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“Oh, hey,” Tyler said warily as he hoisted the huge bag holding his equipment higher on his shoulder. He was windblown, his cheeks red, his hair all over the place. His cuteness rose one level. If only he would gaze at me with something other than distrust. Just once…
“Hey, so, I made dinner tonight and thought this might be tasty.” I held out the container, then realized I had brought no silverware for him to use. “Crap, hold on.” I shoved the chili into his chest, the container bumping the skates hanging over his shoulder, and dug into my backpack like a frantic mole. “I probs have some plastic cutlery in here. Mom always takes home a few handfuls from work.” I realized what I had said and blanched, my sight flying to Tyler as I rummaged around in my backpack. “Not that she steals or anything. She brings home food for dinner sometimes and throws in lots of napkins and extra silverware because my sisters always drop theirs on the floor. The back seat of Mom’s car looks like a silverware graveyard with Barbie shoe sprinkles.”
Tyler smiled. A real smile that made his green eyes glow like hand-polished emeralds. My empty belly twisted tighter as my dick decided now was the time to wake up and stir around in my briefs. I wanted to fucking die. Thank God, my winter coat was long enough to hide my embarrassment.
“That’s funny,” he confessed, his smile fading as he must have noticed who he was smiling at. Then, the corners of his mouth straightened while his brow furrowed. “Why do you keep bringing me food?” he asked, and hey, it was a legit question.
Wished I had a good answer. One that wouldn’t sound like a wooden plaque hanging on the kitchen wall. After twenty seconds passed and I said nothing, I blurted out the solo thing that was rolling around inside my head.
“Food is love,” I answered. Tyler’s eyes rounded. “Mom says,” I tacked on as panic threatened to make me toss the baggie containing a spork and napkin at Tyler, then race off into the night howling in embarrassment. “Mom says that food makes everything better. So yeah, chili that I made with beans. Don’t eat the beans if you don’t want. My little sister Gemma has a bean screen, Dad likes to tease. She picks out all the beans, then feeds them to my dad, which Mom asks her not to do because Mom has to sleep with Dad.”
Tyler stood there, mouth slightly open and eyes wide, staring at me as I blathered on about my dad’s bean farts. The earth could open up and swallow me right now, and I would be totally down with that. “Not saying that you fart or anything because, hey, maybe you don’t. And if you eat that, and you do stink out the locker room, then that’s… uhm… well, it’s kind of funny right?” He blinked. “Cool, yeah, so I’m going to go and do…” I jerked the spork in the direction of the ice. “Take some ice pictures. Yeah, lots of ice pics. Totally makes the ice hockey connection even more… connected.”
I placed the spork and napkin atop his container, backed up, and took a step towards the seats that I planned to crawl under and live forever like the troll that I was. Maybe I would charge people a toll of one candy bar to get to their seats.
“I like the beans,” Tyler said, his expression shifting from confusion to something softer… maybe? I was about to say something—it would have been stupid anyway—when Soren and Felix arrived with shouts and bitter winter winds. They hustled inside, laughing and holding hands, then froze when they saw the great chili charity event taking place in front of them.
“Oh, hey,” Soren said cautiously.
Felix bristled.
I rolled my eyes and walked off, leaving them to be best buddies or whatever it was they were doing.
“Jonah?” Tyler called. I stopped, inhaled to steel myself against the dislike surely coming my way, and glanced back over my shoulder. “Thanks,” Tyler said as a brief, shy smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
I inclined my head in a super cool way, then walked to the ice feeling much lighter than I had in years. Maybe Mom was right, and foodwaslove. Or like. Even trolls could like a cute guy, right?
ChapterSix
Tyler
It was really nice chili,the kind that didn’t quite blow my head off, but was spicy enough to make my tongue burn. It might puzzle me as to why Jonah gave me chili, but that didn’t mean I was confused about eating it—I was a growing boy and ate everything in sight, or so Mom said. Added to that, hockey was intense, and I used up a lot of energy, which was why on top of the chili, I was now eating a second dinner—my mom’s chicken parm.
“… and then the trustees finally admitted it’s airtight,” she finished, and sat back in her chair, a cloud of relief around her. “And that’s the last thing tying your father to us.”
I nodded, much as I had been doing through this entire conversation. She’d lost me when she started explaining the legal side of the prenup my dad had been made to sign before becoming part of the Corrigan family. My grandparents hadn’t thought much of Clive McAdams back then, hence the prenup, which saved the family fortune from falling into his hands, which sounded kind of dramatic, but was true. Not that I had any idea what my grandparents thought of things now, given my mom had cut all ties to them a while back.
They’d been proponents of letting Clive stay married to Mom, stay as my dad—they didn’t seem to care he was abusive, or that he made our lives miserable. As far as they were concerned it was all about saving face.
We weren’t super rich by any stretch of the imagination, but my grandmother considered herself as being blue blood and had enough invested in her social stock that, to her, appearances were everything. She didn’t want anyone to see that the Boston Corrigans weren’t anything but perfect, and that included closing my mom down when she threatened to go public with what my dad had done to her, and by extension, me. In a very rare moment of passion, my grandmother persuaded Mom that out of sight was out of mind, and promised she’d find a way to ensure he wouldn’t worry us anymore.
I hated that he was still out there, not paying for what he’d done, and I hated that he still had the influence to make Mom blanch every time there was a dropped call, or that fear of him meant she barely left the house, apart from going to watch my hockey games.
“Aren’t you hungry?” she asked, and I glanced at my plate where I’d been pushing chicken into a pile in the middle. Then, she pressed a hand to my head. “You’re not hot.”
I rolled my eyes at her with affection. “Jonah made me chili, and I ate it after hockey.”
She frowned, then paled. “Jonah who… Felix’s friend… the one who…”
She couldn’t get the words out, knowing the weight of them.
“He was never the super bad one,” I said in Jonah’s defense. Why was I defending him?
“He still scared you.”
To Mom, that was the framework of her life. She’d been scared so often that everything she did was imbued with tension. She jumped at the slightest noise; she worried about me all the time; and she hated herself for it. Only recently had she seemed to smile, and I put that down to Felix’s dad, who’d shown her nothing but kindness. So much so that I wondered if maybe they might start dating, which would make me and Felix dating-in-laws, which I knew wasn’t a thing, but still, it was a big switch around from him taking his frustrations at life out on me.
“I think he’s trying to make amends, or friends, or I don’t know.”
