Robbie jumped up, looking at him in consternation.”You OK, man? Chrissake, Joey, take it easy, you don’t earn enough to pay me to give you the kiss of life!”
Joey coughed and wheezed for a few seconds, giving him the finger before he caught his breath and looked Robbie straight in the face. “Jeez, Robbie, I forgot; Uncle Frank, and Aunt Caitlin! You know how they feel about your family; the pair of them and the girls are gonna skin Casey when they find out about this, she’s top of their ‘shred-before-recycling’ list!”
Robbie grinned. “I think that’s where you guys come in; when the time’s right, I’m going to need you two to corral Aunt Caitlin so I can get Uncle Frank alone and tell him what’s happened, then we can all kind of gang-up on Aunt Caitlin to calm her down before she goes ground-zero on us. Leave the twins to me, I know how their devious, mercenary little minds work, I can get them on-side. The hard one is going to be Mom, and the only thing that’s going to work is total honesty — anything else and we’ll both be on that shred-list!”
Joey thought about it, and slowly nodded agreement. “Better call Mom later, make sure she knows about this before Uncle Frank or you’ll be sorry. I’m just glad it’s you making that call; she is most definitely not gonna like this!”
The girls came back then, so discussion ended, but at least tentative plans were now in place. Casey looked better, the earlier emotional storm of earlier had calmed; now she looked fresh, happier, back on an even keel.
Robbie and Joey stood up, letting the girls sit before sitting down themselves; some of Sarah’s lessons in manners at least seemed to have taken firm hold.
Casey flashed Joey a tentative smile, her smile broadening when Joey smiled back, and leaned into the circle of Robbie’s arm, pulling in close when his arm closed around her, resting her head against him.
“We all good now, Case?” he murmured, Casey squeezing his hand in the affirmative. “Good, let’s go to dinner, I feel like taking my family out, who likes Szechuan? There’s a new place in Serramonte, I feel the need for something sweet and hot, unless anyone else has got a preference?”
No-one had, so they piled into the car, Joey driving because Robbie knew how much he enjoyed driving the GT, but mainly because he wanted to sit in the back and huddle with Casey.
Dinner was everything they could have wanted, and they eventually headed back late to Daly City. Joey and Karen had to be back in Springfield in 2 days, so there was no rush for flights or anything. In the normal course of events, Joey and Robbie would spend a day with Frank, and a couple of days just hanging, but now they had things to do, people to see, and news to break. When they got back to the apartment, Robbie insisted Joey and Karen take the master bedroom, the cable was hooked through there and he knew how Joey like to watch late night movies, he and Casey camping out in the spare bedroom.
After they’d changed for bed, Karen and Joey discussed the day’s revelations. Karen was still astonished at the changes in Casey; in school she’d been brash, self-assured, arrogant and uber-confident, at 16 already main contender for the school Alpha-Female crown, star of the cheer-leading squad, undisputed Prom Queen in waiting. Karen had despised her, suspected what she was like even then. When she’d discovered what Casey had stood-by and allowed to happen to Robbie, she’d been appalled and disgusted at just what kind of person Casey had really been. Now that old Casey was gone; Karen recognised the fundamental changes in her, a shift from focussing on herself to Robbie, and her obvious and profound remorse for the life she’d stood by and had let happen to him, and the reality of the relationship she and Robbie had struck-up. Karen was unconcerned that Casey was his sister; for most of her life she’d been anything but. To her own wonder, she recognised the paradigm shift she’d undergone in her own views and opinions of Casey; now she saw the girl underneath all that had gone before, and how much that girl wanted, and was wanted by, Robbie.
No, Karen was concerned for Robbie. He was a big, sweet kid, almost Joey’s age but so much younger than him in every way that mattered, and emotional entanglements, with anyone, not just Casey, were going to be a minefield for him; he had no prior experience to help him negotiate that minefield, no history of dating or girls or anything that involved the opposite sex; like Sarah, she’d long been concerned that Robbie had consistently shown no interest or curiosity about girls, sex, dating, the things a young man should have been engaging in with headlong enthusiasm; instead, he’d seemed almost asexual in his lack of curiosity about the opposite sex. It was as if his sex drive, and everything that implied, had been completely sublimated, suppressed by so many layers of trauma for so long that it had ceased to become available to him, an almost autistic inability to connect with himself in this way. Age and maturity had not assisted him greatly; puberty for him had just meant he got taller and started shaving.
When she and Joey hugged and kissed in front of him, he’d always shown no reaction, no hint that he was curious about what they were doing, and that had always worried her deeply; it was like a piece of him was missing, like a door into himself that had been closed and was so well papered-over that he hadn’t known it was there. It was both ironic and gratifying that Casey, of all people, had finally been able to drill down into that untapped part of him, and unlock the things that he needed to express so he could be complete. He’d needed someone that could help him re-engage with that part of his psyche, and unbelievably, Casey had been the one to get through the layers of defensive shrouding and unlock those parts of him that had lain forgotten there.
She just hoped Casey could bring him into his true adulthood in a way that matured him into who he should have been. Karen resolved to keep a close eye on her, not because she distrusted her, but because she might move too fast, damaging him in ways that none of them would be able to fix. Like Casey, Karen felt almost over-protective of Robbie, a deep sense of responsibility for him, as one would for any younger sibling; he may be almost Joey’s age, but in almost every way he was still the baby of the family, a wide-eyed, almost pre-pubescent, innocent, and hurting him would be all too easy. It was all too possible to kill with kindness as easily as with malice.
In their room, Robbie and Casey were not discussing motives or maturity or emotional minefields; Robbie was still resonating with the way Casey had broken down again, pouring out her apologies in a heartfelt stream of regret and remorse, and all he wanted to do was hold her, feel her against him and protect her, to keep her safe in his family, his real family, Joey and Karen and everyone else, not that travesty back home. She was still very fragile; the emotional toll on her was high, and even Robbie, emotional juvenile that he was, recognised that these confrontations were costing her a heavy price; she couldn’t do this over and over again, much as she believed she had to, it was going to break her, and he wouldn’t allow that.
He got ready for bed, unselfconsciously stripping down to his shorts, Casey’s eyes on him. He really was a beautiful specimen, she mused, like an anatomy exhibit of how the perfect male form should look, well muscled but not brooding or heavy, rippling without being over-developed, perfectly classically proportioned; Praxiteles would have sculpted him in an instant, she thought, smiling at the thought of Robbie being the model for the famous ‘Hermes and Dionysus’ at Olympia. Casey had never been particularly attracted to muscle-men; the line in ‘Twins’ where Danny DeVito asks Arnold Schwarzenegger if there’s something wrong with him, he’s all swelled-up, had always seemed apt, but now, when she looked at Robbie’s sculpted form, she could understand the beauty of, and the attraction to, the well-developed, healthy male body.
“It’s not right, and it shouldn’t happen, but I love him” she thought, her heart filling again with regret for the years she’d lost with him. She moved up against him, hugging him around the waist, laying her head against his chest to listen to his heartbeat, strong and steady and slow, the pulse of the true athlete. Robbie smiled at her actions, folding his arms about her, holding her to him.