I stayed where I was, telling myself not to be nosey and stand by the window.
But if I could hear them from all the way over here, that was different. I wasn’t really eavesdropping if they just happened to talk so loud I could overhear their conversation, right?
So that’s how I reasoned out what I did. I kept my gaze on the words of the book in front of me. But also kept an ear out. I had already spent enough time looking out my window at my brand-new car. I’d gone and traded it in after work the day before. The SUV was bigger than I’d planned on getting, but it had been love at first sight. Amos and Rhodes had both checked her out yesterday and approved of my purchase. Winter was coming, and all signs were pointing toward me being here for it.
I was thinking about that when I was pretty sure I heard a door being shut, followed by Amos’s mutter of, “Why does he have to stay here?”
“It’s only for the weekend,” his dad replied, not exactly sounding like he thought two days was that short of time either but trying to convince himself.
“All he’s gonna do is complain and bring up everything you’ve done wrong, Dad, like he always does.”
That made me frown.
“He doesn’t even really like us. He could come over for the day.”
“We don’t take his words to heart, man. In one ear, out the other,” Rhodes said.
I perked up at that and let my eyes stray toward the window. What the hell was up Granddaddy Rhodes’s ass? For Rhodes to tell Am not to let his words bother him…
“It doesn’t make sense why he gives you so much shit for not getting married when he literally married someone that used to attack him?”
“That’s enough, Am. We know how he is, and luckily, he only comes over a couple times a year—”
“Even though we live an hour away?”
The kid had a point there.
“I know, Am,” Rhodes pacified gently. “He comes from a different time. And I told you before, he’s got a lot of regrets, and it took me a long time to accept that the way he is, is his own way of caring.”
The kid grunted. “Can we invite Ora over? To distract him?”
I snorted and hoped like hell they couldn’t hear me.
“No, we’re not doing that to her.” There was a pause, and I think he might have snickered. “It would’ve been a good idea though. Then it wouldn’t be awkward silence… and it would be pretty funny to see his face.”
“Yeah, I bet she’d get him to tell her why it took him so long to divorce your mom.”
The car door slammed shut, and a split second later, a voice I didn’t recognize said, “I have a company who can come re-gravel the driveway for you, Tobias. I got a headache just from doing this stretch.”
I blinked.
“The driveway is fine, sir,” Rhodes replied in a voice I hadn’t heard from him in months. His Navy Voice, as Amos called it once when we’d brought up that first day we’d met and how pissed off Rhodes had been.
And who the hell called their dad “sir”？
“Welcome,” Rhodes kept going.
Welcome?
I had to slap my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing; I could only imagine what Amos’s face must look like. I wondered if he was turning red.
I was pretty sure I heard feet on the driveway. “Amos,” the unfamiliar voice said, “how is your mother? And Billy?”
“Fine.”
“You haven’t managed to gain any weight? Still not playing any sports?”
The silence was piercing. Overwhelming. I was pretty sure my ears were ringing.
“He’s perfect the way he is,” Rhodes spoke up in that same crisp, careful Navy Voice that reeked of whatever careful control he’d built up over the twenty years he spent in the military.
My sixth sense told me this wasn’t going to go well.
Like… really not going to go well.
Mostly because I was going to go beat the shit out of a grandfather for talking about my Amos like that. My sweet, shy friend had to be dying inside now. I knew he was self-conscious about his slim build, and here this fucker went and—
“Maybe he would be if you’d enrolled him in some when he was younger,” the old man replied. “He could use a cheeseburger or two.”
I growled and slowly closed my book.
“He was enrolled in the things that interested him,” Rhodes replied, his voice sounding grittier and grittier with each syllable. “He eats more than enough.”
The mean “Hmph” had me setting it down.