Page 75 of Just A Little Joy

“Hey, Rory, I’m gonna go step outside on the porch. I need to…um…call my friend about Alaska.” I hated how shaky my voice sounded.

Rory gave me an odd look but nodded. “Yeah, yeah, that’s fine. Go ahead. We need to refill our snack plates anyway.”

“Don’t you think you’ve all had enough sugar tonight?” Gabe asked from beside him.

“No, Daddy, I do not,” Rory said primly.

Gabe put his hands up with a laugh. “Just thought I’d ask. Clearly, I’m wrong.”

Rory shifted over, kissed his cheek, and gave him a mischievous grin. “Thanks for admitting that, Daddy.”

“Gabe, are you gonna let him get away with that?” Anders asked from his chair.

“I am,” Gabe said, matching Rory’s smile. “I absolutely am.”

On that note, I hauled myself off the couch and hurried outside. The bracing sea air cleared the fuzz from the wine, but that was about it. It wasn’t doing a damn thing to untangle the mess of emotions strangling my chest. The only thing I could think to do was lean against the house and pretend Daddy was next to me, holding my hand, rubbing my arm, cuddling me because it was cold as hell out here.

“You need a jacket.”

The voice rasped through the dark, and it sounded so real that I froze. It was weird. It was too real. It almost sounded like he was standing right next to me.

“Is there a reason you’re not answering, or just because?” the voice asked again.

“If I’m going to imagine things, I don’t know that responding to my own imagination aloud is the world’s greatest idea,” I muttered. “That would be a manifestation taken in a terrible direction.”

Before my imaginary Daddy could reply, I felt the heaviness of a thick wool coat settle around my shoulders and the waft of real Daddy’s cologne. I opened one eye and stared straight into Travis’s warm brown eyes.

“Oh. You came.”

“Did you think I was lying?”

“Lying? About what?”

“My text. I said I was running late because I had to swing by the bar to fix one of the taps.”

“I think I left my phone in my coat pocket.”

“Well, that explains why it was stuck on ‘delivered.’” We stared at each other longer than made sense. “What brings you out here?”

“I just needed some breathing room. The Pictionary game was getting testy. Are you any good at it?”

“Nope, I suck at it.”

“Oh, you’ll fit right in because none of us are any good at it…” My voice trailed off. I cleared my throat to try and hide the lump lodged there, but I sounded brittle and uneven.

A tap hit the window looking out onto the porch, breaking whatever spell we were under. I glanced over my shoulder and caught the boys scrambling away from it, clearly trying to hide the fact that they’d been watching. Maybe listening too.

Suddenly, I was exhausted. All of it felt too much and too heavy, and I had no idea how to process any of it. I just wanted to be home. If I was going to go, I wanted it over with. Done. Clean break.

“Bub, you want me to take you home?”

“How did you know?”

Our breath fogged in the cold between us, and if that wasn’t a damn metaphor, I didn’t know what one was. Or maybe it was a simile. Crap. I should’ve paid more attention in school.

“Because I know you.” Daddy paused, then added, steady and sure, “Because I love you.”

“Don’t say that.” It came out small and strangled even to my own ears.