Page 92 of Cherry Picking
“Since when are you the reasonable one?”
He chuckles, presses off my hip, and steps back. “Go on. I’ll be out in a minute.”
Parker and Camry are sitting in their chairs chatting when I come back out, and two sets of eyes swing to me with unrestrained apprehension.
“I’m sorry,” I say to Camry, stuffing my hands in my jeans pockets. “I stepped on a sore subject, and you got caught in the crossfire. That wasn’t fair.”
The way she smiles reminds me of her brother. “It’s alright. I’m used to big, bad hockey players having a lot of big feelings. Must be all those muscles.”
Both her and Parker laugh, but when I turn to my brother, his face sours, and his eyes drop.
“Parker. Listen, bud. I’m sorry.” When he doesn’t look at me, I crouch down to his level and duck my head to meet his dark brown, troubled eyes. “I shouldn’t have blown up at you like that. I’m the adult. You’re the child. You had no way to know that fabric was important to me. Hell, I didn’t know it was important to me until I saw it.”
He finally focuses on me instead of the space beside my head, and his shoulders sag with his heavy sigh. “I’m sorry, too. I just wanted to do something nice.”
I’m an asshole.
I sling an arm around my brother’s shoulder, and for once he doesn’t shy away or wrinkle his nose. He folds in like the little kid he is, and if he sniffles, I pretend I don’t hear it.
We all wrap up the evening with my parents cleaning up and Camry offering to lend a hand, Parker running off to do his camp under the tree holiday tradition he picked up from who knows where.
It’s while I’m bringing some of the chairs back in to deposit in the closet under the stairs that it clicks Griffin hasn’t been around.
He sent me out to make my amends nearly a half hour ago, and I haven’t seen him since.
I head up the stairs to the bedroom and give it a firm knock before entering.
Griff is sitting on the bed with the content of his duffle bag—my duffle bag—poured out beside him. He’s stuffing a couple of things back inside, things like his own clothes and necessities.
“Getting a head start on packing?”
I expect him to laugh, to throw a “fuck you” over his shoulder, or something, but what I get is a strained smile.
“I kind of thought you’d take that back with you,” I say. “Put it by the door.”
He bobs his head, eyes sweeping over my mess of travel clothes and jersey.
“Thought it might do you better here.”
When I frown, he sighs, leaning back on his hands to stare at the ceiling.
“You acknowledged me today. In front of your family. Do you know how good that felt?”
I do. Because I was there. It felt like a merging of my two homes.
“Riley, how come you never came out for Matty?”
I blink. A couple of times to see through to the intent in the question. But I can’t find it.
“I wasn’t ready.”
“But you’ve pushed past that for me. Twice. Even when you weren’t certain.”
“Uh huh … I feel like there’s an accusation in there somewhere.”
He shakes his head. “No. Just … I should feel like I have more of you, right? But there’s still that little piece of you that’s out of reach.”
“Griff, are you okay?” I walk over to the bed and take a seat on the floor, placing a hand on his thigh.
