Page 44 of Doing Life

“Get your pants off, Sloan,” Will said.

“Hey, that’s my line,” Lance called.

He did love that little gasp that Sloan gave him. So he was grinning as he headed toward the hot tub, his cheeks all warm.

The room with the swimming pool and the hot tub was always a little disconcerting with the echoes and the weird way the splashing bounced on the tiles when he walked in. Still, he did it, and as soon as the door shut behind him, he heard a couple of guys call, “Hey, Lance,” and “I’m coming, Lance”.

Then he heard. “Good girl, Abby.”

“Hey, Lance, I was bubbling with Luke. It’s Rory.”

“Hey, Mr. Rory, you’re out of work early.” Rory was a lawyer—one of those big-in-a-small-town lawyers, somebody who wouldn’t really be anybody in the Metroplex.

But here he was a big turd in a teeny tiny pond.

And Rory knew it, which made him amusing.

“You know it. There was nothing good to do—no land to buy, no letters to dictate, no trouble or money to make. And I thought, well, I could stay here and pretend to work, but there were no billable hours to be had, so we shut down the office and sent everybody home, and I’m out here soaking my bones.”

Rory led him to the hot tub. “You’ve got three steps, remember?”

He nodded. He remembered, but it was good to have the reminder. Three steps, one big step, then on to the hot tub step.

His hand was put on the railings. “There you go. You want me to just put one of the dog beds down for Abby.”

“Do you mind?”

“Not at all.”

He loved that they had waterproofed dog beds here in the pool area for the dogs. Seriously, how cool was that? This place was like a mini magical universe.

No wonder it was so hard to leave.

He stepped into the hot water, the bubbles around his ankles so damn weird. He never remembered being able to feel the hairs on his legs moving, but he could now.

He could feel the bubbles pop; he could smell the chlorine from the pools—it bordered on overwhelming.

Rory helped him get settled, and then he heard the splash of Rory sitting. “There’s just me and Luke in the tub. Well, and you now.”

“How’s it going, man?” Luke asked, and he nodded.

“Good, I did yoga. There’s going to be spaghetti tonight. Sloan’s here. Will’s looking at his leg.” He hoped that was cool. He figured Will wouldn’t have offered, if it wasn’t.

“Yeah? Spaghetti sounds good. Matty’s cooking steaks. We told him we’d come and hang with him.”

“Yum.” He hadn’t quite figured out a classy way to cut steak up. He sank deeper into the water, the heat going up to his neck. “I want to talk to you about getting him a support dog. He has nightmares, and Abby could use the friend.”

There was a moment of silence and then Luke said, “Sure, no problem. He just needs to fill out some paperwork, and we’ll get him in to see our therapist here and get the ball rolling. Is he on any disability?”

“Fifteen percent.”

“That’ll do. Is he going to come in once Will’s done with him?”

“He doesn’t have any swim trunks,” he explained.

“Babe, could you run and grab some swim trunks for Lance’s man so he can come sit with us? You’re just so much faster.”

Rory snorted. “You just don’t like the fact that I’m not at work, and I know it. If I was at work, you wouldn’t be able to afford to ask me to go get swim trunks.”

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