Cherry Pie Read Online Free

over and opened the front door.
    “You sleep there last night?” he asked Connor, who was sitting on the top porch step.
    Connor dusted off the step, and John saw it was the one with a set of handprints embedded in the concrete. “Nah. I slept at Evan’s.”
    “House or shelter?” John wasn’t sure why he asked that or why he cared.
    “Shelter.”
    “What time did you get here?”
    Connor shrugged. “After sunrise.”
    John laughed. “Had to be just barely. It’s only eight o’clock now, and you look like you’ve been here awhile.” He went over and got his coffee and stepped out on the porch, closing the door behind him. He sat down on the other side of the step, about two feet between him and Connor. “How’d you get here?”
    Connor lifted his leg and shook his foot. “Walked.”
    “You don’t talk much, do you?” John took a tentative sip of his coffee. Still too hot.
    “Sure I do.”
    When nothing else came from Connor, John smiled as he blew on his coffee to cool it. “Sure you do,” he agreed.
    “I told Evan I was gonna look for a job today.”
    “Did you?” John looked over at Connor. He didn’t seem in a rush to get to work.
    “Yep.”
    John sighed. “Where?” Now he was doing it.
    “Here.” Connor looked at him then. “He was the last thing my daddy gave me before he died. Seeing that grave…” He looked away. “It was like losing them all again, right there.”
    He was talking about the dog. John didn’t say anything for a minute or two. What was he supposed to say? “I could use help with the fence,” he finally offered.
    “I thought you could,” Connor said.
    They sat in silence while John finished his coffee.
     
    “What am I supposed to pay you?” John asked while they were taking a break a few hours later. They were sitting in the shade of the live oak, drinking a Coke. Apparently a “Coke” was any kind of soft drink in the South. John wondered how much that kind of advertising cost.
    “What do you want to pay me?” Connor asked. He didn’t sound as if he cared one way or the other. He was just content to dig postholes and hammer nails, sweating in the humidity. John wished he could be so agreeable.
    “Nothing.”
    Connor just grinned at him, showing him a dimple, and then took a drink from the sweating can. A drop of water ran down Connor’s pinkie and onto his wrist, and then John lost it in the dark hair on his forearm.
    “What’s the going rate?” John asked, and then he took a drink too.
    “For making an ex-con dig postholes in the midday heat? Room and board.”
    John paused with his can halfway to his mouth and slanted a look at Connor. He was still sitting there all relaxed and casual, but there was a watchful stillness about him that told John he was expecting a refusal. He’d framed it like a joke. John could pretend that was how he took it. He went ahead and took the drink, looking away from Connor, giving himself time to think about it.
    He didn’t think too long. Being in this house alone had been harder than John thought. Maybe he was being selfish and not thinking it through, things Steve had always accused him of. But he didn’t want to be alone anymore.
    “All right,” he said, rolling to his knees and standing up. “But you’ve got to clean that room up.” He couldn’t do it. Moving Steve’s things in there had been hard enough.
    “I don’t need much space.”
    John had to laugh as he took in Connor’s six-plus feet as the other man stood up. “Nope, not much,” he agreed and was rewarded with the crooked smile and dimple again.
    They walked back over to where the fence posts were piled in the yard. Connor picked one up and then shoved it in a hole he’d already dug. He worked it in by twisting it from side to side, and John had to pause to admire the muscles in his arms as they rippled with his movements. He was lean, but it was clear by the way he moved that those muscles had been around a long time.
    “What are you