Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
“Hold still, wiggle monster,” Jasper said through the pins pressed between his lips.
“I am!” Nina said.
“The pricks in my fingers from these pins would beg to differ. You’re almost done, just stay still for twenty more seconds.”
Jasper was cross legged on the floor, glancing between Ryan and the ends of Nina’s costume, ready to get on with his day.
Ryan was leaning on the door frame to the kitchen, swallowing a handful of ibuprofen and rubbing his back, watching them, mostly focused on Nina as she squirmed on the top step of a stool.
“Okay,” Jasper said. “You’re free.”
“Looks beautiful, Nina! You’ll be the most sparkly fairy of them all.”
“I’m not a fairy, I’m just a sparkly person,” Nina said, rolling her eyes as she headed to her bedroom.
Despite the minor injuries from the pins, a week into their babysitting quest had Jasper in a good mood.
He and Ryan had landed a decent routine.
Jasper helped Nina get ready in the morning and encouraged Winnie to wake up after hitting the snooze button three times, Ryan did bedtime routines with Nina and reminded Winnie to do her homework before she spent the rest of the evening locked away in the bedroom on her phone.
It was Friday evening now, almost one week done. Just one and a half weeks to go, and Jasper was glad, if only because he wanted certain freedoms back, like walking around without pants and peeing with the door open. But he could be patient.
After getting changed, Nina ran down the hall to join Winnie in the living room.
Jasper walked in a few minutes later with a tray of snacks and found the kids arguing over a board game, while Ryan buried his face in a pillow on the ground, oozing regret over the game he’d suggested for their fun family game time.
It was too old for Nina, but she refused to accept that and made up her own rules.
That further aggravated an already disgruntled Winnie, who hadn’t wanted to “play a stupid board game in the first place.” Calliope was kneading the meat of Ryan’s ass to make a bed.
He caught himself smiling at the mayhem, and not for the first time.
He stayed put, snacks in hand, staring at the chaos, absorbing the scene, and laughing to himself about how wrong he’d been.
A week ago, he’d been convinced this arrangement would be unbearable.
Awkward silences and forced conversations, constant reminders of why he’d left Ryan that would make existing around him so much harder.
Instead, it had been… easy. Well, that was a stretch, because taking care of two kids was hard when he was used to taking care of zero kids, but the Ryan part was easy.
They were a team, the two of them, and he’d found himself smiling more and even laughing again at Ryan’s stupid jokes.
He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed them.
And he’d never say this out loud, but he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed Ryan.
He knew he missed how things used to be, but he’d convinced himself Ryan was different now, too intoxicated by the anger and hurt he carried to remember how great he could be.
That realization, though, was making it difficult for him to blurt out the question he needed to ask.
Craig had invited Jasper out for drinks.
Nothing major, but his basketball season had ended, and he had a free evening.
Normally, Jasper wouldn’t think twice about it, but it felt weird leaving Ryan with Nina while he went out with a friend.
Not that it should have felt weird. God knows Ryan had left Jasper alone with the kids a million times, and it’s not like Ryan could say no. But still, after a week of unexpected enjoyment from living this domestic life with him, it was surprisingly difficult to say he had better places to be.
It’s not that he thought Ryan would be angry—Ryan wasn’t like that, really, but he did worry it would just put a damper on the mood of the otherwise pleasant household.
“I’m gonna go to my room to get some quiet before Nina goes to bed,” Winnie said.
“Sounds good,” Ryan said. “I’ll let you know when dinner is ready.”
Nina packed up the game quietly, and Jasper decided this was his chance.
“Hey, um, Ryan?”
“What’s up, possum?” Ryan said, then caught himself, his face crumpling slightly. “Ah, shit. Sorry. Just slipped out.”
As if Jasper needed something else to make him feel guilty, that was the second time in a week Ryan had accidentally called him possum. He’d heard that nickname more times than he’d ever heard his real name out of Ryan’s mouth. He’d missed that, too, but again—he could never admit it.
“Craig asked if I wanted to get a drink, and I’d like to meet up with him.”
Ryan glanced outside and then back to Jasper. There was light snowfall outside, but nothing like the last time he’d been out with Craig. Ryan hummed. “Craig and snow. And how did that go last time?”
Jasper huffed a laugh. “Okay, smartass, I—”
Ryan let out an exaggerated gasp. “Language,” he said, pressing his hands to a giggling Nina’s ears.
“He said ass!” she yelled.
“I know! Role model, who?”
“Anyway,” Jasper continued, biting back a smile. “Do you mind if I go?”
“Of course not. Nina and I are going to watch The Acorn Mystery three times in a row.”
“Yeah!” Nina said. “Can we have popcorn?”
“We can have popcorn if you go pick up the laundry in your room and wash your hands.”
“Okay!”
She hustled down the hallway, leaving Jasper and Ryan alone.
“You’re sure you don’t mind?”
“I will only mind if I don’t hear from you and Craig texts me to come pick you up.”
Jasper bit his lip. “I am sorry about that.”
“But, um…” Ryan stood up from the ground, groaning at his aching knees and back. “Goddamn. Getting old is rough.”
He limped towards the front door, the joke about getting old falling flat, because it was obviously more than that.
Jasper was struck by how visible the physical cost of Ryan’s career had become.
Decades of bumps, falls, and injuries had settled into his joints, and it was something Jasper hadn’t spent much time considering until now.
Ryan came back with his own car keys in his hands. “Take the Rover.”
“What? Why?”
Ryan raised an eyebrow and gestured to the window where they could see snow falling.
Jasper grabbed the keys without further argument. “Okay. Thank you.”
“Popcorn!” Nina yelled from the kitchen.
“That’s me,” Ryan said. “Have fun tonight. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“I won’t.”
Jasper watched Ryan disappear into the kitchen and was surprised when he felt a small part of himself wishing he could cancel on Craig and stay home to watch a movie about squirrel detectives.
“Okay, little chicken,” Ryan said, lifting Nina onto the couch. The effort tweaked something in his back, and he groaned, breathing through it as best he could. “Jasper is gone. We could watch the Acorn Mystery, but what if we watched Uncle Ryan’s best of tape? Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“Best of what?”
“My best matches. I miss wrestling, and I feel a little sad about it tonight. Watching it might make me feel better.”
She seemed to ponder it for a moment but shook her head. “No, thank you. Acorn Mystery, please.”
“Okay. Just thought I’d try.” He leaned forward to kiss her head and felt another flash of pain. He let out a yelp.
“Why are you making those noises?” Nina asked.
“I’m old.”
“Like a dinosaur.”
“I’m not as old as a dinosaur, but I’m getting there,” he said. He twisted at the waist to stretch his back, but it made everything feel worse. “Okay, um. I actually need to lie on the ground.”
“Okay.” Nina hopped off the couch to lie on the ground, too.
Slowly and carefully, Ryan slinked off the couch and onto the floor, where he turned to his stomach, suddenly worried he might be trapped there forever.
“Do you want a pillow?” Nina asked.
“Sure. Thanks, Nina.”
She slipped a pillow under his face and fixed the overgrown mullet bangs that lay across his forehead, then reached down to straighten the longer hair draped over his neck and shoulders. The feel of her little fingernails on his scalp was soothing.
“Like my own little spa,” Ryan said.
“Yeah! I can go get my makeup brushes.”
“Sounds nice. I’m just going to close my eyes for a sec.” Mostly so Nina wouldn’t see the pain behind them, but he was tired, too.
The rug was nice to lie on, so there was that. Small, downy chicken feathers came into focus the longer he lay there, his face twisting involuntarily at their presence from thoughts of what other chicken-related things may be ground into the rug beneath his face.
But the rug was also soft, like Beni’s had been.
He thought of his time spent on Beni’s rug that first two weeks after Jasper kicked him out, heartbreak and exhaustion the only things he’d managed to feel.
It was different from this, sprawled out on his own rug, in his own house, the tightness in his back overriding everything but the sound of his nieces’ bickering in the distance.
His eyes opened when Nina reappeared. She got close, then tripped over the lip of the rug and fell, her upper body landing across Ryan’s back. He groaned, but not from pain—the pressure gave him incredible relief.
“Nina,” he said, mouth half covered by the pillow he was using.
She scrambled off him, standing up near his head. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to fall on you.”
“That’s okay, sweetheart. Could you do me a favor, though?”
“Yeah!”
What Ryan really wanted was for Nina to fall on him again, or maybe just walk along his spine, but he knew if things went wrong, that was a good way to ruin what was left of his back. But the pressure—he needed more.
“Can you go grab Calliope and put her on my back?”
“Okay!” She scampered off before he could say anything else. Seconds later, Ryan heard the indignant yowl of a cat being picked up against her will. “I got her!”
“She sounds happy,” Ryan said. “Okay, put her on my back, please.”
Nina did, and Calliope settled in between Ryan’s shoulder blades, immediately kneading along his muscles.
“God, that’s nice.” Ryan let his eyes flutter closed again from the feeling of Calliope’s tiny paws. “But I need something lower, too.”
“Hmm.” Nina pulled two cushions off the couch and stacked them on Ryan’s lower back. “Like that?”
“Yeah.”
“More?” she asked.
“I think so.”
Ten minutes later, Ryan had Calliope, two couch cushions, a giant stuffed animal he’d surprised Nina with for their two-week staycation, and a folded blanket piled on top of him.
Together, they put just enough pressure on his back to relax the tight muscles that had taken him down earlier.
He hadn’t realized how exhausted he was until things started to loosen.
Calliope purred, Nina settled down next to him with a book, the TV played the Acorn Mystery at a volume so low it was just quiet murmurs. Ryan let out a breath and felt his eyelids droop.
He didn’t know how much time had passed when Jasper walked in. He’d heard Nina jump up and run to the door, shushing him.
“Where’s your cousin?” Jasper whispered.
“She’s on the phone.”
“And where’s Uncle Ryan?”
“He’s right there. I think he fell asleep.”
Jasper snorted out a laugh. In a normal volume, he asked, “Why does Uncle Ryan have so much stuff on his back?”
“He hurt it. I don’t think he can get up.”
“He’s hurt?”
Ryan felt Jasper crouch beside his head and stroke the hair off his face. Ryan kept his eyes closed, giving himself time to enjoy the feel of Jasper’s hands.
“Uh huh. And I’m very hungry. He’s been there the whole time you were gone.”
“Jesus Christ. Okay. Let’s go get you some food, and then… Oh, man. It’s bedtime. We’ll play with Ryan more tomorrow, okay?”
Ryan heard the rustle of blankets and the thump of little feet as Nina gathered her things.
Then there was a pause, and Jasper said, “What are you watching?”
“Uncle Ryan wanted to watch his wrestling show, but then he got hurt. I put it on to cheer him up, but then he fell asleep.”
Ryan opened his eyes and glanced up. He couldn’t see Jasper’s face or the TV, but he could picture exactly what was on the screen—some younger version of himself doing something reckless and stupid.
Probably causing the exact injuries that landed him there on the floor, in a house he used to own with a man who used to love him.
Half an hour later, Nina was in bed. Ryan was awake, but still on the ground. Jasper came back into the room and quietly removed things from his back.
“Aw, my deep tissue massage is over?”
“Oh, shit,” Jasper said, laughing. “I thought you were asleep. I was going to cover you with a blanket.”
“Believe it or not, this isn’t the most comfortable place to sleep.”
Jasper laughed softly. “I’d guess not. Are you okay?”
Ryan nodded into his pillow. “I’m fine. I just tweaked something.”
He felt Jasper’s hand slip under his arm, and Ryan worked to lift himself off the ground with Jasper’s help. It was a whole ordeal, one that had Jasper’s hands moving all over Ryan’s body. There was minimal pain, but Ryan was still left with an ache in his chest.
“You good?” Jasper asked.
“Yeah. Feel a lot better. Thanks.”
For a second, neither of them moved, Jasper’s hands still steadying Ryan on either side of his waist. Then he stepped back.
“Goodnight, then. Take some more ibuprofen.”
Ryan nodded. “Goodnight.”