Ella heaves a sigh and moves back over to the cooker to turn down the heat. “Well, that’s two kids down,” she murmurs.
Chase obviously likes the idea of there being fewer people at the table, because he grins and yells, “More ribs for me!”
Dinner ends up feeling pretty weird with just the four of us. Chase and I make small talk while Dad and Ella share more elaborate summaries of their days. When they’re not looking, I offer Chase a rib or two.
And dinner as a whole runs relatively smoothly until the phone rings. We think nothing of it until Dad rushes back into the kitchen. He tosses the wireless phone onto the counter and grabs his keys. “That was Grace,” he explains quickly, his wide eyes on Ella as she warily stands. “Jamie’s fallen on his wrist. She says it could be broken. We better go.”
Ella’s face distorts as she presses a limp hand to her forehead. “Not this all over again!”
“He’ll be fine,” Dad tells her firmly. “Let’s go get him.”
Ella rushes around the kitchen to check that everything is switched off, because she can’t have the house catching on fire while she’s gone, and then she pauses at the archway to the hall. She strains her neck around to face me. “Can you and Tyler please stay here and keep an eye on Chase?”
I quickly nod as I stand up. “Go.”
She offers me a thankful smile before fleeing out of the house and into the car with Dad. As the engine fades away into nothing, the only noise I hear is Chase slurping the barbecue sauce off his plate.
I begin gathering all of the dishes into a pile as he finishes eating. “Good ribs, huh?”
“Amazing ribs,” he corrects. He tosses the final bone onto his plate and smiles. “Mmm.”
Rolling my eyes, I reach for his plate and add it to the stack before carefully carrying them over to the dishwasher. I almost throw the bones into the garbage disposal before noticing my mistake and dumping them in the trash instead. “So does Jamie break his wrist often or something?”
“No,” Chase says. He’s suddenly by my side, opening up the dishwasher for me and beginning to place all the used cutlery inside. “Tyler does.”
“Oh man,” I say, and then I smile to myself. “I thought he was tougher than that.”
With Chase’s help, we get the kitchen cleaned up in the space of ten minutes, and then he heads into the living room to watch TV while I ensure the front door is locked. Now that Tyler and I are close to being alone in the house, I decide it’s the perfect time to try to talk to him again. I can’t tell if he’s mad at me or mad at himself, but either way he’s pretty furious, and I prefer to see him in a good mood.
He’s sitting on the edge of his bed when I push open the door to his room. His head is low and his hands are interlocked in front of him, his room silent.
“We’re watching Chase,” I say quietly, to let him know that I’m there. “Jamie’s maybe broken his wrist.”
Immediately his eyes flash up to meet mine, and suddenly he’s getting to his feet. There’s panic on his face. “What happened? Where is he? Who?”
I’m a little taken aback by his outburst, and his questions only confuse me. “What?”
He clears his throat. “I mean, how?”
“I think he fell on it,” I tell him. He looks like he might pass out, so I decide to lighten the mood and say, “I heard you’ve broken yours, tough guy,” as I wiggle my eyebrows at him. But it completely backfires.
His eyes dilate with a mixture of anger and shock at my joke. “Who told you that?”
“Um, Chase.” His sudden outrage surprises me, so I look into his eyes to get a clue to why he’s so mad. I can’t quite figure him out. “What’s wrong?”
He drops his eyes to the floor and back up again. He takes a step toward me. “What else did the kid tell you?”
“Nothing,” I whisper as his eyes pierce mine.
Another step. “Are you sure?”
“Stop freaking out.” He ignores me, not reacting as his fierce eyes scan my body. “I’m sure,” I quickly add.
“You know what? I can’t deal with this,” he snaps. Shaking his head and breaking our eye contact, he turns away from me and heads for his bathroom. “I can’t deal with you and I can’t deal with Tiffani. I can’t deal with your dumb questions and I can’t deal with Tiffani’s whining. I can’t deal with any of it right now.” As though he’s out of breath, he exhales rapidly as he grabs onto the edge of the sink and stares at the faucet.
“You’re getting so worked up,” I say as I approach him from behind, pushing open the door farther so I can stand inside the small bathroom with him.
“Watch the door,” he mutters. “The lock is fucked.”