I flip him the bird. “Why don’t you try to do your job in skates? Also, the D-man slammed into me. I got back up like that,” I say with a snap of my fingers.
Gavin cracks up, bending over at the waist. “Oh, man, it’s so fun giving you hell. You’re so sensitive.”
“I am not sensitive,” I say, my brow narrowed.
He stops laughing, but keeps smiling as we head out of the barn. “Right, sure. But if you’re worried you don’t have the balance to do it, you can muck the stalls instead.”
“I said I would hang the owl box.”
“But if you can’t manage it, there’s horseshit to shovel,” he says as he yanks one big door closed.
I pull on the other one. “Why have enemies when you can have a brother?”
“Might as well have both. More fun for me,” he says with a wiggle of his brows as he strides across the grass, away from the home.
He stares at the property in the dark, then sighs, the satisfied sound of a job well done.
“You know—I’m happy to help around here,” I say seriously. “If you want me to do more.”
“I know,” he says, kind and full of understanding. “But the bird stuff is more than enough.”
Is it though? Sure, I know he and Mira like running Big Steps. A familiar pang of guilt twists inside me. Like I could help more. Or maybe it’s just a memory of how happy my dad was before things started breaking. When Heather used to stay with me at the ranch before we fell apart.
Back before Dad stood in the open door one day, then said quietly, “I don’t think I can go out.”
My heart aches thinking of that moment.
I pull myself out of those thoughts right as Gavin looks me up and down with skepticism. “Why do you look like you’re a frat boy?”
I’m wearing slacks and a white linen shirt. “I don’t look like a frat boy.”
“Country club guy. Same thing,” he says with a hint of derision since we are neither. We didn’t grow up with enough money for golf courses and tennis matches, and I never joined a frat, nor wanted to.
“I hate clubs.”
“Again, why are you dressed like you’re going to one?”
As we walk up the stone path to the house, I answer, “I had to go to a thing.”
“A thing? What kind of a thing?” he goads, reading me instantly.Brothers.
I grind my jaw. Am I telling Gavin I’m fake dating someone? No, that’d be a bad idea. He’d mock me in front of Dad, and the point of fake dating is, well, to fake it. If Remy could tell her boss, I can tell my brother. “I had to go to a picnic. With a woman,” I say.
Gavin’s eyebrows shoot to the moon. I brace for him to sayyou found someone who’d date you, but instead he just claps my back as we reach the porch. “Judging from the smile when you got out of your car, I’d say it went well.”
“I wasn’t smiling.”
“You’re such a bad liar,” he says, and we go inside, where I set the puzzle on the kitchen table, as Remy’s pretty voice replays in my head saying,“I like the dogs-with-jobs one.”
I replay other things as I head upstairs alone, thinking of her.
* * *
I have just enough time before morning skate for food and for a certain asshole cat who likes his morning walks. When I head downstairs, the scent of scrambled eggs and buttery toast floats toward me, making my stomach growl. My dad’s at the stove, moving some eggs around in a pan.
“Morning,” I say, then ruffle his hair. “I’m going to take Thor out for a walk. Want to come with me when you’re done?”
It’s rote. I ask it every day I’m here.
