If I Must Lane Read Online Free PDF Page B

you’ve said it! Three days, you been here three days. In five minutes you told me about work, your boss who’s okay, and the receptionist who had the world’s cutest baby. The rest of the three days? It’s been Ian Cooper. I know more about that man than I know about your last three girlfriends, including the fact that I think I like him better already.”
    “You liked Penny—”
    “I liked to shop with her. I didn’t want her in my family.”
    Joel hadn’t thought he could blush anymore than he already had, Shows how much he knew! “Melody, he’s a friend! I’m not… you know… I can’t be….”
    His mother stopped his stuttering with a quiet pat to the hand. “I know, baby. Poppa would have told you, Mexicans, they can’t go all gay. But Poppa was an asshole, and we all know that.”
    Joel wondered if he’d eaten something poisonous and then gone to sleep on it. His stomach was starting to hurt, that was for damned sure.
    “Mommy!” he objected, and Melody took pity on him.
    “Mommy, we’re starting to freak him out. You need to leave for a minute, so we can talk, okay?”
    Lucia rolled her eyes. “You kids.  You think we don’t know anything. Gay was a thing in the eighties too, you know!”
    “I’m gonna throw up,” Joel muttered to himself, and he hid his face in his crossed arms.
    “Why, Joey?” Melody asked him softly. Just like she’d done when they were kids, she crossed her arms too and looked at him from about six inches away, eye level.
    “You think I’m gay, Mom says Pops was an asshole—”
    “What’s so wrong about being gay, pappi?” Melody asked seriously, and Joel grimaced.
    “I don’t know. You know, Pops used to—”
    “He used to say faggots should be burnt at the stake. I know. He also used to say sending a girl to college was like teaching a dog to read, and you know what? I said fuck him. I know he’s dead, and you want to think the man was perfect, but he wasn’t. He loved us, but fuck him. I do what Pops said, I be a mommy for real now, and I wouldn’t be any good at that, pappi, I really wouldn’t.”
    “You’d be great at it, Mel,” Joel said softly. “You took good care of me when Mommy was at work.”
    Melody’s hand came out and ruffled his hair. “You were the best kid in the world, Joey. In fact, you were too good. Nothing get you riled. Nothing make you too mad. Nothing make you cry. I worried ’bout you. I thought, ‘He’s a good kid, but he got no passion’, you know? And I still think that. You go get your degree in computers because that’s what you’re good at. But it’s not what you love. No, I stand by it. You do what you got to in your heart to make it right, because this Ian, you got more passion in your voice for him than you got in your life for anything.”
    “He’s a friend,” Joel insisted, but his argument was weak, even to his own ears.
    “You always love your boyfriends more’n your girlfriends, you know that? In grade school it was one thing,  but in high school and college? Joel, pappi, why you got to lie to yourself?”
    Joel didn’t have any answer to that. As much as he didn’t want to think about it, it was probably true.
    Melody sighed and continued to stroke his hair. “I taught you that stuff you know.”
    “What stuff?”
    “That putting the calendar on the fridge, making lists, how to do laundry.”
    Joel managed a pale grin. “You done good, mammi , it come in handy.”
    “Yeah, well, I tell you. I could have done it all pissed off and all. You were my little brother. I had better things to do, that what you think when you young, you know?”
    Joel frowned thoughtfully. “You didn’t. You were a good teacher.”
    “Yeah, Joey, ’cause that’s the sort of thing you do for family.”
    Joel closed his eyes tightly and fought a very real temptation to cry. “I- I never let myself think about it, you know?” he admitted at last.
    “I know, Joey. You got Pops in your head, telling you it’s