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My eyes shot open. Yes, plural. Apparently, the icing did help somewhat. It wasn't fully open, but I could see more than a slit. And what I did see was Ryan sitting at the edge of the couch, his hand still brushing my somehow-dry hair out of my face. If my hair was dry then... "How long have I been sleeping?" I asked, trying to bolt up, but he pushed me back down.
"Couple hours," he shrugged.
"How many hours?"
"Five," he admitted with a smile.
"Five hours! Why didn't you wake me up?"
"Figured you needed to catch up. I did replace your icepack a few times though. Did some good. Maybe you'll be one of the lucky ones who only have a week or so of swelling."
"How do you know so much about things like that?"
"Things like what?" he asked, but it was pure hedging. He knew exactly what I was talking about.
"Injuries and fighting and all that."
"That is a story for another day I think," he said, making me stiffen slightly. "I'll tell you," he reassured, having been watching closely enough to see the change. "But let's not go there tonight, okay?" he asked and because he seemed to need it, I decide to give it to him. I knew what it felt like to not be ready to talk about something, to want to work up to it.
"Okay. So what did you make while I was out?"
"A bunch of dips and shit," he offered, shrugging. "My sister-in-law informed me that New Years Eve was not the kind of night you made a huge meal for. So it's all snack and apps. I did make some mozz sticks and fries though. Don't know what your alcohol tolerance is and figured we should lay a good fat and grease layer for it to land on."
"Good thinking. I haven't had more than a couple glasses of wine in, well, years." In fact, I refused to keep much alcohol in my house because I knew how easy it might be to reach for a glass of something during a stressful time. And then that became a crutch.
"Well, champagne aside, I have everything," he said, waving a hand at his liquor cabinet. "Benefits of having a bar in the family."
"What bar?" I asked, moving to sit up.
"Chaz's."
"No way," I said with a big smile. "That was the first bar I ever went into when I was legal."
"Kind of the only game in town," he agreed. "Though I snuck in and drank illegally with my brothers more than a time or two."
"Really?" I asked, smiling at the idea of him being a troublemaker. He seemed so staid and responsible.
"I'd call it peer pressure, but I really just wanted to know what the fuss was about. Pops came in and found us all puking in the bathroom."
"Was he pissed?"
He laughed a little dryly at that. "My parents aren't your typical parents. Pops was the kind of man who fixed the 'problem' when Shane decided to take up smoking by making him smoke an entire pack one after another until he was so sick that he never touched one again."
"So I'm assuming that when you were done being sick..."
"He made us chug until we puked again," Ryan agreed, smiling at the memory. "Pops is a hardass, but it worked. For the most part. We didn't sneak into the bar anymore at least. And it was a good year or two before any of us touched alcohol again."
"What's your mother like?" I found myself asking, liking the picture he was creating for me.
"Even more of a hardass than my Pops if you can imagine. Pops had to work a lot while we were kids and she was stuck with five troublemakers, boundary-pushers, and general pains in the ass. She had to be a force to deal with all of us."
"Like how?" I pressed, noticing the way his smile went nostalgic talking about his family, his eyes a little far away in the memory.
"Shane has a missing curfew followed by near frostbite story he can tell you sometime," he said easily, just assuming that it would happen eventually, a certainty in his tone that almost made me believe it too. "There's a falling through the kitchen window story that, I think, Hunter has to tell. Mark has a garden hose wakeup story."
"What about you and Eli?"
"Eli stayed more out of trouble than the rest of us as a rule, but he still can never seem to follow simple orders. A while back, Ma demanded we all bring dates to Sunday dinner. It was mandatory. If we didn't bring one, we didn't eat. Eli didn't eat. And she made him help her serve and everything," he added, laughing.
"And you?"
"Hmm," he said, thinking on it a second, his own stories not coming as easily to him as his siblings'. "I was in senior year and for fuck knows what reason, we all had to be in one sport each. I'd say it was because she wanted us to learn teamwork or some shit like that, but really, she probably just wanted a few hours to herself where we weren't driving her nuts after school. And me, idiot I was, didn't opt for baseball where I'd get to sit out a lot of the practice or wrestling like Shane so I could use the skills I'd learned grappling with my brothers my whole life. Or even cheerleading like Mark..."
