and just stopped trying, but she had never let humiliation stop her from moving forward.

  Basil just wasn’t that kind of guy.

  He’d met Chad when he was at University. Chad was interning for some Senator in DC but was staying near campus because he’d found a sublet with cheaper rent, and he ended up frequenting the coffee shop where Basil was working. He was attractive, which Basil had to admit even to this day Chad had a charismatic charm about him that was hard to ignore. Up to that point, Basil had never given a hearing guy the time of day, but he watched Chad navigate the mostly-Deaf run coffee shop with ease, taking it in stride when they didn’t bother to accommodate him, and watched week after week as he picked up more and more of the common signs thrown around the place.

  He also watched Chad watch him—it was blatant, there was no way to miss how Chad’s deep blue eyes followed him around every time he moved from the coffee bar to the ice bin to the pastry window. And the way Chad would sometimes wait until Basil was at the register before ordering. And he’d been charmed the day Chad had raised a shaky hand and looked as nervous as a newborn foal when he curled his fingers into the letters of his name.

  His friends encouraged him to go for it, not deterred by the fact that Chad was one of them—the hearing people who outside of this insular community and campus, would treat him like a second-class citizen. Chad was trying, they told him, and he was hot, and he obviously liked Basil.

  So, when Basil carefully signed, ‘Go out with me,’ mouthing the words as carefully as he could so Chad might understand, he’d been over the moon when the answer had been yes.

  Then they dated. And Basil was young and stupid and thought maybe it wasn’t such a big deal when Chad’s signing skills plateaued at basic customer service. Or the way he kept pushing Basil to learn lip-reading better, or the way that he pushed for Basil to sign up for speech therapy.

  It still made Basil feel sick to his stomach when he thought about the way he’d just signed up for the therapy, and the way he knew that deep-down it was wrong because he’d hidden it from both Amaranth and his parents.

  He was losing sleep, and his grades were falling, and he was unhappy, but it didn’t matter because his boyfriend was hot and wanted him, and he was a special kind of guy. He had a way of looking at Basil like he was the only person in the entire room, and it was enough to warp the mind of a twenty-year-old who had never really had much luck with dating before.

  It got ugly so slowly, Basil hadn’t realized it until one night he was having beer and pizza with some of the other interns Chad was working with. Basil had been working his ass off in therapy and lip reading, but he had been struggling so he’d kept it to himself. In the end, maybe it was best, because Chad felt safe in front of his friends when he started talking about Basil like Basil had no hope of understanding what was going on.

  “Dude, it’s fucking hilarious. He barely understands me. I have to talk like a fucking retard to get him to understand that I just want a beer from the fridge. The best part though is that I can say that shit right in front of him and the only thing he’ll pick up on is if I’m like, baby I love you.” He angled himself more at Basil then, but it hadn’t mattered.

  Basil had understood it all. Just like he understood the laughter booming through the room so loud he could feel it in the palms of his hands which were resting on the arm of his chair. Part of him wished he’d done better in speech therapy just so he could use Chad’s own language to tell him just what he could do to himself, but instead he went with a very universal gesture.

  The beer dumped on his head was just a bonus after shoving his middle finger in Chad’s face. He didn’t need any formed language to tell the guy, ‘Fuck you, I never want to see you again.’

  For a lot of years, he wondered if the worst part wasn’t the fact that he’d been sitting in a room for nearly two years as a bunch of hearing assholes had been mocking him to his face where he couldn’t understand them, but the fact that Chad hadn’t come after him. He’d just stayed there in that weed-saturated apartment while Basil stormed off and let himself cry—just once—before packing his shit and leaving.

  He stayed on a friend’s couch and checked his phone every day in some absurd hope that Chad would reach out and apologize and beg for forgiveness. Not that he’d give it, but he just wanted proof that Chad had been actually interested in him as a person, and not just some sort of social experiment to see what he could get the ‘deaf retard’ to do for his own amusement.

  It never came. Chad never looked him up again, never returned to the coffee shop after that. Maybe he was just afraid he’d get the shit beat out of him—and he likely would have, so it was probably best. Eventually Basil moved on with his life and got a master’s in computer science, and worked some bullshit menial job doing online tech support because in spite of having a higher education degree, no one wanted to hire the deaf guy.

  Then his parents and his aunt and uncle died, and out of the blue he was the owner of a flower shop so similar to the one he and Amaranth had grown up in, it almost hurt. To this day, it left him a little achy inside when he stepped into the cooler and smelled that rush of floral fragrance that had once clung to his mom’s hair and skirt no matter how many times she washed it. But this was better than wasting his life in front of a computer screen without any hope of doing more.

  This, at least, was his. It was his hard work and toil, and he didn’t have to deal with the Chads of the world because Amaranth had agreed to be his buffer. It felt a little pathetic to rely on his big sister for it, but in the end, it was worth it.

  It would have all been fine, too, if Derek hadn’t waltzed
into his life and forced him to feel things he hadn’t ever wanted to feel again. He woke up that morning feeling a mixture of loss and regret. Loss, because in spite of it being a small town, he’d never actually seen Derek around before and doubted he would again, and regret because he’d put himself out there in a way he hadn’t meant to.

  He’d purchased the drawing on a whim, unable to erase the soft, far-away look in Derek’s eyes when he’d opened the page to show him something important to him. It was absurd, the strange, bubbly feeling in his gut when he thought about owning something that was part of Derek—something that had been ripped out of him and put onto paper—but it was there all the same.

  He nearly cancelled the order when he checked his email, but he realized he’d been using Ama’s PayPal which meant in all likelihood, Derek wouldn’t recognize him anyway. The delivery address was to the shop and he didn’t think he’d given Derek his last name. So, he could keep this piece of the man he couldn’t stop thinking about without taking any real risks.

  It was ideal, really.

  And he could live with it.

  His stomach rumbled near eleven, so he poked his head around the corner and saw Ama holding the phone to her ear, writing something down on paper she was reading from the caption screen. He waited until she was done, then walked out into the blissfully empty show room.

  ‘Finished?’ she asked when he’d caught her attention.

  He shook his head. ‘Going to stop for lunch. Do you want anything?’

  She considered it a minute, then waved her hands in front of her. ‘Whatever. You know what I like. But get me a coffee on your way back. I need a boost.’

  Basil sighed, peering over the top of the counter to the order sheet and saw three new ones. ‘We’re going to be overbooked,’ he reminded her. ‘I’m not pulling anymore midnight shifts.’

  She fixed him with a flat look, and he knew what it meant. The busy season carried them through the slow one, kept them in the black, made sure that his aunt and uncle’s hard work didn’t go to waste. The sad part was he hadn’t known them well. Sharon was his mother’s only sibling—she’d been studying botany along with her sister and Basil’s dad at University. Michael had been invited in as a guest speaker—a hearing man who was fluent in both British and American sign language and had just finished his Ph.D. in Plant Genetics and had been traveling around the world to share his recent findings. Somehow it ended with Sharon leaving halfway through her senior year to settle in Fairfield with Michael. It had put a rift between Sharon and Basil’s mother for years, and it wasn’t until he and Amaranth were well into adulthood that the two of them had become close again.