Chapter 15 #2
“And their wealth isn’t generational. My mom’s a surgeon, my dad an anesthesiologist. They met when she was finishing med school.” Barry didn’t sound mad when he said this, just matter of fact.
“And their son is a professional hockey player, so that helps the family net worth at large.”
“Doesn’t hurt it,” he agreed while making his way into the kitchen to start putting away clean dishes from the rack. “I told her I’d go out with her for dinner, but she said she had these vitamins to bring me and didn’t want to wait another minute to see me.”
“Sweet of her.” I hung up my keys on their respective hook next to Barry’s. “And what kind of vitamins? Like a bottle of biotin? Has she seen all the vitamins you take?”
I organized our stack of shoes by the back door, his expensive tennis shoes and a nicer pair of basketball shoes he wore with his walk-up outfits sometimes.
His shoes always made me want to know how many more shoes he had at his apartment.
Surely he had a massive closet and it was probably full of sneakers, right?
Did he collect expensive basketball shoes?
That’s a thing people do, and Barry liked—loved—basketball.
When he wasn’t watching hockey clips to prepare for games, he was often checking stats about his favorite team on his phone, wincing or exclaiming through the games.
I placed the shoes on the little metal rack, which I seldom used in favor of The Pile. I put my old tennis shoes on the top rack, his on the lower one and wondered idly how his stuff had gotten so quickly mixed in with mine.
“I have a nutritionist, but Mom got me this subscription of Best For supplements for my birthday,” he called over the sink.
“Best for what?” I shouted back and heard him laugh.
“No, the company is called Best For. You take a quiz and it tells you what vitamins you need. So biotin may be in there, I guess, if it was the best for me.”
“Sounds fancy,” I said. Kate would lose her shit for something like that. Maybe I could get it for her for Christmas. “When was your birthday?” I reached past him for the sponge to quickly wipe down the counter.
“November twelfth,” he said after a pause.
“How old did you turn again? Forty?”
“Thirty-two.”
“Ah.” I winked at him, then immediately felt like an idiot. Barry probably looked cool winking, but I hazarded a guess that I did not.
Reasonably, thirty-two was not that much older than me.
Seven years. But thinking about it still made me blush.
There was something so “hot older guy” about thirty-two that wouldn’t exist so much if he was just thirty, or even thirty-one.
Barry was quiet as he cleaned a few dishes I’d left in the sink.
I wiped crumbs off the island, careful not to disturb the five-hundred-piece puzzle Kate and I had started after shopping.
“Isn’t that hockey ancient?” I asked.
He tsked. “Brat.”
November twelfth, though, was last month, almost a month exactly.
I stood up, doing some mental math, then walked to the calendar tracked my index finger backward.
“Hold on, the day I ran into you was your birthday?”
“It was.” The back of his neck was pink, and I almost walked over and put my palm there just to see how warm it was.
I busied my hands with a towel instead, sidling next to him at the sink to dry the dishes he washed.
A few glass containers from meals he left me, two plates, three forks, all six of my spoons, one glass cup, one pink coffee mug, Junior’s food dish.
I watched his hands in the soapy water as he scrubbed a plate I’d eaten a slice of grocery store cherry pie on that morning. He handed it to me in the second sink and pulled the water plug to drain the warm water, leaving only suds behind.
A trade to a new team and a surprise pregnancy from a girl he hadn’t seen in months was probably as shitty a birthday present as it could get.
“I’m sorry you had to find out like that.” I slid the last plate into the cupboard and leaned against the counter. I looked at the ultrasound photos on the fridge beneath a Statue of Liberty magnet. “On your birthday.”
“Don’t be,” he said.
“I am sorry that I wasn’t going to tell you. You’re really great so it would’ve been my mistake.”
Barry was looking at me, I could tell in my peripheral, plus I could feel his focus on my face. Really, it was almost unsettling.
“It was a me thing,” I said. “I really liked you, I was just—”
Scared of how charmed I was by you, afraid you wouldn’t text me back, afraid you would text me back, worried I’d start liking you even more than I already did.
“Stressed,” I say finally.
“’S’okay, Harvey. Best birthday present I’ve ever had.”
I debated putting my hand on his forearm or bicep, something reassuring and friendly, not sexy or romantic, but I settled on brief eye contact and a nod. Basically the same thing.
The doorbell sounded, sending Junior’s claws scrabbling against the floor as he retreated, likely beneath my bed. Barry and I inhaled in unison before he headed for the door to let in his mother. I gave one last attempt to smooth out my hair before following suit.