“I’ll wait to hear from you, then,” Ryan said stiffly. He raised one hand, as if he was going to offer a farewell handshake, then seemed to think better of it and stuffed his hand in his coat pocket instead. “Good night.”
“Good night, Ryan Price. Take care of those hands.”
Ryan nodded, and left. When the door closed, Fabian cringed. Didtake care of those handssound flirty? It definitely sounded dumb.
With a sigh, Fabian fell back onto his bed. What a weird night.
Chapter Seven
“Can I move in with you?”
Ryan smiled at his sister’s pained expression. He’d slept late that morning and had been awoken by Colleen’s Facetime request. “You don’t want to move to Toronto,” he said.
“I totally do. I’ll get on a plane tomorrow. Today, even. This town is smothering me.”
“You love it, though. And what would all those poor third graders say when their teacher disappears?”
“They’d be thrilled. Seriously. Let me mooch off of you in Toronto for a few months. Or years.”
Ryan would honestly love to have Colleen closer to him, but he knew she was kidding about this. “You should come visit soon.”
She sighed. “I want to. If you don’t come home for Christmas, maybe I could go there for a few days.”
“I’m going to try,” Ryan said. “I want to come home this year.”
She smiled. “That would be awesome. But I still want to visit you in Toronto. I want to goout. Have you been to any of the clubs?”
“Um...”
“Ry-an,” she whined. “You are a young, rich gay man in Toronto’s Gay Village!”
“I’m not that young,” Ryan argued.
“You’re thirty-one. That’s not old.”
“I have the body of a seventy-year-old, though.”
“You have the body of an Olympian. What the hell are you talking about?”
“My back’s been bothering me.”
Her expression softened. “Sorry. I’m being a dick. So you really haven’t been going out at all?”
“Well.” Ryan braced himself, because he knew his sister was going make athingabout this. “I actually ran into someone recently. From Halifax.”
“An old teammate?”
“No. Do you remember when I lived with the Salahs?”
“I think I only met them once, but yeah. You liked them, right?”
“Yeah.” He bit his lip, which his sister noticed immediately.
“Oh my god. What?”
“I likedoneof the Salahs in particular.”
“Please don’t let it be the dad.”
