“Is Ty your boyfriend?”
Ollie licked his lips. Did he have beard burn? Did he have, like, drying spit on his face?
And did he have to answer this question? “Yeah, bud.” He paused. “Um, is that okay with you? This isn’t how I wanted to tell you.”
Although hey, at least they had all their clothes on.
Theo scrunched up his face. “Are you going to kiss in front of me all the time?”
Ty made a noise. Ollie stepped on his foot. “Um, maybe little ones. But not—notallthe time. Sometimes we’ll just watch baseball together or eat dinner and stuff.”
Theo nodded like he was considering this very carefully. “Is Ty still moving to Chicago?”
Oh no. Ollie didn’twantto answer that one. He glanced up at Ty, pleading with his eyes.
Ty took half a step away from Ollie and turned toward Theo. “Kind of. I won’t be working the same way I work here, though. I usually work four days and then have four days off, so I can come visit when I’m not working.”
“Like when Dad was in the Army?”
“Exactly, except I’ll be home for a little bit of every week.”
Ollie thought that was kind of a lot to promise—Ty still had a life and friends in Chicago, and what if he got sick, or someone else did, and he had to cover a shift? But he wasn’t going to object.
“Butwe’renot going to move to Chicago,” Theo clarified. His lower lip stuck out a little, confirming Ollie’s suspicion that this was a statement and not a question.
“That’s right. We might go to visit, if Ty invites us.”
Ty said, “The Nats are playing the Cubs at the end of August.” He glanced at Ollie, shrugged helplessly, and blushed again. “I have three tickets behind home plate, if you know anyone who might want to come—oof.”
Theo rammed him full speed and wrapped both arms around his waist. “Oh my God! Really? That’sso cool! Dad, we can go, right? Since you got fired and stuff.”
Jesus. Ollie reached one hand out to the back of a chair to steady himself. This conversation was giving him emotional whiplash. Ty put a hand on his shoulder too, and he managed to breathe. “Where did you hear that?”
“At school. Jordan heard it from Megan, whose mom works with a lady at your company.” That face scrunch again. “I guess maybe it’s not your company now.” The scrunch became a crumple. “They said you got fired ’cause of me. Did you?”
Ah, fuck.Ollie glanced up long enough to meet Ty’s eyes, and he gave a slight nod and quietly left the room. Ollie pulled out a couple of chairs and gestured for Theo to sit next to him. “I did lose my job, yeah, but not because of you, okay? I only took that job because they promised me that they believed family should come first. It turned out they broke their promise.That’swhy I got fired, not because of you.”
For a kid who’d had a lot thrown at him in the past five minutes, Theo was doing a remarkable job keeping an even keel. “Are we gonna be okay? Are we gonna have to move again?”
“We are going to be great,” Ollie promised. And then—well. Fuck. He might as well. “I might even take some time to decide what I want to do next. I don’t want you to worry about that, okay? I have savings from the Army, and your mom put aside money just for you.” Ollie wasn’t touching that—that was for Theo’s college, or for a down payment on a house one day—but if it helped ease his anxiety now, Theo should know it existed.
Theo leaned forward, all trace of concern gone. “So we can go to Chicago?”
Ollie’s mouth opened. Wow, he’d really walked into that one, huh? “Yeah,” he said helplessly, “we can go to Chicago.”
TY LEFTOllie and Theo to their conversation and retreated to the kitchen to start dinner prep. Or at least that was his plan, but after two minutes, he hadn’t managed to do anything other than stand in front of the fridge with a stupid smile on his face.
If he wanted to keep his fingers, he had better leave the cutting board alone, so he retreated to the games room to process.
Ollie loved him.
Ty dropped down onto the couch and put a hand to his lips.
Ollie loved him, and Theo seemed to be okay with the two of them dating. Ty was pretty embarrassed they’d been caught making out like teenagers, but it could’ve been worse. And at least the important parts of the conversation had been over by then.
Ollie loved him.
He just couldn’t stop thinking it. Ty had had relationships before, lasting ones even, people he thought he could spend the rest of his life with. Now the idea seemed absurd. His previous vague daydreams of what his future might look like had seemed real and clear and tangible at the time, but compared to the vision he saw now? It was like comparing a television show broadcast on an old aerial antenna on a tube TV to an IMAX movie. Before, Ty could barely hear the dialogue over the static; now he could smell the popcorn.
