Murph #2
They call out greetings as I lick the cone before it can drip all over my fingers.
The ice cream parlor is open only in spring and summer, and they use cream from a local Iowa dairy.
The last time I got a cone was months ago, and I had intense cravings for a solid week afterward.
Yet this tastes even better than I remember.
“Do you all build houses?” Ben asks, awed.
“We do,” Hunter says.
“Big houses?” Ben’s eyes widen.
Wyatt nods. “We’ve built hotels, resorts, condos, and smaller houses.”
“Are you ever scared it’s going to fall down on your head while you’re building it?” Ben asks, between licks of his ice cream.
Elias chuckles. “No, we’re not. There’s a lot of safety equipment and two safety people who go around checking to make sure everyone on the site is safe.”
We spend the next ten minutes answering Ben and Rose’s questions about building houses before they leave to continue exploring Rios.
As I sit down to my work with the remains of my mint-and-chocolate-chip ice cream cone, I’m conscious that four men are back staring at me with the intensity of four inquisitive meerkats.
“I have never seen anyone eat an ice cream so smugly in my life,” Elias mutters.
“It’s sickening,” Hunter sighs.
“Tell me about it,” Knox adds.
“The least he could do is share,” Wyatt says, a strange note in his voice.
I lift my head to find them all grinning at me. “Shut up. And I’m not sharing. Get your own damn ice cream.”
But Elias is right.
I am smug, and I am happy, and it’s all because of Rose, who treated me to my favorite ice cream cone for no reason at all, and Ben, who was so damn pleased to see me.
For a guy who did all he could to keep his walls up and everyone out, I feel pretty fucking lucky. I’m not sure I deserve Rose or Ben, but I won’t ever take them for granted.
Pulling up outside the house just after 4:00 p.m., I cut the engine and start to get out when the front door opens. Win slips out, quietly shuts it behind him, and rushes over to get in the passenger seat.
And he just sits there, staring straight ahead.
I raise an eyebrow while gripping the door handle. “Problem?”
He takes a breath and slowly releases it. But he still won’t look at me. “I kissed her. I mean, she technically kissed me. I think it was supposed to be a playful thing because of Ben, but it happened. If you feel the need to punch me in the face, I won’t get out of the way.”
I take my palm off the handle, and he flinches away from me. Rubbing my chin, I eye my anxious friend. “I’m gonna need you to condense that and have it make more sense, Win.”
My eyes are tired, and my brain is drowning in information.
After Rose and Ben left, I spent the rest of the day staring at plans for so long that I recoiled from the sunlight like a goddamn bat when I walked out of the office.
All this paperwork reminds me that I will always prefer to be outside, building something.
It’s necessary, but I still fucking hate it. We all do.
“Before the punch to the face?” he asks.
I scowl at him. “There will be no punch in the face. Take a deep breath, then tell me what happened. From the top.”
“Maybe we could go for a drive?”
“No.”
He lets out a resigned sigh, as if unsurprised by my response. “Fair enough.” He sits back in his seat, closes his eyes, and doesn’t say a word.
If I hadn’t come straight from work, maybe I’d be a little more patient. Hell, that isn’t true. I’d snap after I woke up from a nice, long, restful three-hour nap. It just isn’t in my nature to be patient. “Win!”
He jumps, tearing open his eyes and looking at me. Instantly, I feel like shit for snapping at him when I see the mounting confusion in his gaze.
“This morning, I helped Ben make Rose pancakes. Ben wanted to make his mom feel better, and bananas and ginger help with nausea. Cooking is my thing, so I told him I would help.”
Win Gabriel is a good guy.
No one can take my snapping and snarling and awkward silences on the chin as easily as this man.
And the thing I’ve never understood is, he’s five years older than me and lost both his parents when he was thirteen, yet he’s retained this positive outlook that I gave up years ago, if I ever had it at all.
“Then?”
“Well, I helped clean up Ben.” He shakes his head, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. “That kid is a magnet for dirt. I swear, a piece of eggshell floated right into his hair.”
I smile. “I hear you.” Every lick of his chocolate ice cream cone left more on his face than probably went into his mouth. My parents used to say I was bad, walking into the house looking like I spent all my time rolling around in the dirt. Ben is something else.
“She seemed grateful. She kissed Ben to say thanks, then he said she should kiss me too.” His eyes meet mine warily. “Just to say thanks. I want to be clear about that.”
“I won’t kill you for kissing her, Win. I told you this before, and I meant it.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, “but that was before I kissed your scent-match.”
As I scrutinize him, I recall the bitterness in his voice when I asked him how to be more likable.
His advice had been exactly what I’d needed to hear.
Instead of focusing so much on fucking up what I say, focus on listening to the other person.
“I’m guessing something out of the ordinary happened. ”
He drags his gaze from mine and slumps into his seat, crossing his arms. “I thought it would be a kiss on the cheek. Just a friend thing. I mean, that’s all Win Gabriel is good for: being a friend.”
The bitterness returns twofold. Now I know exactly what it’s about. “We’ll get back to that. What happened next?”
“Well…” He glances over at me, then leans toward his door, putting more space between us. “She seemed to like it. Kissing me, in case I wasn’t clear.”
I’m tired, and I’m hungry, but I don’t tell him to get to the fucking point. He’s tense enough, and he’s a friend. And he’s owning up to something that he’s scared I’ll kill him for, but he’s still doing it because he feels it’s important for me to know.
I lift my brow. “So the second I park outside the house, you get in my truck and prepare for me to kill you?”
He nods. “That sounds about right.”
I sit back in my seat and look out toward the house as I speak. “Do you know why I hate small talk?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him tilt his head toward me. “You don’t like people.”
“I consider it a waste of my time. I could be eating, watching TV, or working on the house. Hell, I could be staring into space, and I’d consider that a better way to spend my time than talking about the weather or whatever football game everyone watched last night.
You’re not like me, Win, and you don’t want to be.
People like you because you give them every part of yourself.
You care so deeply that they feel it. Even me.
You still found a way to connect with me.
If you take one thing from this conversation, take that. ”
He lets out a quiet, barely audible breath. “I don’t know how to be more than a friend to Rose.”
“I don’t know how to talk to someone without sticking one, but usually both, feet in my mouth,” I counter. “And I don’t for one second believe you’re incapable of being more than a friend to Rose. You need to get out of your head and just be you, instead of who you think she wants you to be.”
We look at each other, and I see the struggle going on inside Win. The will to believe me, but the doubt winning.
“You really don’t have a problem with me kissing Rose?” he eventually asks.
I open my door, eager to see Rose, play with Ben, and eat something.
In that exact order. But for now, I look my friend in the eye and speak from the heart.
Something I only learned to do because of him.
“I have a problem with you thinking you’re not worthy of the happiness you deserve more than me.
That’s what I have a big fucking problem with, Win.
You’re a good man. Too good to think as little of yourself as you do.
Come on. Let’s go see the reason for both our happiness. ”
Win gets out of my truck with a relieved smile, and I clap him on the shoulder on the way to the front door, lucky to have him in my life.
“I might have accidentally told Ben that Rose is pregnant, so we don’t have to keep mouthing baby anymore when Ben’s around. Rose said she was kind of relieved about that,” he says.
“Good to know. Ben and Rose brought me an ice cream cone at work.”
He opens the front door, grinning. “I know. They came to see me at the diner after.”
I chuckle. “How much chocolate was Ben wearing?”
His eyes sparkle. “Enough.”
Never has one word made me laugh so hard.