Garrison
“Sorry, Mom. I had to go help a friend.” I smile to myself because I know, for sure, Bates would be all growly and pissed-off if he heard me refer to him as my friend.
“A friend, huh?” my dad asks as he sits at the table and, no joke, flips through a newspaper. I don’t even know where he gets that thing and why he won’t use his phone. But my dad is a traditionalist who wants everything like it was when he was a kid.
It’s weird.
“Yeah, just a teammate.” I don’t know why I don’t mention Dixon’s name. Probably because I don’t want any discussion about how strange it is. Yeah, he’s a teammate, but not one I’ve ever hung out with before.
“Speaking of the team,” my mom says, as she sits down at the table, gripping a cup of coffee with both hands. “I can’t believe you were involved in that fight last night, Garrison. You know I don’t like that.”
“Oh please, Darla.” My dad chuckles proudly, his chest puffing up. “You used to love when I’d get into it out on the field. Couldn’t keep your hands off me afterward.”
He winks at me, and I gag—not a fake gag either, that shit is real. “No. Never. Ever. No.” I shake my head, and my mom blushes, shoving his arm playfully.
“Stop.” I swear she turns into a giggling teenager around my dad sometimes.
And even though it makes me want to puke, their love is true.
I have no doubts about that. She was a cheerleader.
He was a jock. They were a couple made in small-town heaven.
They got married right after high school.
My dad started working, drilling oil, and Mom stayed home and raised me. And that’s all there was to it.
“Oh, like you didn’t have little cheerleaders pawing at you last night,” he teases, and again, I feel sick.
But for a whole different reason. I don’t let my mind go there though. There’s no reason to. “You know me, Dad,” I barely force myself to say, but he’s totally satisfied as he goes back to teasing my mom and happily eating his breakfast.
Not long after that, though, there’s a knock on the kitchen door, and I know exactly who it belongs to without looking.
“Oakley Easton, get your butt in here,” my mom directs from her seat as he opens the door. “You know you don’t have to knock, sweetie. You’re always welcome here.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he says, always so damn polite to my mom as he closes the door behind him and nods a hello to my father before taking a seat next to me at the table.
“Smell food?”
He chuckles at that while my mom gets up to make him a plate. “You know your mom is the best cook in Kensley.”
“Now don’t going telling your mama that or she’ll never talk to me again,” my mom says as she places an overflowing plate in front of my best friend.
I laugh at that because our moms have been friends since they were toddlers, and Mrs. Easton would probably give her the silent treatment for all of two minutes before she remembers some juicy gossip she just has to tell my mom.
I don’t say that, though, and we dig into breakfast like we’ve done so many times before. Oakley and I pretty much spend equal time at each other’s houses, and it’s true that he’s as welcome here as I am at his home.
Despite all this, I still can’t help the twist in my gut, wondering what he’d think about what I saw. If he’d be one of the assholes Bates was talking about. If he’d tease them and think it’s some kind of joke.
He’s never said anything outright homophobic around me before. I know he’s a decent guy, but I still don’t know how he’d react.
But there’s no way I’d tell him about what I saw. I meant what I said to Bates. It’s Travis’s and his business and no one else’s.
Hopefully, Jameson actually believes that.
But if not, I think I can be pretty damn convincing. I also think I could have a hell of a lot of fun trying.