Starts with a Match

First Fight or First Flight

Toby's talking about the barbecue on the drive home. The one I totally checked out of as soon as I finished talking to Don and Jim. I'm not really listening, sitting with crossed arms and crossed legs in the passenger seat. Guess they're really hitting it off with my friends. Hannah wants Toby to workout with her sometime, go running.

Jim, after he left me and Donovan to go talk to his wife, started chatting it up with Toby, too. Beth says that she's invited the new person, Leah Fin, to the spouse event this week. Leah was invited to the barbecue, too, but her and her husband couldn't make it.

Toby got invited to go shooting with the two of them. I'm invited, too. Double date. Invited, invited, please, no one invites me to anything. More like an afterthought.

I'm too sober to be so bitter right now.

I don't care about the kids thing. I swear I don't.

But I care about the secrets.

Claire had secrets from me. She hid how bad we were doing with money until we got kicked out from three different complexes and lived on the streets for four weeks before a friend took us in.

She lied about where some of the money was going when she went through a pot phase.

Lied when she had to sell Mom and Dad's wedding rings in order to get us groceries and pay for a dentist appointment for me.

She hid two pregnancies from two different guys, until the first one ended in a miscarriage, and the second an abortion. I would've helped her. Done my best as a kid, gotten more hours at the gym I worked at under the table after school. I would've supported the abortion decision, too. If she'd just told me.

Is there anything else Toby hasn't told me? Did they even have roommates, did they even have a crazy fucking stalker ex? Why did they agree to move in with me? To marry me? No sane person would do that unless they were hiding something massive—

Oh, we're home.

Toby hops out of the truck and wanders toward the door, looking back at me once, twice. They tilt their head and wave a hand my direction, and I thump down and stoop around them, unlocking the door. "You good, Kooper?" they ask, walking in after me.

I hum and drop my keys in the bowl on the mud bench they set up by the front door. Waste of space, never needed a mud bench, just takes an extra twenty seconds to carry my damn keys into the kitchen and set them there.

I sit and start to unlace my boots to put them by the bench. Toby's still in their sneakers.

I look them over and stand up straight again. "What?"

They smile and put hands in their pockets. "Wanna go for a walk?"

"We just got done with a park. Are you not satisfied with the outdoor air?"

Toby chuckles and my eyes keep darting to their abdomen. Do they have scars from the surgery? Was it even a surgery? Did they lie about that to Beth?

"I like being outside. We can go around the neighborhood. I've been wanting to go see the playground at the elementary school nearby."

Why? Not for your future kids, that's for sure. "Go for it." I'm an asshole. Toby's smile slips.

"You sure you okay?"

"I said I was, didn't I?" I ask, deciding I want my shoes on after all, and I want my keys, so I can go get something to drink at Walmart.

"No, actually, you kinda just grunted at me. What's going on?" My nails are sharp as I scratch at the back of my neck, through my hair.