17. Riley
CHAPTER 17
RILEY
Two weeks of no contact has my heart beating ragged and tattered in my chest.
This was my decision, my call—me running home with my tail between my legs away from the man I love most in the world.
Because loving him scares me more than anything.
I just don’t know why.
Usually when I come home for the holidays, I tough it out on the couch because my old room was turned into Mom’s storage space, but Parker and I spent a few days clearing it out—with Mom’s permission of course.
It feels so much smaller than before I moved out, but that was twelve years ago.
Twelve years of playing in the leagues.
With a busted up knee and a heart hanging by its withering strings to show for it.
“I’m getting kind of tired of seeing your face,” Parker says with his head buried in the closet. “This is more Riley than I’ve had my entire life.”
He isn’t wrong. Parker was a baby when I went off to play college hockey and got scouted for the NAPH.
My parents had tried for years to have another baby, and it never seemed to catch. They said my Mom had a ‘hostile uterus’, and it was a miracle I’d been conceived at all. One in a Million chances.
Yet in my senior year of high school, she got that pink line, and she lit up with the same kind of joy flying down the ice gives me.
“Get used to it, Parkie.”
“Why? Because instead of wearing your knife shoes and smacking a rubber Oreo around on slippery ice you’re wallowing in your parents house like a teenager who just got dumped?”
Why are twelve-year-olds so nasty?
I sit up and swing my legs over the air mattress and catch Parker turning around with a pair of old skates held up near his head.
“You wore these things out .”
“Mom is sentimental, but those should have found their way to the trash years ago.”
We both laugh, and then Parker comes over and nudges the open suitcase at my feet. It’s mostly empty save for a few personal items—Mom decided that my plan of washing my clothes and throwing them back in the bag was a deal breaker—but that doesn’t stop my brother from rummaging around anyway.
“What’s this?”
Parker holds up a jersey, and in an instant a pang hits my chest, because I know it isn’t mine.
The jersey itself is a deep maroon color with white and yellow bands. The Hornet’s mascot—an angry white and yellow bee—takes up the front with the team name. On the back written in big, white text are the numbers thirty-two with ‘Foster’ spelled out above them.
“That’s my roommate’s,” I say as the sadness leaks back into my bones and makes my muscles weary. “Must have grabbed it by mistake.”
“Mhm.” He shoots me a calculating look, then shakes his head and busts out a blinding grin. “Foster is a cool player. Gotta be something to be the wall people play Ping-Pong-Puck off of all day.”
My own grin springs forward because my brother is ridiculous. Parker isn’t into sports, not really. He did a summer football camp with Dad and decided it was a miserable experience, while Dad on the other hand thinks Parker would make a great QB candidate.
That’s a lot of pressure to put on someone in the throes of puberty.
Meanwhile, Parker is happy to be parked in a room with some paint and a canvas, and you won’t see him for hours.
“I bet he’d like you. He’s kind of a little shit, so I’m sure you’d get along.”
Parker sticks his tongue out and eyes the shirt again. “Do you think I could borrow this? Freak Dad out to think I’m choosing another sport over football?”
If I want to hold up the lie that I took the jersey by mistake, then the answer is yes. But the tug in my chest and the wince I can’t hold back don’t give me the opportunity.
Parker hands the shirt to me—even though he could have dropped it back in the suitcase—and stuffs his hands in his pockets.
“Are you sad?”
I look up, realizing I’m gripping the material way too tight but can’t convince myself to ease up.
“About what, Parkie?”
He crinkles his nose at the nickname. “Retiring. Dad says you loved hockey since you were younger than me. I can’t imagine loving something like that and losing it.”
I’ve loved and lost a lot of things—a lot of people—and the hole it burns in you only gets larger with each one.
“It sucks,” I say, and my throat hurts from the raw truth of it. “I almost wish I could take it back.”
Griffin’s voice, frail and pleading on the other end of the line was almost enough to break me. I was sitting in the airport waiting on my flight to be called. I could have turned around and gone home.
Because home will always be with Griffin.
But I want better for us. Better for him.
And I can’t give that to him right now.
“Well, I’m glad to have you back.” Parker half shrugs and kicks the corner of the suitcase. “Takes some of the pressure off with Dad.”
Looking at my little brother fills me with another kind of regret.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been here more.”
He shrugs again, but I can see the way his cheek caves in as he pinches it between his teeth.
“Why don’t you grab your sketchbook and show me what you’ve been working on?”
Parker’s ears turn pink, but his posture perks up. “I have a better idea.”
And that’s how I end up in the backyard lying on the grass with paint in my hair and on my clothes while Parker spreads handfuls of the mess over some kind tarp/canvas thing he laid across the porch.
“Do I get to see it yet?”
“Nope.”
I close my eyes and tip my face toward the sun, the gentle evening breeze nipping at my cheeks and the skin beneath the neck of my sweater.
Tomorrow might be Christmas Eve, but Colorado weather still dictates cloudy skies with a touch of sunshine and just enough chill to turn your heaters up but without a lick of snow in sight.
There’s a fifty percent chance tomorrow, and seventy-two percent on Christmas day, but I’m not holding my breath.
Parker brought me out here, laid me on the tarp, and then proceeded to fling paint at me and stomp around for ten minutes before letting me move away from the line of fire—but I have to stay out here and close my eyes until he’s finished with whatever project he’s working on.
If there’s one thing to be said about us Eastons, it’s that we’re hard-headed, persistent, and passionate as all hell when we go after something.
Peeking one eye open to watch my brother’s intense look of concentration fills a crack in my chest I’d never known was there.
“I said no looking.”
I snort back a laugh and throw an arm over my eyes. “I’m not. You’d think you’re remaking the Mona Lisa over there.”
“Much better than that boring old thing, thank you very much. Besides, you can look. It’s done for now. I need this paint to dry before doing anything else.”
It takes me a minute to stand, my knee fairly healed but still has its weak spots. I haven’t been cleared for any kind of strenuous activity yet, and would you know it? Going from lying down, to your knees, to your feet is actually surprisingly strenuous.
Once I do and walk back up to the porch, I can see why Parker loves fiddling with art. The canvas is probably a good six and a half feet tall and at least as wide. There’s a clear outline where he had me lay on it, but instead of being drawn with any kind of pencil or marker, it’s outlined by splashes and splatters of paint.
Black.
Yellow.
Maroon.
Around the outline are more solid smears from when Parker was shuffling around, and it’s rough, but it takes the shape of the Hornet’s mascot. Slightly enlarged and distorted, like it’s supposed to be blurred behind the outline.
My number, fifty-five, is scrawled out in various random places around the canvas.
“What is this?”
Parker stares at it, pointedly not looking at me as he fights the twitch of his lips.
“A vision board of sorts. A mural of Riley Easton as he’s been known all my life: the big, bad hockey player. We’d put some other stuff on the outside, but honestly I don’t know you well enough to do it on my own.”
I throw my arm around him, and he squeaks while throwing both hands in the air, but then he settles and leans into me, even if he grumbles a little.
“I love your creativity.” I rough up his hair and let him go. “We’ll brainstorm together. How does that sound?”
He nods. “We can get back to it tomorrow. Paint needs to dry, and I need to roll it up and protect it from the weather.”
Other than some wind and dark clouds, things aren’t looking too bad, so while Parker works on gathering all of his art supplies, I head inside to where Mom is standing at the stove stirring a pot of what I think is cabbage and hamburger meat. She’s alternating between keeping the pot from boiling over and typing furiously into her computer on the counter.
“Maybe you should let Parker illustrate one of your books. Have you seen him, Mom?”
“Ha!” She looks over at me and waves her hand away. “Maybe when he’s eighteen. Until then, my pen names stay far away from him.”
Her dark hair is in a messy bun and has that stringy quality it gets when she goes more than twenty-four hours without washing it, and she’s wearing her glasses even though that usually only happens when we leave the house. She can’t see distance in the slightest, but usually anything up close is fine.
“Hey. If you need to get work done, I can take over dinner.”
The clacking of the keys stops, and she tilts her head. “No, it’s alright. I’m at a stopping point. Just needed to get these two idiots’ yammering out of my head.”
Mom writes romance novels of the sports variety, something she fell back on during her infertility struggles. It kept her afloat and makes her happy, so even if Dad and I snicker when she asks us sports related questions that have nothing to do with interest and everything to do with what she’s putting in her novels, we support her.
That’s what family does.
“What you could do, though,” she says, pushing back some of her stray hair. “Tell your father to come in and wash up some bowls so we have something to eat out of instead of chatting away with whichever player’s parent he’s been outside with for the last twenty minutes.”
I nearly choke on my laughter as I throw my hands up. “You sure you don’t want me to wash them for you?”
Mom has that definitive ‘looks can kill’ stare down pat. “He’s the one who uses two bowls to make ramen in the microwave instead of just pulling down a pot. Some soapy water won’t kill him.”
“Message received and ready to be delivered.”
Mom and Dad have my favorite kind of relationship: supportive but firm in their own needs. Dad can be pushy, and Mom can be stubborn, but they work, and that’s what I want.
To click and work with someone even through our differences.
Like Griff.
I planned on talking the situation out with my parents, but two weeks in and I haven’t gotten the nerve to bring it up. To say clearly that I’m attracted to men, and there’s one man in particular I want to spend my life with but can’t stop the sinking feeling in my gut when I picture it.
The screen door creaks when I push it open, and the holler that scrapes my throat dies in the wind as I take in the man standing at the bottom of the porch steps.
Chestnut brown hair and hazel eyes the color of a summer lake with a smile that awakens the slumbering heartache in my chest. Not that it’s ever far.
He looks up and over my dad’s shoulder before I can find any words, and a spark of determination lights up his expression. With a clap on Dad’s shoulders, he bounds up the steps, holding the strap of his duffle bag in place, and aims that superstar grin at me like I didn’t break his heart the last time we spoke.
“Hey,” I croak out. “What are you doing here?”
“You invited me for the holidays, remember?”
“I didn’t think?—”
Griffin has the audacity to wink at me. “It takes more than one scared phone call to shake me, Riley.”
And then he shoulders past me and barks out, “where can I put my bag? Evening, Mrs. Easton.”
I’m left standing there dumbstruck as my Dad raises a questioning brow. “Thought you’d be happy to see your friend. After All, you told us he had a change of plans. Aren’t you glad it worked out?”
Instead of answering, I shake my head and follow Griffin into the house where my boyfriend (maybe not-boyfriend?) is helping Mom set the table.
“That coach of yours sure knows how to instill manners into his players, doesn’t he?” she asks while throwing me a smile.
“It’s called ‘fake it til you make it’, Mom. He’s kissing ass. Had to find some way to stay on the team this long.”
Griff catches my eyes and bites back a smile.
It’s nice. Seeing him here like this. In my childhood home. With my family.
“Well, we don’t have a spare mattress, so one of you will have to take the couch or sleep on the floor.”
“We’re grown adults. We’ll figure something out.”
I swear every time he looks at me, Griff’s eyes turn a little more molten, but I know damn well he can’t be thinking of fucking around when he should be rightfully pissed at me.
Not that the gray hoodie and dark red track pants don’t remind me of lazing around at home and slowly stripping the layers off one another.
Maybe there’s a little pent up tension from the last two weeks.
“Woah, hey! You’re Foster.” Parker skids to a stop just inside the sliding glass door, eyes going wide.
Griffin steps around the table and holds out his hand. “Parker, right? I’ve seen you at a few games.”
“Only because Dad makes me.” Parker grins and shakes his hand with a little too much enthusiasm, and Griff raises his brow at the paint all over Parker’s arm.
“Parker Easton,” Mom calls out with an exaggerated sigh. “Please go clean up, and be nice to our guest.”
Parker rolls his eyes but skirts around Griff to run off to the bathroom. Griffin chuckles and turns back to me, a humorous twinkle in his gaze.
“I like that one.”
I roll my eyes, but my own smile breaks through. “You would.”
Dinner itself is weird, but not bad. We obviously don’t talk about the elephant in the room, but my heart expands and soars a bit at how easily Griffin fits. At the table. With my parents. Teasing Parker. It’s like he always belonged right here with me.
I offer to clean up the dishes while Mom goes to get work done in the bedroom and Dad finishes cleaning up Parker’s mess outside. Meanwhile, Griffin and my brother are laughing and chatting in the living room easier than any conversation Parker and I have ever had.
A part of me thinks I should feel jealous, that Griff is a better big brother than I am, but it only fills my chest with joy. Two of the people I love most in the world getting along?
I’m enjoying basking in the happiness while it lasts when Parker’s voice booms from the living room, “Oh! Now, Riley can give you back your jersey in person.”
My cheeks ignite, and my ears burn, and I can feel Griffin’s stare even though I refuse to meet it.
His low chuckle echoes between the living room and kitchen. “I brought his, too.”
I whip my head around and catch Griff’s nod toward the bag sitting at the bottom of the stairs.
It isn’t his travel bag.
It’s mine.
The one I left for him.
This is going to hurt.