Page 20 of The Boyfriend Boycott
“I’m kidding! Jeez, I never thought I’d have to tell you to lighten up.” I bark out a laugh. “I would never make you get rid of your bike.” His shoulders visibly relax. “You are getting a makeover though.”
“Spencer, what the fuck,” he groans, and I can’t help but smile.
“It’ll be fun bossing you around, don’t you think?” I joke, but inside I’m dead serious. This is my comfort zone. Calling the shots. Making the decisions. Maybe I will be good at PR. I’ve always seemed to figure out how to get my way.
CHAPTER 9
GRADY
I shutthe front door behind me and follow the sound of classic rock that’s blasting through the house down the hall to the spare bedroom. Hudson didn’t hear me when I came in, but he turns around now, as I shout his name over the music.
He sets down his paint roller and clicks off the old silver boombox he still uses on the job.
“It looks great in here,” I say, assessing the progress that he’s made today. He’s been working on this room over the last week, a special project I enlisted him for. I can tell he’s been working hard by the way his damp T-shirt is clinging to him, his sandy blond hair is damp as well, mussed and sticking up as if he’s just scrubbed his hand through it. Yesterday he finished putting up the trim that makes up the board and batten along the lower half of the wall, and today he’s finishing painting it a soft dusty blue. The same dusty blue paint dots the fabric of his T-shirt.
It’s not just this project he’s had a hand in; he’s put a lot of work into the house for me since I bought it from Dad. We’ve just about renovated the place top to bottom, which involved a lot of tearing down wood panelling and ripping up green shag carpet. This was the last room left, and I’ve been saving it for a special purpose.
“The final coat of paint just went on. Then I just have to hang up the light fixture. You can start bringing in furniture and finishing touches whenever you like,” Hudson says.
“Thanks for doing this, Hud.” I give him a smack on his shoulder. “I know it doesn’t need to be done for a couple of months yet, but I appreciate you fitting this in.” Business has been booming at the construction company, but the paycheck I offered him to work on this side project was enough motivation for him to reschedule his upcoming projects.
“You’re just lucky you asked me early. The next few months are going to be insane,” he answers, turning back to the paint roller on the drop cloth covering my hardwood. “Where have you been today anyways?”
“Out,” I say, dodging his question. “Care for a beer once you’re done cleaning up?” Hudson was one of the few people who saw how Spencer’s first visit to Heartwood threw me for a loop, and he’d be the first to call me out on spending time with her now.
“Sure. Let me finish cleaning up, and I’ll meet you out there.” Hudson retreats down the hall, and when he finds me again a few moments later, I’m already seated out on the patio, a cold beer in my hand, and one cracked for him on the table next to me. He picks it up and takes a swig, and I notice some sweat beading on his forehead.
“You never answered my question from before,” he says.
“Which one?” I deflect, but I know that Hudson is just curious about how I spent my day. He’s always been like that, interested in other people’s lives just for the sake of knowing them a little bit better.
“Where you were all day,” Hudson clarifies. “You weren’t at the bar, because you don’t smell like fry oil.” Hudson is the only one of the Landrys that inherited our mother’s blue eyes, and now they are piercing right through me.
“I took my bike out,” I half lie, and only by omission. “It’s such a beautiful day, wanted to take advantage since I haven’t been able to ride through the winter.” I don’t return Hudson’s eye contact. Instead, I let my gaze drift off towards the woods surrounding the back of the property where the four of us used to spend our days from sunup to sundown.
“Sure.” He takes a casual swig of his beer, a smug look on his face that I can’t quite place.
My phone buzzes on the table in between us, vibrating repeatedly. My eyes dart down to see Spencer’s contact on my screen, and her name comes up asRebel. The moment she admitted to giving a fake number to Carter the other night at the bar is a moment I wanted to memorialize. There was something about the fire behind her eyes that I couldn’t get enough of. Hudson is also looking at my phone screen, and I click it off, ignoring the call. I’ll call her back once he leaves.
“It’s her, isn’t it?” he says, more a statement than a question. “Spencer. You’ve been talking to her.”
I say nothing. Instead, I scrub a hand over my face.
“Just be careful, dude. That’s all I’m gonna say,”Hudson warns. Might be a little late for careful.
“There’s nothing going on between us,” I deflect, although I don’t sound convincing, and I know that I’m trying to convince myself more than Hudson at this point.
“Listen, I did the math. The last time she was in town was right before you went into that weird mopey phase of yours last year. Don’t think I don’t know what’s going on.”
“I did notmope.”I emphasize thep, popping my lips.Did I creep through every single one of her Instagram posts after she left? Sure. But I did not mope.
“You sure as shit did. I know what moping looks like because I’m an expert at it myself,” Hudson says, referring to the rough patch he went through after he graduated and his high schoolsweetheart left town. It took him years to get over Wren, if he ever did. The jury is still out on that one. I would bet anything that if she showed up in town tomorrow, Hudson would be just as fucked as I am when it comes to Spencer. “It was written all over your face. Now I’m convinced it was because you couldn’t stop thinking about her. I’ve never seen you so hung up on someone.”
“And there’s a good reason for that,” I answer. The fact is, Hudson has never seen me hung up on a woman because I don’t let myself get hung up on women. I made a point not to date again after my high school prom when shit went sideways, and I realized that I was going to have to be there for my brothers. When I did finally start seeing someone a few years ago, it ended with me heartbroken over a woman who was never meant for me in the first place. She got bored, said I was too predictable, too nice, and left. I didn’t know it was possible to betoo nice, but apparently it is, and I was.
“We don’t need you to be looking out for us anymore, Grady. Jett and I are adults now. We can take care of ourselves.” Something in Hudson’s words causes a sharp pang in my ribs. Realistically, I can tell myself that they don’t need me anymore. In reality, the thought of not being there for them makes me feel like I no longer have a purpose.
With Mom no longer around, Dad as good as absent with his workload at the clinic, and Mason already gone away to med school in Ontario, that left me as the man of the house. I didn’t know how to be the man of the house, so I was the next best thing. I was a big brother. I swore to myself that I would take care of them up until the day they didn’t need me anymore. I guess I never realized that day had already come and gone.
