Page 96 of Roommate
Always.
* * *
At eight o’clock, it’s finally time to leave. I say goodnight to all the Tuxbury Shipleys, and congratulate my grandpa on his poker wins. “I’ll get you next time, you old coot.”
“Sure you will,” he scoffs. “Bring more cash next time.”
“Will do.” Then I say goodbye to my parents, as my father walks slowly and painfully toward their car.
At last, I hurry towards my truck, eager to go home and see how Roddy is doing.
“Kieran? Can I ask you a favor?” my brother calls.
Uh-oh. “What is it?”
“Well, I know it’s kinda late, and it’s kinda Christmas. But I was hoping you could come home with me for a couple of hours and replace the hinges on the barnyard gate.”
“What? Why?”
He rubs the back of his neck. “Dad hit the gate with the tractor this morning. His mobility is still pretty bad.”
“Even for driving? Shit.” I glance toward my parents’ car and see my mother at the wheel. If he let her drive, it must be bad.
“Yeah.” Kyle sighs. “He wanted to fix it with me tomorrow. But if we fixed it without him, we could pass it off as a Christmas gift. I kinda don’t think he should be lifting anything. And we’ll need to manhandle that gate.”
“Sure,” I agree. It won’t be fun in the dark. But farming always throws you these challenges at the most awkward times. “Let’s go.”
* * *
It’s eleven p.m. before I can head home. But the gate is fixed. And Kyle and I strategized about how to keep Dad busy until he’s healed enough to work comfortably.
“I told him it was a good time to fix that baler connection that’s been acting up. He can tinker with that thing while he’s sitting down.”
“Maybe,” I’d hedged. “Or maybe he just needs another few weeks off.” The truth is that there aren’t a lot of desk jobs on a farm, except for keeping the books and ordering seed.
“You try telling him that,” Kyle had muttered.
The house is completely dark when I get home, except for the Christmas tree in the living room window. This morning I was so excited to give Roddy his gift. And then we had epic sex. Inside the walls of this house, my life is exactly how I want it to be. Keeping my joy behind walls is something I’m used to, but Roddy isn’t. And I’m the jerk who’s asking him to do it indefinitely.
I enter the house quietly, dropping my coat on the rack, and putting a piece of pie I brought home for Roddy in the fridge. I stop by the living room to turn off the tree before I go to bed, and that’s where I find him, curled up on the sofa, his sleeping bag over his body, his head on a pillow. Instead of my bed—the bed I’ve come to consider our bed—he’s tucked himself in on the couch.
I feel sick. All I can do is stand here, frozen, wondering what’s happened to us. Is this it? Have I lost him already?
My worried gaze takes in two empty bottles of wine on the table. But then I notice that there are three wine glasses and a soda bottle, too. And a mostly eaten bowl of popcorn.
I want to wake him up and ask a hundred questions. Who was here? How are you? Why aren’t you upstairs in our bed?
But instead, I turn off the Christmas-tree lights and climb the stairs alone.
* * *
Things don’t improve the next day. At all. Roderick goes to work before I get up. When we’re working the coffee counter together during the morning rush, I ask him if his evening was okay.
“It was surprisingly nice,” he says, then gives me a sheepish smile. “I served two hundred helpings of ham and got drunk with the priest, Sophie, and Jude the mechanic.”
“Jude doesn’t drink,” I say stupidly.
“Right.” He nods. “But he didn’t mind that we did.”
