Page 24 of The Best Parts of Him
Muffled laughter. “Dabbs, are you drunk?”
“A little.”
“Oh my god, is this a drunk dial? My life is made. Are you at a bar or something?”
“Uh, no? Just had a lot of wine with my family. A looooooooooot of wine.”
Ryland snort-chuckled. “You’re going to regret that tomorrow.”
“I had pizza to soak up the booze. There was pineapple on it, though, so it wasn’t very good.”
For whatever reason, that set Ryland off, and his laughter in Dabbs’ ear made something in his stomach tumble.
“What were you doing that required so much wine?” Ryland eventually asked, still laughing.
“Talking. Catching up. Taking pictures with the cup. It’s my day with it, you know? Oh, wait, I seem to remember there were chicken wings at one point?”
“You don’t remember?”
Dabbs grinned at Ryland’s laughter. “The evening’s a bit hazy.”
“Sounds like you had a good day at least.”
“It started at a local hockey camp. There was no wine there. Just 7Up that the kids drank out of the bowl.”
“Aw. That was nice of you to do that.”
“It’s where I played hockey. Seemed appropriate. The kids let me take the first sip of 7Up out of the cup.”
“Photos, or it didn’t happen.”
“Oh. Hm.” Dabbs frowned. “There must be some floating around online. Most of the kids had phones, and so did their parents. Send them to me if you find them.”
He hadn’t taken any of his own, too busy with everything else to remember to take any, a fact he was regretting now. He wanted something to commemorate his afternoon at the arena.
“I’ll take a look later,” Ryland said. There was a rustling sound on his end, and Dabbs tried to place it.
“Are you in bed? Did I wake you?”
He tried not to think about Ryland in bed, but he was just drunk enough to imagine Ryland all tanned and messy-haired with the sheets pulled temptingly up to his waist, one leg enticingly exposed.
“I was just watching a movie on my laptop,” Ryland said. “My dad and I went kayaking on Lake Champlain, and we got back late. I was too wired to sleep, so I put on a movie.”
Dabbs rose and descended the porch steps, the wine making him restless. “You and your dad are close?”
“Yeah. He’s the best. Pretty much raised me, Jason, and Brie.” Another rustle that had Dabbs’ brain going places it shouldn’t. “My mom moved out of Maplewood after they separated. Not far, but far enough that we’d have needed to change schools if we lived with her. So we stayed with my dad during the week, and my mom had us every other weekend until she moved to France.”
“I thought . . . ” Dabbs paused and attempted to align his thoughts. He sat in one of the Muskoka chairs, the purple one that was Penny’s favorite. “The way you talked about your parents’ divorce when I was in Maplewood, it sounded like . . . I don’t know. Like maybe you had it tough growing up.”
“Sure,” Ryland murmured. “Divorce is hard on kids. But as I got older, I eventually realized it was just as hard for my parents. As an adult, I can appreciate how difficult it must’ve been for my dad to single-parent us until my stepmom came along.” A thump came from his end of the line. “Ah, fuck.”
“Did you drop your laptop?”
“My water. I forgot I had it next to me in bed, and when I shifted . . . damn it, it went everywhere. The mattress is wet, the carpet too. Gah. Hang on, I’ve got to put you down.”
A wet mattress. Christ. Ryland was sending his mind into the gutter without even trying.
“Okay, I’m back,” Ryland said a moment later. “I moved to the other side of the bed. I don’t want to sleep in the wet spot.”
