Page 51 of The Best Parts of Him
“I forget.” Ryland waved a hand. “Something to do with science. And the winning word the final year I participated was onomatopoeia.”
“Did you win a national championship or something?”
Scoffing, Ryland took a photo of the pumpkin archway to post to his socials later. “Nah. These were just school-led spelling bees.”
“So how come you can spell these difficult words but you’re terrible at Scrabble?”
“Hey!” Laughing, Ryland rounded on him. “That’s a totally different skill set.”
“Yes, that’s obvious. Know what else is a different skill set? Pumpkin carving.”
“Huh?” Ryland grunted with the effort of lifting the biggest pumpkin he’d seen so far.
“I don’t think you should be lifting that with your shoulder,” Dabbs pointed out. “Wait, stop. There’s a cart thing.”
There was, indeed, a cart thing nearby. A dozen of them parked like grocery carts at the supermarket, except these looked like rickety dollies.
Dabbs placed his pumpkins on one and wheeled it over. Together, they managed to mostly roll Ryland’s pumpkin onto it without re-injuring themselves in the process.
“You sure that’s the one you want?” Dabbs asked, standing back with his hands on his hips. “It’s massive. Think of all the guts you’ll have to clean out before you can carve Bellamy’s face.”
Ryland grinned and rubbed his hands together. “I’m willing to put in the time.”
Several hours later, Ryland had a few regrets.
He was literally elbow-deep in pumpkin guts when Dabbs returned to the kitchen after a phone call with one of his teammates—they called all the time. From the one-sided conversation Ryland had just overheard, Sandbaker, one of the team’s call-ups, had ostensibly called to check in on Dabbs but had really wanted Dabbs’ advice on a commercial one of his smaller sponsors wanted him to shoot. Before that, Dabbs had gotten a video call, this time from Sandro Zanetti and Michael Hughes, two Trailblazers veteran players, who really had called to check up on him.
Ryland had fielded his own queries from teammates, and Des had made sure to video him in during show-and-tell. He’d witnessed Singleton showing off his black belt—impressive—and Maymi’s collection of cicada exoskeletons—cool, but also gross.
“You do know you’re going to be at this for hours, right?” Dabbs said.
“It’s fine,” Ryland insisted, using a serving spoon to scoop out pumpkin innards, depositing them into a salad bowl. “My flight home’s in forty-eight hours. That’s lots of time to get this right.”
“More like thirty-six hours,” Dabbs corrected.
He stepped up behind Ryland, the move so unexpected that Ryland dropped the spoon into the salad bowl.
“Put this on,” Dabbs rumbled quietly in his ear. His arms came up around Ryland, as though hugging him from behind. He held an apron in his hands, which he brought up over Ryland’s head before tying it at the back.
Ryland stood frozen, barely even breathing, his heart beating so hard he heard the echo of it in his ears. Dabbs stood close enough for Ryland to feel his breath on the back of his head, and it was . . .
God. He couldn’t think.
“There,” Dabbs said. “Now you won’t get your shirt dirty. It’s a nice one. Brings out your eyes.”
Um . . . what?
Dabbs smoothed down Ryland’s shirt where it had bunched up under the apron’s tie, and if Ryland wasn’t mistaken, he took his sweet-ass time doing it too.
Giddy now, Ryland leaned back an inch, just to see what would happen, and nearly jumped for joy when Dabbs grunted softly.
Dabbs stepped back in the next second and cleared his throat. “How can I help?”
You can throw me down on the nearest surface, Ryland almost said.
Although, given his injured shoulder and the incision in Dabbs’ abdomen, nobody would be throwing anyone anywhere.
Pity.
