Ty blinked, and his eyes focused a little more, and—okay. The guy was good-looking, sure, but now that the sun had risen another degree and Ty’s vision had adjusted, he was ordinary enough—too short and round-faced to be a model. He looked like the kind of guy you asked to join your softball team or drank beer with.
Not that Ty planned to consume any more alcohol any time soon.
“Uh,” Ty said. He’d been back in town less than twenty-four hours, and it was asmalltown. News traveled fast. He hadn’t had to tell anyone else yet. Everyone who lived here already knew. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but he, uh.”He drove his car full speed into a knot of pine trees.“He died.”
Despite his resolve, Ty’s voice cracked on the second word.
Ollie’s eyes widened and his mouth parted slightly, and Ty could imagine the struggle. He obviously hadn’t been close to Leonard, orhe would’ve known about the… accident. Which meant this was super awkward for him, because no Leonard meant no job, but focusing on that when someone had died made you look like an asshole.
“Oh,” Ollie said carefully. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
Ty snorted without meaning to. “Yeah, me too. Old man’s still ruining my life from beyond the grave.”
Then he registered the car in the winding circular driveway. Apart from the driver’s seat and the seat behind it, it was packed with cardboard boxes.
There was a kid in the back seat, a little boy with Ollie’s eyes and a messy head of auburn curls.
Fuck, did his dad ruin this guy’s life too? He cleared his throat. “Uh, maybe—do you want to come in? Because I… need coffee.” And Advil. So much Advil.
And a shower; fuck, he smelled like bourbon.
Ollie shifted from foot to foot. “I don’t want to impose—”
“Come in,” Ty said more firmly, because suddenly the idea of sitting by himself in his parents’ kitchen, the site of untold childhood scoldings, seemed unfaceable. “Bring your—your kid?”
“Theo,” Ollie offered. He smiled with his whole body when he said the name.
Somuch coffee. “Bring him,” Ty said. “I haven’t gone shopping yet or anything, but the old man must’ve had something to eat in there somewhere. I’m pretty sure he didn’t actually live on the shattered dreams of his only child. Or we’ll order delivery… do you think Uber Eats comes out this far?” There was an IHOP in town. At least, there used to be a decade ago, the last time Ty set foot in the place.
“Uh,” said Ollie. He took a half step backward, which was when Ty realized it was pretty weird to invite total strangers into your house for breakfast, even if they looked like they could go totally HAM on a stack of pancakes. “Maybe it would be best if we just came back another day.”
Ty had the sudden horrible suspicion that if he let this man out of his sight, he’d evaporate and Ty would never see him again, hallucination or no. Ty couldn’t face it—not this big stupid monstrosity of a mausoleum, not breakfast, not the fact that he had to bepresentableat his father’s funeral in less than three hours. Ollie and his kid might be total strangers and they might think Ty was a total freak of nature, and the only thing in his father’s kitchen—Ty’s, now, ohfuck—might be canned milk andmaggoty flour. But right now Ty only cared about one thing, and his dignity wasn’t it. “Look,” he blurted, “I know it’s—weird. And we don’t know each other. And this is so not how you expected to spend your morning, I mean, clearly.” He gestured helplessly at the car, the kid, the boxes. What a clusterfuck. “But my asshole dad just died, and I would seriously love to not be alone in this stupid house for another minute.”
For a moment they stared at each other, both—Ty assumed—hyperaware of the tattered remains of his self-respect dying ignominiously on the intricate tile porch between them.
Finally Ollie cleared his throat. “Sure, uh, I guess. One condition?”
Oh thank God.“Name it.”
Ollie glanced down and then back up. “Put on some pants?”
Ty’s mouth worked soundlessly without input from his brain, and then he finally looked down. Yep, he sure had answered the door in his boxers. Making a real smooth first impression here. “I think I might still be drunk,” he confessed.
A smile twitched at the corner of Ollie’s mouth. “You think,” he echoed.
A literal, actualseaof coffee. “All right,” Ty said faintly. “Well, uh—I’m just going to… dress. You and Theo, uh, come in and… yeah. Make yourself at home.”
Look on the bright side, Ty told himself as he retreated to his bedroom.This day probably can’t get much worse.
THIS DAY,Ollie thought, standing on the porch as Half-Naked Man disappeared into the house, was already a shitshow.
He and Theo had made the drive up from DC yesterday and checked into a motel. The place was kind of a dump, but it was only for a night. Ollie’s parents had tried to convince him to stay with them, but that would’ve meant Ollie sleeping on the couch and Theo in Ollie’s old bedroom in a house filled with people he didn’t really know. He figured they could handle a motel for one night. And it had a pool; Theo loved the pool. He didn’t care what the room looked like.
But they’d only gotten the room for a night because Ollie was supposed to start work for Mr. Morris this morning—work as a home-care aid, not that Ollie was in any way qualified. When his Aunt Eliza—ex-aunt? She’d been his aunt by marriage, but his uncle had died andshe’d remarried; he didn’t know what that made her now—called a couple weeks back, he thought she was nuts. Did Ollie want to come be a “companion” to an older man with dementia? Help him with his groceries, make sure he didn’t hurt himself, blah blah blah? Then she mentioned the pay, and the fact that the job included housing for himself and Theo, and, well, by that time Theo had finished chemo and Ollie thought a change of scenery would do them both good, so why not?
The answer, apparently, wasbecause people with dementia die, you idiot, and now Ollie was in Connecticut with no place to live and no job and a kid to look after.
But he was, apparently, going to get breakfast from a guy who was in even worse shape than Ollie.
