Page 24 of Tough Guy
“I’m not mad at you. I just have stuff to do,” he lied.
“All right. Love you. We’ll be watching the game tomorrow night.”
“Love you too. Say hi to Mom and Dad.”
“Call them soon, will you? Mom has been complaining about you forgetting about them.”
“Will do.” God, it hadn’t even been a week since he’d last called them. “Bye.”
Ryan yawned and stretched. He wasn’t surprised he had slept in. After returning home from Fabian’s last night he’d been up for hours, staring at the ceiling and replaying every detail of the evening in his head.
And now he was awake with nothing to do. Colleen was right; his life was sad.
He grabbed his laptop from his nightstand and opened the IKEA website in his browser. It wouldn’t hurt to order a few things; his apartment really did look ridiculous. And what if he did want to invite a man back to his place? It wasn’t alikelyscenario, but it wasn’t impossible either.
As Ryan added more items to his cart, he found himself getting excited about his new furnishings. When it was time to check out, he went hog wild and opted for the extremely expensive express delivery so he would get the stuff the next day.
He tried not to imagine, as he entered his payment information, what Fabian would think of the colorful throw pillows he had ordered.
“Prepare to have your minds blown,” Fabian said cheerfully as he plunked his backpack on Vanessa, Marcus, and Tarek’s kitchen counter. “I hit the discount Halloween table at the grocery store and bought...” He paused for dramatic effect, and then quickly pulled from the backpack. “A caramel apple!”
“Oh my god! Oh my god, Fabe,” Vanessa said. “Are you suggesting weslice upthe caramel apple and layer it on top of the cinnamon cream cheese I bought? Because that is fucking genius.”
“I am suggesting exactly that.”
“What about my blackberries?” Marcus complained.
“Fuck you and your blackberries,” Vanessa said. “Caramel apple plus cinnamon cream cheese for the win.”
“I’m putting blackberries on mine,” Marcus grumbled.
They all ate delicious waffles and drank coffee and cheap mimosas, and to her credit, Vanessa waited until the food was gone before mentioning Ryan. “So you want to tell us about that hockey lumberjack or what?”
“Hockey lumberjack?” Marcus asked, setting his phone on the coffee table facedown in a gesture of absolute interest in the conversation.
“He was at the show last night,” Tarek explained. “Some hockey player who is in love with Fabian.”
“That is so wrong, I don’t even know where to start,” Fabian protested.
“As if,” Vanessa said. “He’s completely in love with you. He carried your gear home.”
“Right.” He rolled his eyes. “I forgot that means we’re engaged now.”
“Can someone tell me what the fuck is happening?” Marcus said.
“It’snota big deal. Remember I told you my parents used to billet hockey players? Like, every year a different teenage hockey player would live with us?”
“Yeah. You hated it. Who wouldn’t?”
“Right. So, I did hate it. They were all homophobic jock assholes who almost definitely would have beat me up if they hadn’t been living under my parents’ roof.” Fabian chewed his lip before continuing. “But one of them...”
Marcus’s face lit up. “Oh my god. You hooked up with one of the dumb hockey bros!”
“No,” Fabian said quickly. “Not at all. It was just that this one guy, Ryan. He was...different. He was nice to me. And... I liked him.”
“Aw, you had a crush on your hockey player housemate!” Vanessa said. “This is good shit, Fabian. Continue.”
“Nothing happened, like I said. We just...got along. Not that we were hanging out or anything, really, but we would do homework together. Watch TV. Sometimes walk to school together. Stuff like that.”
