“Of course you can admit it, but it won’t change the fact that I stomped yourass.”
He grins and pats me on the shoulder, taking the sting out of my struggle, as this was the third attempt to get to the end of this particularroute.
“Ready to call it a day?” Ty asks. I nod, and we hit the showers. On our way out, Ty says, “You wanna swing by my place and check out that new artwork I was telling you about? You don’t have to if you need to get home to your…fiancé.”
He stresses the word, teasing, and at the same time, I can tell he’s trying to make light of what was once the most uncomfortable of situations between us, the very thing that now seems to bond us in some strangeway.
I agree, so I follow him back to his place and assess his latest addition to hisunit.
“Nice… It looks good,” I tell him, checking out the abstract art he has now hanging behind hiscouch.
“You don’t likeit.”
I bite my tongue and take a deepbreath.
“That bad,huh?”
“It’s not mything.”
He glances between me and the picture, taking a moment to deliberate. “Well, it’s mystyle.”
“It’s not like you needed myapproval.”
“No, but approval is nicesometimes.”
The weight of his words makes me feel like crap for the way I handled this. “I’m sorry, if it means thatmuch—”
He laughs. “Oh, sorry. No. I made that sound way too important. That’s not what I was talking about, not some stupid artwork. I enjoy it, but I don’t give a crap if you think it looks bad.” He opens his mouth like he’s planning to go on but stopshimself.
He has something to tell me. It reminds me of times when he’s told me about failures in his life—exams, projects, sports, interviews that didn’t go the way he’d hoped. Makes me reflect on Jesse’s nightmares and what he’s struggled with as far as thinking Charlotte and Stan might leave him. I wonder if Ty’s struggling inschool.
“Ty, I love you, no matter what you might be goingthrough.”
He purses his lips as though I made it harder for him to finish telling me whatever’s on hismind.
“Can I get you something to drink?” heasks.
“I’mfine.”
“You need a beer? I’ll get you a beer,” he insists, walking past me into the adjoining kitchen. “Feel free to make yourselfcomfortable.”
I wish he’d spit it out. I hate the suspense. But this is Ty’s way. He gets things out when he’s good andready.
He fetches two beers and opens them, then returns to the living room and hands me one before taking a seat in the love seat, which leads me to sit on the adjacent couch—keeping some distance like he did when I talked to him after Jesse and I told him about ourrelationship.
The way he pauses, the silence stretches out to a point where I’m starting to grow concerned. “Did anything happen with classes thissemester?”
He laughs. “Oh, no. Nothing like that. You ever have something you want to tell someone and can’t bring yourselfto?”
I’m racking my brain, searching for what he could possibly want to talk to me about, but I entertain his question. “Yes, not so long ago, infact.”
“Of course you can. I forget. I was a part of a big one there too.” He snickers and rubs his hand back and forth on his leg, the way he does when he’s on edge aboutstuff.
Oh, please, God, he needs to put me out of mymisery.
“It’s funny because I’ve played this scenario out in my head a thousand times. It never ends badly, so you’d think it’d be effortless, but there’s this thing spinning around in there…possibly because so much of my life is already up in theair.”
“Whatever itis—”
