Oliver snorted. “I did tell you. You hung up on me.”
“You’ll have to be more specific. I’ve been hanging up on you for years.”
“You threw a laptop across the room rather than listen to me!”
“Don’t be dramatic. I knocked you off the table.”
“See!” Oliver shoved a finger at him, the edges of his cocky self-assurance crumbling. “That. That right there is why I had to lie.”
“What?”
“You! You, asshole. You’re so fucking stubborn, you’d argue with me even if you knew I was right!”
“No, I—” Seb snapped his mouth shut.
“She did ask about you. Every time I talked to her, she asked if I knew if you were coming. It would have broken her heart if you weren’t here Seb. And you, you stubborn, selfish asshole, you wouldn’t even let me speak long enough for me to tell you that.”
“But I said, last time I was here, after Dad—”
“Dad? Do you know why you hate him so much? Why you two fight whenever you get within shouting distance of each other?”
“Because he’s a controlling asshole?”
“Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?”
“Don’t compare me to him.”
“Oh my god! You’re exactly the same, the two of you. So stubborn and you refuse to see it! I could be pissing on both of you, and you’d swear it was raining to prove you were right.”
“That is a truly disturbing mental image, Ollie.”
“Would you shut up and thank me already?” Oliver’s voice cracked on the last word.
“Thank you?”
“I did this. Me.” He thumped his chest. “The first thing she asked me when she walked in the door this afternoon was if you were here. And I got to say yes. That is the best gift I could have given her.” He was out of breath as he smoothed his hand over his hair. “I did it. I got you here, so you could be the center of attention, just like you’ve always wanted. And instead, you’re arguing with me in a fucking garden shed in October. It is fifty-five degrees out, and this suit is not made for that. Can you please punch me so we can go back inside?”
The shed fell into damp silence. Oliver huffed and put his hands on his hips, fanning out the back of his jacket. Seb tried a few times to say something. Argue. Snap back with a witty retort.
In the end, he held his arms out wide.
“What are you doing?” Oliver said.
“Come here.”
Oliver hesitated.
“Don’t look at me like that. Come here and hug it out.” Seb came forward and wrapped Oliver in a hug.
“You’re an asshole.” Oliver squeezed him so hard something in Seb’s spine wentpop.
“It’s genetic apparently.”
“I love you.”
“Love you too, man. But I’ll love you less if you break a rib.”
Seb got waylaid on the way back into the party by his Aunt Karen, who cornered him and wouldn’t let him go until she’d thanked him no less than a dozen times for giving up his room at the Bluewater Inn. Then she insisted on reintroducing him to his cousin Jeanine, who might have been twenty but looked way too young to be shacking up in a hotel room with the giant on her arm. The guy said he played defensive tackle on their college football team, and Seb believed him.
