Chapter 27
PARKER
“Look at him,” I said as Beck made his way toward us.
Mason and I had been painting the hallway for an hour. With no guests, it was a good time to get it done, being the only indoor painting job left. At this point, every room of the inn had been renovated, and while there were a few bigger jobs remaining, most of those would wait until spring.
“He’s a fucking mess,” Mason said, more bluntly.
Since Beck and I were roommates, when I offered to move in to help Mason renovate, Beck immediately decided he would do the same.
At the time, Mason had laughed at Beck’s insistence he could be as useful as me, and it seemed like now he had a good reason to be skeptical.
If he wasn’t working, Beck was either screwing someone new, sleeping in…
actually those were his three primary activities.
“I heard that.”
Mason ignored him. “There’s a pan for you over there.”
Though slow to get going, when Beck did start painting, he got it done.
“I take it you had a good night?” I asked as we worked. Though I’d stayed at Delaney’s last night after the winter festival, having promised Mason we would paint today, I came back early and met Beck’s “date” just as she was leaving.
“Eh. After you guys left it started to die down. Nothing special.”
“And the woman I ran into on my way in this morning?”
Mason snickered.
When Beck didn’t answer, I looked over at him. The poor guy seemed genuinely confused. “Seriously?” I asked. “You don’t even remember?”
“Of course I remember,” he said, leaning down to add paint to his roller. “Just can’t recall her name at the moment.”
Shaking my head, I didn’t respond. Beck’s choices were his own.
“I swear you’re regressing,” Mason said. As usual, he had less qualms than me about speaking his mind. Or pissing off Beck.
Maybe both.
“Maybe I am.” Beck seemed less than bothered.
Since he was apparently in a good mood, despite Mason needling him, I pressed. “Talk to the parents lately?”
I didn’t have to look at him to feel Beck glowering at me. “As a matter of fact, a few days ago. Same shit, different day.”
I had a feeling.
When Beck went on a bender—staying out past closing, bringing more women home than usual—it usually meant he and his parents had had a falling out.
Unlike my own rocky relationship with my father, Beck didn’t discriminate between his parents.
He didn’t get along with either of them, for different reasons.
He came from money. A lot of money. His dad was eternally pissed off Beck had no interest in taking over the family business, a bottling company that supplied most of the Finger Lakes wine bottles.
His mother, though she’d never worked a day in her life, had even more to say about Beck’s career choices.
Or lack of them. Both divorced and remarried, his parents really were something else.
Which was why Beck had wasted a college degree to work as a bartender, not taking a dime from his parents… to piss them off.
“Mom? Dad?”
“Both. Fucking tag-team conference call. Mom was at Dad’s office, estate planning or some stupid shit like that. Always a good time being lectured by them despite the fact that I’m thirty-one fucking years old.”
“Good job, Parker,” Mason said, refilling his pan with paint. “Just what we need. A hungover and jacked-up Beck.”
“I’m not jacked up,” he said, his tone saying otherwise.
I kept my mouth shut. If Beck wanted my advice, he’d ask for it. The guy didn’t need another parent. He needed to figure shit out on his own.
“You and Delaney skipped out early from O’Malley’s.” Mason smartly changed the subject.
After the festival, we met a bunch of people, including Mason and Pia, at O’Malley’s, but didn’t stay long. “I met her after work, so we were out all day.”
“Another sleepover too.” Beck’s voice had less of an edge, though he was still grumpy. I didn’t take it personally.
“Probably not the last. We had ‘the talk’ yesterday.”
“I heard about that,” Mason said.
“Already?” I finished my section and moved down the hall.
“Last night. Apparently the girls chatted. Pia told me after you left.”
“That was quick.” Beck reached for the paint can at the same time I did. Letting him have it, I thought back to the carriage ride. To last night. To every day we’d spent together so far.
“Feels right,” I said without much more to add. The guys would know. I never moved this fast.
“Not sure why we took the pact anyway,” Beck mumbled, handing me the paint can.
I didn’t respond since there wasn’t much to say. He was right. But for some reason he seemed to give Mason a pass. Of the three of us, his parents’ marriage wasn’t fucked up. Just the opposite, but his dad did live with a broken heart when his mom died.
No one talked for a while, which gave me time to think. Time to imagine a scenario where things didn’t work out between us, where Delaney and I split up but still saw each other through Mason and Pia.
Stop. There’s no reason to think that way. Things are great between us.
My girlfriend. It had been a long time since I’d called anyone that, and even longer since I’d felt this way about a woman. This all-consuming need to be with her. Constantly thinking about Delaney when we weren’t together.
It was fun. Exciting.
And scary as hell too.