I glance at the cards on the table, and then at the cards in my hand. I push two chips onto the table almost before I notice that I’ve got three of a kind. “Okay. Sorry.”
Everyone frowns at me simultaneously. “Fricking Kieran,” Kyle says with a sigh. “You can’t tell when he’s bluffing, because he always has that same expression.”
“The original poker face,” my cousin Dylan agrees.
They’re right. Because I’m always bluffing.
Always.
At eight o’clock, it’s finally time to leave. I say goodnight to all the Tuxbury Shipleys, and congratulate my grandpa on his poker wins. “I’ll get you next time, you old coot.”
“Sure you will,” he scoffs. “Bring more cash next time.”
“Will do.” Then I say goodbye to my parents, as my father walks slowly and painfully toward their car.
At last, I hurry towards my truck, eager to go home and see how Roddy is doing.
“Kieran? Can I ask you a favor?” my brother calls.
Uh-oh. “What is it?”
“Well, I know it’s kinda late, and it’s kinda Christmas. But I was hoping you could come home with me for a couple of hours and replace the hinges on the barnyard gate.”
“What? Why?”
He rubs the back of his neck. “Dad hit the gate with the tractor this morning. His mobility is still pretty bad.”
“Even for driving? Shit.” I glance toward my parents’ car and see my mother at the wheel. If he let her drive, it must be bad.
“Yeah.” Kyle sighs. “He wanted to fix it with me tomorrow. But if we fixed it without him, we could pass it off as a Christmas gift. I kinda don’t think he should be lifting anything. And we’ll need to manhandle that gate.”
“Sure,” I agree. It won’t be fun in the dark. But farming always throws you these challenges at the most awkward times. “Let’s go.”
It’s eleven p.m. before I can head home. But the gate is fixed. And Kyle and I strategized about how to keep Dad busy until he’s healed enough to work comfortably.
“I told him it was a good time to fix that baler connection that’s been acting up. He can tinker with that thing while he’s sitting down.”
“Maybe,” I’d hedged. “Or maybe he just needs another few weeks off.” The truth is that there aren’t a lot of desk jobs on a farm, except for keeping the books and ordering seed.
“You try telling him that,” Kyle had muttered.
The house is completely dark when I get home, except for the Christmas tree in the living room window. This morning I was so excited to give Roddy his gift. And then we had epic sex. Inside the walls of this house, my life is exactly how I want it to be. Keeping my joy behind walls is something I’m used to, but Roddy isn’t. And I’m the jerk who’s asking him to do it indefinitely.
I enter the house quietly, dropping my coat on the rack, and putting a piece of pie I brought home for Roddy in the fridge. I stop by the living room to turn off the tree before I go to bed, and that’s where I find him, curled up on the sofa, his sleeping bag over his body, his head on a pillow. Instead of my bed—the bed I’ve come to consider our bed—he’s tucked himself in on the couch.
I feel sick. All I can do is stand here, frozen, wondering what’s happened to us. Is this it? Have I lost him already?
My worried gaze takes in two empty bottles of wine on the table. But then I notice that there are three wine glasses and a soda bottle, too. And a mostly eaten bowl of popcorn.
I want to wake him up and ask a hundred questions. Who was here? How are you? Why aren’t you upstairs in our bed?
But instead, I turn off the Christmas-tree lights and climb the stairs alone.
Things don’t improve the next day. At all. Roderick goes to work before I get up. When we’re working the coffee counter together during the morning rush, I ask him if his evening was okay.
“It was surprisingly nice,” he says, then gives me a sheepish smile. “I served two hundred helpings of ham and got drunk with the priest, Sophie, and Jude the mechanic.”
“Jude doesn’t drink,” I say stupidly.
“Right.” He nods. “But he didn’t mind that we did.”
“Oh, you mean after the community supper,” I say slowly. And now I understand. Father Peters is a top-notch recruiter of idle hands. “That’s cool.” Except I spent all of yesterday worrying about poor Roderick alone at home. Meanwhile, he was getting wasted with new friends.
“Father Peters is nothing like I’d expect him to be,” Roderick says, frothing a pitcher of milk. “He’s a good time.”
“Can we talk?” I ask suddenly.
Roderick looks up at the line of people in front of us and raises an eyebrow at me. As if to say, Is this really the time?
It isn’t, of course. But later, when I go looking for Roderick on his break, I find him standing outside the kitchen door on his phone, ordering a twin-sized bed from the mattress store.
That evening after work, I watch, depressed, as the same delivery guys who brought my mattress set up Roddy’s in his downstairs room. I feel blindsided, and after they leave, I stand in his doorway and blurt, “Why are you doing this?”
He’s silent a moment, busy unwrapping his new sheets. Then he drops them on the mattress, turns around, and sits on the edge of the bed. “We need a little distance, I think.”
“Why? One minute everything was great, and the next minute you’re like a stranger again.”
“That’s not true,” he says, fiddling with the piping on the edge of his new mattress. “But we have a problem. And the problem is that I love you.” He looks up, gutting me with his sad expression. “And I know you also care about me. But I’m not in the right place in my life to have a secret relationship with you.”
I love you. The words reverberate through my chest as I stay there in the doorway, struggling with what to say.
“—And you’re not in the right place in your life to come out. It isn’t anybody’s fault. It’s just true.”
“But maybe I will be someday.” Not that it’s easy to picture.
“See, I know you mean that. You’re one of the most honest people I know.” He folds his arms in close, as if trying to warm himself, and it seems like there are five miles between us, instead of five feet. “But I refuse to put pressure on you. And I refuse to ignore what I need, too. What if there’s some guy out there who’s ready to be my other half?”
Ouch. Times a million. The thought of him meeting someone else tears me to shreds. But I’m suddenly too angry to give him the satisfaction of saying so.
“It’s not your fault that I’ve been down this road before,” he says. “But I cannot make the same mistakes again.”
“But I’m not your jerkoff of an ex.”
His smile is sad. “Nope. You’re a hundred times more worthy. And thank you for reminding me that I don’t have to shop at Jerks Are Us anymore. Even so, I’m going to look around for another apartment, Kieran. It will take me a while, because Jude says my car needs even more work, and cash is always tight. But it’s better if I live somewhere else. Wouldn’t you agree?”