Page 52 of The Best Parts of Him
Biding his time, Ryland removed a second serving spoon from the drawer. “It’ll go faster with two of us.”
Dabbs rounded the counter, shoved aside the barstools, and started scooping. “Do you even know how to draw Bellamy’s face?”
“Sure don’t.”
Dabbs coughed out a laugh. “So what? You’ll carve out a happy face?”
“I was going to give it horns, but now that I’m thinking about it, that seems a bit over the top.”
Eyebrows flying up, Dabbs paused in the act of transferring pumpkin insides to the salad bowl. “You don’t like Bellamy? I know you buried the hatchet for Jason’s sake, but?—”
“I do like him,” Ryland interrupted. “I haven’t been pretending to for appearances’ sake, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Why the devil horns then?”
“I don’t know, it’s . . . ” Shifting his stance, Ryland dug at a stubborn hunk of innards with the edge of the spoon. “When Jason chose him as a partner it was like he was replacing me with Bellamy. And yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds, and no, I didn’t feel that way with any of Jason’s previous partners. It’s just . . . it was Bellamy.”
Ryland had been threatened by him in college and threatened by him again when he’d started dating his brother.
It didn’t make any sense—there was nothing to be threatened by, not in college and not now.
But Ryland liked being first—in competition, in people’s lives.
“Did you ever think that Bellamy was just as threatened by you?”
Ryland blinked at him. “What?”
“Think about it. It couldn’t have been easy for your brother to date Bellamy given the bad blood between you, and Bellamy must’ve felt like at any point he could be cast aside if Jason decided he didn’t want to make waves. It was probably really hard on both of them.”
Ryland, in his selfish annoyance that Jason had picked Bellamy out of everyone on the planet, hadn’t considered that perspective. And he should have. “Did Bellamy say that?”
“Not in as many words,” Dabbs said. “But I do know Jason didn’t want to hurt you, so Bellamy must’ve felt like he was caught in the middle.”
“That . . . must’ve really sucked for him.”
Ryland had been there, caught between two people and unsure how to move forward. When his parents had first gotten divorced, he’d not only felt forgotten, but his sense of family had been so thoroughly shattered that he hadn’t known who to approach first with . . . anything. Artwork he’d completed in school, a problem he was having with a classmate, stories from the schoolyard.
In the end, he hadn’t told either of his parents. Instead, Jason had become his best friend and confidant.
Which was why it had hurt so much when he’d started dating Bellamy.
Looking at it from Jason’s side of things, though . . . God, it must’ve been nearly impossible for him. Did he risk their relationship by dating Bellamy, or did he keep the status quo and miss out on the possible love of a lifetime?
And Ryland had actually told Jason that Bellamy was only using Jason to get to him.
Jesus fuck, he’d been such an asshole.
He stabbed at the stubborn pumpkin guts with a wildness the pumpkin didn’t deserve, and when they finally came loose, he scooped them onto his spoon . . .
Only for his arm to jerk reflexively when one of the dogs brushed against his leg and startled him.
The guts went flying . . .
Right into Dabbs’ eye.
“Ahhhh!”
The sound Dabbs made was nearly identical to the one he’d made during their middle-of-the-night pee break in Maplewood on the Fourth of July weekend, and Ryland couldn’t help but laugh even as he apologized.
