the jackpot question

The first time Buck ever broke his arm as a kid, Maddie offered, not quite unkindly, to pinch his leg each time he complained.

“How would that help me?” Buck had whined.

“It would distract you, at least for a little bit,” Maddie had explained, her older-sister’s ‘duh’ unsaid, but not unheard.

And Maddie hadn’t really been serious, then, but Buck had laid in bed every night, his good arm pinching the hell out of his thigh, waiting for the pain to go away.

Twenty years later, he leans into Eddie.

or;

the dam breaks over the holidays.