Page 23 of The Best Parts of Him
Dabbs made a noise in the back of his throat. “You’re not going to post that, are you?”
“Uh, yeah. My brother won the playoffs. Obviously I’m going to tell my twelve followers about it.”
Penny scoffed. “Twelve?” She looked around the room, her gaze falling on Dabbs, then on their mom and stepdad before she looked down at herself. “Are four of them in this room?”
Nicole hunched her shoulders. “Shut up. I don’t post that often. I only got Instagram so I could follow my favorite Hallmark movie stars.”
“Wow.” Penny whistled. “That’s both adorable and incredibly pathetic.”
Nicole flipped her off.
Dabbs looked around for the Keeper of the Cup, wanting to include him in the conversation, but Ken was half asleep in a Barcalounger by the living room window. Considering how often he’d traveled with the cup, he’d probably seen it all at this point.
The cup stood next to the coffee table, tall and gleaming, while the coffee table itself was littered with empty pizza boxes and several empty bottles of wine. Dabbs was feeling a little wine drunk and enjoying it, and when Steve—his stepdad—returned from the kitchen with yet another bottle, Dabbs let him fill his cup.
He was on vacation. Wine was basically a given.
He’d brought his dogs along on the drive to North Bay from Burlington, stopping every couple of hours so he could stretch his legs and they could run around and let off some energy. Nicole and Penny had managed to time their arrival at Pearson International Airport in Toronto so that they landed within less than an hour of each other—Nicole from Ottawa where she worked as an analyst for the federal government, and Penny from Vancouver where she worked at a bike rental place downtown—so Dabbs had picked them up on his way north, and they’d spent the three-hour drive alternating singing along to the radio and catching up. His dogs had been thrilled to have a lap to curl up in.
His mom disappeared into the kitchen while Penny and Nicole debated the value of hashtags, and when she came back, she had a bag of all dressed chips, a bag of sour candy, a box of two-bite brownies, and a bag of Oreos. Clutching them to her chest as though she planned to devour them all herself, she peered into the top of the Stanley Cup. Glancing at a sleeping Ken, she whispered, almost guiltily, “Can we drink the wine out of this?”
Dabbs couldn’t help but laugh.
He’d already cleaned it of sticky 7Up residue, so he waved a hand lazily to indicate she should go ahead and tried not to laugh as she poured an entire bottle into the cup’s bowl, giggling madly.
“Do you think anyone’s ever taken a commemorative pee in the cup?” his wine-drunk brain asked.
“Ugh, gross.” Penny shuddered.
“Why are boys so disgusting?” Nicole muttered.
“You could ask Ken when he wakes up,” Steve offered.
Nicole made gagging sounds. “That’s not a question I want an answer to.”
“I do,” Dabbs told her.
“You’re no longer part of this conversation.”
Dabbs laughed until his stomach hurt.
After another two—or maybe it was four—glasses of wine, Dabbs stood and stretched his arms over his head. In the kitchen, he drank a full glass of water, then brought four glasses to the living room for the rest of his family. Mom and Steve were passing the bag of Oreos between them, and Penny was pretending to be a ballerina, using the cup as her dance partner.
“I’m naming him Nespresso,” she announced, executing a wobbly pirouette.
“You’re naming the Stanley Cup Nespresso?” Dabbs asked, just for clarification.
“Yes. Because it’s an all-star trophy. And Nespresso is the all-star of coffee.”
Nicole held up one finger. “Incorrect. Kicking Horse Coffee is where it’s at.”
The debate reminded Dabbs of hanging out with Ryland in Maplewood—“We could go together like Timbits and coffee”—and since he had nothing to contribute to a debate about coffee, he stepped out onto the back porch to get some air.
It was almost midnight, yet the heat of the day lingered. The porch steps led down to a fire pit surrounded with Muskoka chairs, and beyond that, the waters of Lake Nipissing lapped gently at the shore. Dabbs sucked in a deep breath, inhaling the scents of home, and sat on the top step of the porch.
His phone buzzed in his pocket—a teammate asking how his day with the cup had gone—but because he was sufficiently drunk, he ignored it and called Ryland instead. Only belatedly did he recall what time it was, but Ryland answered with a questioning “Dabbs?”, so obviously it didn’t matter.
“Ry . . . ” In his inebriated state, Dabbs’ tongue tangled itself around the second half of Ryland’s name, and what came out on his second try was, “Rya?”
