I squinted my eyes at him and announced, “You know, if we’re gonna take this slow, you’re gonna have to not be so hot.”
He looked in danger of dissolving in laughter which was a good look on him (as were all of them, gah!). “How am I gonna do that?”
“Not talk about fucking hard would be a start.”
“Rynnie, baby, you gotta know delayed gratification is the best kind.”
Seriously?
I pointed my chicken breast at him across the couch. “That! Stop doing that!”
He started chuckling.
I rolled my eyes and focused on eating.
“You wanna talk about your brother?” he asked.
Man, that was nice.
Still.
“No, nothing horrible happened today, but the end of it is surprisingly promising, so I don’t wanna ruin it.”
“All right, sweetheart,” he muttered.
“Do you have a brother?” I asked.
“Yes. Two.”
“A sister?”
He shook his head.
“You oldest? Youngest?” I went on.
“Middle.”
“Middle child syndrome?”
“Nope.” He shook his head. “Dad called me Bobby.”
I didn’t get that.
“He called you Bobby?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Said I was Bobby Kennedy, as good as or better than the ones that came before, or after.”
Wow.
Bold.
And maybe uncool.
“I bet your brothers loved that,” I mumbled.
“Dad was about competition. He did shit like that all the time to get us riled up to best each other to better ourselves.”
I wasn’t sure that was healthy, though watching Boone talk about it, he didn’t seem tense.
“I was a brain,” he went on. “Late bloomer. Growth spurt came when I was a sophomore in high school, which sucked. And then I was all gangly. I’d always been shit at sports. Both Cassidy and Larson were strong, tough, tall from young ages, and they just got taller. Good at sports. Smart too, though they weren’t into that kinda thing, so they didn’t apply themselves. But the stuff they were good at was the stuff other kids thought was cool, so my dad was tryin’ to make me feel less of a loser, doing shit like calling me Bobby. Cass and Lars didn’t need that. Everyone thought they were awesome.”
Wow again.
That was, in a way, beautiful.
“So how did you become all you are today?” I asked quietly.
“When I started growing, Cass took me under his wing, taught me how to work out, lift, use the weight machines, helped me fill out. And Lars and me played a lot of basketball.”
“So you have a tight family.”
“They’re all still back in Pennsylvania, except Lars, who lives in Idaho. But yeah. I’m thirty-three and Christmas and Thanksgiving are still sacrosanct. If I didn’t haul my ass back home for both, Mom would disown me.”
“That sounds sweet,” I said.
He looked into my eyes. “It is.”
I turned back to my food, happy he had that, wondering how it would feel.
“Not everyone can have Ozzie and Harriet,” he said gently.
I returned my attention to him. “It sounds like you did.”
“I did. My parents fought on occasion, we heard them. But they got over it, sometimes it’d take a while, but they did. It wasn’t great, being the scrawny Sadler brother. But Mom and Dad and even Cass and Lars played to my strengths at home, so I had a solid foundation it was impossible to fall off. I know I was lucky, am lucky. Hear shit. See shit. Shit I never had at home or shit my parents shielded me from. I count those blessings, Ryn. But it doesn’t make someone who doesn’t have all that any less.”
“I’m just a little jealous, I guess.”
“You’ve just been blindsided by some ugly. It’s raw. I’m sure there was good.”
You could say that about being blindsided.
This happening repeatedly since I was six.
I scooped up some potato salad.
I was chewing it when Boone asked in a strange voice with a low timbre I didn’t get, “There wasn’t any good?”
I looked to him and instantly understood that timbre.
He seemed wired in the sense, if that wire snapped, he’d be pissed.
I downed the salad and told him, “My mom is incredible. She’s funny and she’s strong and she’s protective. I think you’d really like her.”
“So she’s like you.”
That was the nicest thing anyone could say to me.
“I hope so.”
He put his fork on his plate, bent forward, reached out a hand and curled it around my ankle.
He then pulled my leg straight, putting my heel on his thigh, repeat with the other foot, and through this, I rescued my plate so it wouldn’t fall in my lap.
Only then did he sit back, with my feet in his lap, and return to his food.
But he did this saying, “We weren’t gonna get heavy. You wanna watch TV?”
“We could stream a movie.”
“I’m up to be haunted by a case.”
I grinned at him.
His eyes twinkled at me then he dug under my calf to get the remote and pointed it at the TV.
I used to like dating. The anticipation. Dolling myself up. Going somewhere fun or out for good food.