21. Riley
CHAPTER 21
RILEY
Dinner holds a tense awkwardness that only I feel.
I can tell because my family is all bubbles and laughter, Griff’s sister fitting in like an extension of them and not a new addition.
Nothing between Griff and I feels resolved. It’s like we’ve hit a pause button. One where I hold the remote—and Griff’s heart.
Remembering my conversation with Parker, I have no doubts that coming out would only get me support from my family.
Why do I still feel so unsure?
“I’m just saying that the guy they’ve padded the line with is an ill-fitted replacement, that’s all,” Dad grumbles after the third time Mom tells him to stop pestering Griffin about the roster.
“Honey, let’s be honest, unless it’s Riley back on the team, you’ll have a problem with anyone.”
“Well my son was the best defenseman they had. Can you blame me?”
Griffin chuckles beside me, grabbing my thigh under the table. “He’s right,” he whispers. “I miss playing with you out there.”
“Oh, you know my brother has it bad when he compliments another player.”
All eyes swivel to Cam, who is smiling joyfully and shoveling a spoonful of food in her mouth when she catches drift of everyone’s attention.
“What?” She covers her mouth with one hand until she finishes her bite and looks around. “Seriously, what? My brother having a thing for Riley is the world’s worst kept secret.”
While I expect silence and heavy stares to follow, it’s Griffin’s immediate laughter that fills the space. For a moment, my stomach drops, but then he smiles at me with the weight of all the feelings so much stronger than just having a thing for me, and that pit fills with regret.
“Yeah. I like this knucklehead a lot.”
It’s a confession but not an admittance. The feelings are there but no confirmation of a relationship or reciprocation.
It would be so easy to open my mouth and reply. So easy to reach over and pull him into a kiss, assure him that this is what I want.
Even though my hand twitches to reach for his, it stays clenched in my lap, eyes on my plate so I don’t have to meet the expectant stares boring down on me.
“Riley’s cool with it,” Griff says, saving me, but he pulls his hand back from the comforting grip he had on my leg. “It’s really not a secret.”
Parker sends me a funny look, but he keeps his word and doesn’t say anything. I almost wish he would.
I told Griff we could do this, but he’s following my lead, and right now my lead is a motherfucking coward.
I reach for his hand under the table, but he leans forward and folds them both on top.
If I want him at this moment, it needs to be in the open.
He’ll love me in private, but out here he needs more.
“Well,” my mother says, cutting through the tension. “My son could do a lot worse than an NAPH hopeful.”
She means it; I know she does.
Dad grunts, and my pulse skyrockets as he looks up from his phone where he’s likely reading game scores.
“As long as he keeps his game up, we could do with another professional athlete.”
Parker nudges me, tipping his head toward Griffin and motioning with his eyes to my parents.
“ Now, dingus ,” he mouths, and he’s right, isn’t he?
There’s no reason to be afraid.
Or apprehensive.
This isn’t coming out to the world. It’s my parents. My family.
The people who have been there for me even when the request was ridiculous.
That doesn’t make taking the words from my chest to my throat any easier.
Light chatter picks up amongst the table, but I can’t bring myself to participate. Time stretches on, and when the words don’t come, I steel myself for a last ditch effort on my sanity.
Actions speak louder than words.
My palms are a sweaty mess from being clenched under the table, and I swipe them on my pants leg before clasping one over Griffin’s hand in a single, unquestionable movement.
He doesn’t startle or utter a word, only squeezes my hand and continues on about the conversation him and Camry are having.
No one speaks, and I worry that it wasn’t enough. That I’m going to need some big, grand gesture to make it known.
But I catch a smile from my Mom as she breaks out into her happy hums. Dad’s eyes pass over our joined hands once, and he gives a subtle nod before going back to his phone. Parker leans over the table and meets Cam for a high-five … and the world keeps spinning.
Conversation and laughter continues.
No one asks any questions.
No one makes any comments.
But it’s out there.
Griffin says my name, and when I turn, there he is: a hand gripping the back of my neck, and his mouth claiming mine for a quick kiss that leaves me red-faced and wanting more.
“Thank you,” he whispers at the same time Parker spits out an, “ew.”
The evening plays on with lawn chairs in the backyard, everyone decked out in pajamas—Cam in ones Mom loans her, and an array of gingerbread and peppermint snacks and hot chocolate flavorings.
Presents were done in the afternoon, but now there’s two freshly wrapped ones with Griff’s sister’s name on them.
One is most definitely from my Mom, still being cheeky and embarrassing.
The other is picked up by Parker, who holds it out to her once we’re all seated.
She takes it with a sweet smile and unwraps it slowly, revealing a little stuffed bat with random bits of fabric and other miscellaneous craft objects glued and sewn around it.
“I didn’t have a lot of time,” he starts, scratching at his nape. “So I repurposed some things I had lying around. Figured you deserved something for showing up on our doorstep and having to deal with our brothers.”
Everyone around the firepit laughs, but woven through the bat I spot a familiar tie-dyed style fabric. Pink, blue, and white all swirled together.
It reminds me of a silly little sweat rag Matty used to carry around everywhere, especially when he was rehearsing.
Come to think of it, the last time I saw him with it would have been when he stayed with us a few summers back.
Not that it matters. Matty and all of his memorabilia are long gone.
That is until Camry turns it over and I spy the little silver initials that blend through the white and blue.
M.N
Matty Nichols.
I couldn’t tell you what comes over me then. It’s like a bottle that’s been sitting on the shelf is picked up and shaken with the lid torn off and directed straight at me.
It burns, and it itches, and it seeps beneath my skin until there’s no clawing it out.
“What did you do?” I ask, an uncontrollable quake and rasp to the words.
“I made our guest a present … duh.” Parker looks at me with his face scrunched and a scoff on his tongue that frees my own from where I’ve been biting it back.
“That wasn’t yours.” I point to the fabric, and he frowns.
“You must have left it here at some point.” He shrugs. “Sorry. It ended up in my art desk. I didn’t know it was yours.”
Just like you never knew Matty was mine.
I stand up abruptly and hold my hand out in front of Camry. “Could I see that for a second?”
Her eyes dart from Parker, to her brother, to me, and then gingerly hands it over. I’m gentle with it, because it’s a gift and it isn’t mine. Not most of it.
I thrust it into Parker’s hands. “Take it off.”
“What?”
“The tie-dye fabric. Take it off. Use something else.”
“No way.” Parker steps back. “It’s been here for god knows how long. You can’t care about it that much.”
“I can, and I do.” My voice cracks. All eyes are on me, but I can’t look at anyone else. “It belonged to Matty. You had no right to mutilate it like that.”
Parker’s eyes shoot wide, and he looks down at the toy in his grasp. “It’s been years, Riley. Besides, I can’t put it back together the same?—”
“It doesn’t need to be the same,” I grunt out. “I just need it back.”
“Riley—”
“Easton.” Griffin’s rough voice booms behind me. It’s his game voice. His fighting voice. “Step inside.”
I shake my head. “Just a minute, Griff.”
A hand grips my elbow firm, veering on the edge of pain. “Step. Inside,” he whispers. “You’re scaring my sister and your brother.”
I let him pull me inside, away from the heat of the fire and chill of the wind.
We stop in the kitchen where Griff backs me up and grips the counter on either side of me, keeping his voice low as he speaks.
“What the hell was that about?”
Hurt is still swirling in my gut along with a dozen other emotions I can’t identify. They’re ugly and make me want to turn tail and run.
“Parker crossed a line.”
“No.” He leans in, nose to nose as if we were rivals on the ice about to brawl. “You crossed a line, Riley. You are a thirty year old man berating a fucking child. The Riley I know wouldn’t talk to anyone like that. What the hell is going on?”
I don’t know. I can’t explain the rage and helplessness digging around inside.
Some of the hardness in Griffin’s expression fades, and his arms circle me, bringing our foreheads together.
“What do you need?”
I’m sorry, echoes in my brain like an endless cave. But I don’t know what I’m sorry for.
For exploding? Sure, but it doesn’t feel right.
It feels bigger.
“It was a piece of Matty,” I say, quiet almost as if the words could shatter. “It was a piece of Matty I didn’t know was left.”
Griffin moves his hands to my face, scrubbing his hands along my beard. “You miss him?”
I nod, and it feels like a betrayal to admit. “I loved him.”
But not enough.
Never enough.
Because there’s always a part of me in the way.
I thought I’d worked through this when Griffin and I got started. He let me unload all of my heartache onto him, and I thought things were better.
Healed.
But now it’s like the wound is torn open without any sign of closure.
Something passes through Griff’s eyes, there and gone before I’m even sure it was there, and then he kisses me so softly my heart aches.
“You owe your brother an apology.”
His dark eyes swim with questions I don’t have the answers to, so I let him drag me into another kiss. One that warms the ice forming in my veins. One that wakes up the rationality buried beneath the roar of emotions.
“Since when are you the reasonable one?”
He chuckles, presses off my hip, and steps back. “Go on. I’ll be out in a minute.”
Parker and Camry are sitting in their chairs chatting when I come back out, and two sets of eyes swing to me with unrestrained apprehension.
“I’m sorry,” I say to Camry, stuffing my hands in my jeans pockets. “I stepped on a sore subject, and you got caught in the crossfire. That wasn’t fair.”
The way she smiles reminds me of her brother. “It’s alright. I’m used to big, bad hockey players having a lot of big feelings. Must be all those muscles.”
Both her and Parker laugh, but when I turn to my brother, his face sours, and his eyes drop.
“Parker. Listen, bud. I’m sorry.” When he doesn’t look at me, I crouch down to his level and duck my head to meet his dark brown, troubled eyes. “I shouldn’t have blown up at you like that. I’m the adult. You’re the child. You had no way to know that fabric was important to me. Hell, I didn’t know it was important to me until I saw it.”
He finally focuses on me instead of the space beside my head, and his shoulders sag with his heavy sigh. “I’m sorry, too. I just wanted to do something nice.”
I’m an asshole.
I sling an arm around my brother’s shoulder, and for once he doesn’t shy away or wrinkle his nose. He folds in like the little kid he is, and if he sniffles, I pretend I don’t hear it.
We all wrap up the evening with my parents cleaning up and Camry offering to lend a hand, Parker running off to do his camp under the tree holiday tradition he picked up from who knows where.
It’s while I’m bringing some of the chairs back in to deposit in the closet under the stairs that it clicks Griffin hasn’t been around.
He sent me out to make my amends nearly a half hour ago, and I haven’t seen him since.
I head up the stairs to the bedroom and give it a firm knock before entering.
Griff is sitting on the bed with the content of his duffle bag—my duffle bag—poured out beside him. He’s stuffing a couple of things back inside, things like his own clothes and necessities.
“Getting a head start on packing?”
I expect him to laugh, to throw a “fuck you” over his shoulder, or something, but what I get is a strained smile.
“I kind of thought you’d take that back with you,” I say. “Put it by the door.”
He bobs his head, eyes sweeping over my mess of travel clothes and jersey.
“Thought it might do you better here.”
When I frown, he sighs, leaning back on his hands to stare at the ceiling.
“You acknowledged me today. In front of your family. Do you know how good that felt?”
I do. Because I was there. It felt like a merging of my two homes.
“Riley, how come you never came out for Matty?”
I blink. A couple of times to see through to the intent in the question. But I can’t find it.
“I wasn’t ready.”
“But you’ve pushed past that for me. Twice. Even when you weren’t certain.”
“Uh huh … I feel like there’s an accusation in there somewhere.”
He shakes his head. “No. Just … I should feel like I have more of you, right? But there’s still that little piece of you that’s out of reach.”
“Griff, are you okay?” I walk over to the bed and take a seat on the floor, placing a hand on his thigh.
“I’ve heard, in great detail, how much you cared about him. I knew it when we started this. I watched you, little by little, come back to life. And just now? When those memories of Matty came back? I watched some of that life die.”
Griffin Foster isn’t a sad man. He’s jovial and goofy, hot-headed and passionate, a force to be reckoned with in front of the net, but desolate and defeated? That’s not my Griff.
“Griffin. I don’t have feelings for Matty anymore. Not the way I do for you.”
“I know.” He laughs, but it’s humorless. “It’s more … the memory of that relationship. I feel like I’ll never hold a candle to it.”
I shake my head, and he drops back on the bed to throw an arm over his eyes.
“That’s not true,” I say, getting to my feet and climbing on top of him. I need him to pay attention.
My weight draws his focus, peering out beneath his arm.
“I love you, Griff. You. This relationship right here. This is my Roman Empire.”
His lips wobble, a smile breaking free. “You’ve been spending too much time with the teenager.”
“I mean it. I loved Matty. And I regret every day that I couldn’t give him more. That my fear ended not only a romantic relationship but a friendship I’m not sure I’ll ever replace.”
“Right there,” he whispers, placing his palms on my chest to grip my t-shirt. “That’s the heart of it. How much it still means to you. It’s like you’re still afraid of losing it. That moving on and being with me is some kind of betrayal to a man who left you—who you let go.”
That’s not true. It isn’t. I let Matty go years ago. I moved on.
Then, I think about the aching hole in my chest that still beats out the pained memories of boxing him up. Taking him to the airport and getting that final goodbye.
Most days I lock it away, but tonight it’s busted open and pouring out.
“There it is.” Griff’s bittersweet smile pulls me from my thoughts, and his hands snaking around my neck pull me down to him. “I know you’re in this with me, Riley. I know you want this as much as I do.”
He takes a deep breath, holding me hostage while he gathers his thoughts. “I’m jealous of someone who’s a ghost in your life. I used to feel this way a lot. When we were transitioning from fucking around to caring about each other deeper. It always felt like what you had with Matty was impossible to live up to.”
I slip my arms under his shoulders, linking us together in a silent notion that he isn’t alone. That no matter what he thinks or worries over, I’m right here.
“I want you, Riley Easton. I selfishly want all of you. All this time, I thought the secrecy was killing me, and that’s part of it, but … I don’t want you looking back at every step forward we make. I can’t take knowing that you might be thinking about what could have been if you had been ready for him.”
“What does that mean?”
His eyes that had fallen closed flutter open. They’re deep, dark, and filled with a terrifying kind of honesty.
“It means you were right to leave,” he says softly. “You need to take some time to figure out what you want.”
“I want you .”
“And you know exactly where to find me. Once your head is clear. Once I have time to deal with my own issues.”
“How much time?”
The hand on my neck slides into my hair. “I don’t know.”
He lets me kiss him. Lets me pull him so close every hard, rigid line of our bodies lines up. His heartache bleeds into mine. His passion fuels my need.
Our souls dance in what quickly transforms into a tentative goodbye.
Not forever, I tell myself.
That doesn’t make it hurt any less.