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“Chinese is ordered,” he informs me. “Should be here in about forty minutes.”
“I guess you didn’t need to consult with me to find out what I like, huh?”
“Oh, I know what you like.” He invites himself in, plopping down on my bed and lying back, his sweaty body spread out on my clean sheets. Not that I mind. “You’d always get the same thing.”
I smirk as I pull open a drawer to grab some around-the-house shorts. “Someone’s being a know-it-all, like always.”
“Nah. I don’t know anything.” He turns his head. “Except for when it comes to you.”
Clasping the mesh black shorts I just fished out of my drawer, I turn and peer at Stefan over a shoulder. He’s got his fingers laced behind his head while comfortably sprawled out on his back, his body somehow seeming relaxed even in its half-crunch position. Naturally, that pose accentuates every single ab he’s got. Coupled with the fact that he’s still glimmeringly slick with his own sweat, he’s pretty much two steps away from looking like a screenshot from a gym-boy porn flick.
“Take tomorrow off.”
I blink. “What?”
“Take tomorrow off,” he repeats. “You get sick days, right?”
“I … I can’t just take a day off,” I protest through half a laugh of disbelief.
“Surely you have a job where you can take sick days. I mean, you went to college and studied your ass off for ten damned years. You’ve earned it.”
“Six years. And I can’t just randomly take a sick day already. I just began my job this school year.”
“Yes, you can and will.”
I stare at him. “Why do you want me to call in, exactly?”
He sits up a bit, propping himself up on his elbows. “Because we have catching up to do. We need a bro day. Just you and me.”
“A what?”
“A bro-cation.”
“Seriously, Stefan. Just stop.”
“A bro-liday.”
“What are we even going to do?”
“What aren’t we going to do?” he shoots back. “Don’t you want to just fuck around town like the old days?”
“Uh, sure, it sounds fun, but I have a job now. A good one. A job I want that I just started. I change the lives of teenagers. I—”
“Yeah, yeah, your dream job,” grunts Stefan, “and I’m proud of you. I really am. But your dream’s missing something. The most important thing.”
“And what’s that?” I shoot back, staring at him with a touch of defensiveness.
That touch is obliterated and replaced by one of his own when he rises from the bed and slaps a hand to my shoulder.
He looks me in the eye. “A buddy to do it all with.”
20
STEFAN
There’s nothing quite like kicking back in my truck with the windows down, arm hanging out the door, and steering lazily with a hand over the top of the wheel.
Especially when Ryan’s with me in the passenger seat.
Yes, I got my way, and he called in to work. I got to hear the whole glorious conversation, and while he was on the phone with whoever it was he needed to call, he kept sneaking looks at me and trying not to smile.
I’m witnessing straight-laced Ryan playing hooky for the first time.
The look on Ryan’s face is exactly what it should be: relaxed and completely liberated. He needed this day off. No one likes a Wednesday at school, anyway; it’s the middle of the week, full of crap behind you and crap ahead of you before the weekend. It was the hardest day of practice and the most susceptible to teachers giving pop quizzes and mid-week assignments.
Not sure how that translates for a school counselor, but from the look of it, he’s plenty satisfied to join me in being a bad boy for a day.
He doesn’t even ask where we’re going. He just threw on an orange t-shirt that fits him snug on the arms and shoulders, some leg-hugging above-the-knee denim shorts, and a pair of sneakers that barely look like they’ve been worn more than twice. Then he hopped in the truck with me, turned on my radio, and kicked back while we burned the road.
I pull into the parking space and cut off the engine. Ryan is already staring out his window. “Terry Park,” he reads quietly off a nearby sign. “Holy shit.”
“You totally remember this place.”
“I totally fucking remember this place. After practice. And that one guy’s birthday party.”
I slap on my white cap, flip it backwards, then hop out of the truck. “It has the best paths. Fucking beautiful this time of day, don’t you think?” I ask while grabbing a backpack from the backseat, tossing my phone and keys into it, then slinging it over my shoulder.
“Perfect,” Ryan agrees.
We start heading down the path that cuts over a field toward the woods. Two weed-riddled soccer goals are set out on either end of the field, though there’s no kids playing with them. Ahead of us, the path disappears into the trees where it starts to trace the bank of a winding creek.
