Turkey in the Snow Read Online Free PDF Page B

beer.
    “Finding him in bed with someone else,” Hank said. He was, he realized, walking a difficult balance between trying not to be a dick and trying not to spill his guts on the floor. Nobody liked guts with their pizza—talk about unappetizing!
    “Nice. Did you really find him in bed? Because you hear that all the time, but you gotta think, like, sometimes, you just catch one guy walking out of the apartment, and then there’s confession time, or, you know, you see a kiss or—”
    “Alan was in our bed, screaming ‘Fuck me harder with that thing!’ and Keith was behind him, doing what Alan said.” Hank had to admit, he did get a perverse pleasure out of watching Justin try very, very hard not to spit pizza out all over his plate. When Justin had mastered himself, and after he’d knocked back another swallow of beer, he cocked his head thoughtfully.
    “That was a lot of drama,” he said, and Hank found himself looking into a pair of surprisingly intense blue eyes.
    “Yeah, well, I’ve seen worse,” he admitted.
    “Mm…” This time Justin was eating thoughtfully, and Hank supposed he was enjoying the hell out of just watching this guy eat. It was like every mouthful was a different mood. He swallowed, and Hank was sure another question was coming. He was wrong.
    “My mom’s the dramatic one in my family,” Justin said, smiling. “She can turn any moment into a joke or a reason to laugh. My dad likes to play practical jokes—stupid ones, like pulling down your pants if you’re wearing them too low or playing hide and go seek when you’ve been reading and you’re not sure if anyone’s in the house. They do this haunted house every year for Halloween—it’s huge, and scary, and the louder the music the better. It always scares the hell out of the neighborhood kids, so my sister Brenna and I are the last two left at home, and we always have to go meet the little ones Josie’s age and take them by the hand and show them how it’s not as scary as they think.” Justin laughed softly. “There’s this one little girl on our block—red hair, blue eyes, freckles, cute as hell and a bossy little shit, too. This last year she left her older brother at the sidewalk with their mom and stalked up to our porch all resolute and everything—she’s like five, right? And she’s got her little pumpkin in front of her, and she’s a little witch with a black hat, and she’s frickin’ adorable, right?” Justin’s shoulders went back, and he clutched his pizza plate in front of him like a little girl clutching a handbag. He widened his eyes and pursed his mouth to a little girl’s kewpie doll pucker, right down to making his rather lush lower lip tremble, and Hank started to laugh.
    Justin kept going. “Anyway, she gets almost up to us, and the lights start going and the ghost drops from the tree and the big cackle comes out of the sound effects machine, and she doesn’t scream, she just turns right around and stalks back to mom and her brother, saying, ‘I’m not old enough! I’m not old enough! I’m not old enough! You go!’” And now he mimicked her shoulders and her posture and Hank had this image of this pudgy five year old, being absolutely in control at the same time she was frightened to death.
    By this time he was laughing so hard he could barely breathe, and as he wiped his eyes and calmed down his breathing, he saw that Justin was grinning wickedly, chuckling through another bite of pizza.
    “That’s awesome,” Hank breathed, still coming down. “I can totally see her. How’d her older brother take it?”
    Justin grinned some more. “Oh, Kaden’s all about the science of the thing. I swear, he’s like, eight, right, and he’s like, ‘Evelyn, I told you that at our age we’re too imaginative to confront a manifestation of our fears!’”
    “Oh get out! No way an eight year old said that!”
    “No, I swear! This kid is something else. Their mom just stands back and listens to