“You have your moments.” I motioned to his face. “Do I even want to know what happened here?”
“Gnomes,” he said gravely. “So many fucking gnomes.”
I grabbed his wrist and towed him inside, saying, “Come on. These dogs need to burn off some energy and you’ve made lots of noises about the quality of your pitching arm.”
We settled in the backyard, me flopped down on a chaise and Beck throwing an endless stream of tennis balls for Scout and Jem as stars twinkled overhead. It was a new kind of sexual pleasure for me.
“Why is it you don’t throw balls professionally?” I asked.
Beck laughed. “I’m good, but I’m not as good as Dex.” Another laugh, this one without any warmth. “He’s sorry for being a fucking douchebag, by the way.”
“I figured as much.” When he didn’t continue, I said, “You’re welcome to vent about everything that happened today. I’m very good at being on the receiving end of venting. I can listen or I can help you come up with solutions, or I can see if there are any movies we might want to watch to forget about all of it. I also came home with a bunch of new cookie samples from Muffy, so that can figure into tonight’s equation too.”
After a long pause where I watched the obscene stretch and pull of his muscles under that t-shirt, he said, “I can’t stay. I wish I could trust Dex to stay home alone but there’s a very solid chance he’ll burn down the house or fall off the roof simply because he believes it’s easier to destroy things than fix them.”
I’d figured as much but I was still disappointed. “Is Dex all right?”
He blew out a breath. “No, but he will be. Eventually. It might take the better part of a decade and probably a good divorce attorney, but he’ll make it.”
“I didn’t even know he was married.”
Beck shook his head. “Most people don’t. They’ve been separated a long time.”
I needed to hear a lot more about that though this wasn’t the moment. “And your parents?”
His chuckle was so painfully bitter that it almost hurt. “The plea deals are gone. Dead. And all due to completely stupid shit.”
Jem trotted over with a slobbery tennis ball and dropped it in my lap. I flicked it away and pointed to Beck, hoping he understood who was playing ball tonight. “What happened now?”
“My mother didn’t turn herself in at the agreed-upon time. She wasn’t even on her way to the airport,” he said. “Fucking ridiculous.”
I murmured in agreement. Beck didn’t need my comments or reactions here.
“And everyone’s favorite fuckhead Devon approached the feds with a shit ton of highly incriminating evidence.”
“That guy really is a fuckhead.”
Beck fell silent for several minutes, focused on throwing the balls and wrenching them from my dogs’ jaws when they returned. They loved him so very much and my favorite thing was how he loved them right back. I had quiet, secret moments where I wondered whether he came for me but stayed for the dogs. I didn’t mind. I’d take that. I’d take anything I could get.
Then, “Remember how we talked about us both being terrible at relationships? You said I refuse to be vulnerable, I said you needed to find the right cock?”
I smothered a laugh. “Vaguely, yes.”
“That was the problem with the woman in Singapore. She was actually terribly at relationships.”
“Good to know it wasn’t about finding the right cock.”
“No, that’s all yours,” he said. “She wasn’t actuallyinSingapore though. She’s a Swede based out of Dubai and her firm sent her on quarterly trips to the island.”
“Sure. That sounds like an important distinction.”
“Yeah, that’s not the point.” He pushed a hand through his hair and glanced over at me with a tight expression that fell somewhere between a frown and a grimace. This was going to be awesome. “Though it didn’t occur to me at the time, I wasn’t particularly open or vulnerable with her. She didn’t know much about me and I guess I didn’t know much about her because I found out through a friend of a friend that she was married. I heard about it because that friend was taking over for her since she was moving to the Munich office to be closer to her husband.” He fired off another ball and both dogs streaked across the yard toward it. “And the crazy thing was, I didn’t really care.”
“You didn’t care that she was married or that she was leaving?”
He started to reply but stopped himself, shook his head, and threw another ball. “It pissed me off that she’d cheated with me, but the rest of it didn’t matter. I’d forgotten about the whole thing until my fucking brother brought it up tonight. What the fuck is wrong with me?”
“Nothing. Not every relationship is revelatory,” I said. “They’re not all instructive.” I held up my hands and let them drop to my lap. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
