Stray Fears - Gregory Ashe Page 0,52
moving around in the kitchen.
“Oh my God,” Elien said. “That smells so good.”
“Hi, boys,” my dad said. He was flipping channels and settled on golf. “Dag, that nice young man at Rouses asked me why you stopped texting him.”
I herded Elien toward the hall.
“What nice young man?” Elien called over my shoulder.
“Oh, Elien,” my dad said, twisting in the chair to talk to him. “He’s got these great eyes. Aquamarine, right, Gloria?”
“Turquoise,” she screamed from the kitchen.
“Turquoise,” my dad said.
“Nobody has turquoise eyes,” I said.
Elien was being surprisingly hard to manhandle into my bedroom.
“What about his body?” Elien said.
“Well, he’s very muscular,” my dad said.
“He’s not a bear,” my mom shouted from the kitchen.
“No, he’s not a bear,” my dad said. “More of a twunk.”
“Please stop,” I said—to Elien, my dad, the universe.
“Dag, he’s a twunk,” Elien said. “Is that Dag’s type?”
“Oh,” my dad said. “I mean, Jackson wasn’t quite as muscular. But Robbie had really strong thighs.”
“What about body hair?” Elien said.
“That’s it,” I said, and I got him over my good shoulder and carried him into my room.
“I think he manscapes,” my mom called after us. “He’d look very nice in a thong, I think.”
Elien giggled into my neck until we got to the room, and then I tossed him on the bed and pointed a finger at him. “You are still drunk.”
“A little. Your parents are cute.”
“Please don’t encourage them.”
He sprawled on the bed, dragging his arms and legs across the bedding. “This is comfy.”
“Great. I’m glad you like it. You can rent it out from my parents when I leave, and they’ll set you up with Chad from Rouses.”
“Oh my God, you actually texted him?”
“My dad made me promise.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And what happened?”
I rolled my eyes. “Let’s work on finding David.”
“In a minute. You texted him. What did you say?”
“Normal things.”
Rolling onto his side, Elien propped his head in his hand and said, “I’m really good at dating. And flirting.”
“Ok.”
“Let me help you.”
“That’s not really the focus here.”
“Hey,” Elien said, his hazel eyes still soft from the rum. “It’ll take five minutes. You deserve to be happy. This guy sounds super hot.”
“Yeah, well, I told you about my awesome track history with guys.”
“Don’t do that.”
I dropped into the desk chair. “What?”
“Don’t shut everything down because one asshole got inside your life and messed things up.”
“It’s not just—”
“I know, I know. Badge bucks. That’s just an excuse, though.”
“No, it’s—”
“Read me your texts to Chad.”
“No.”
With a grin creeping across his face, Elien began to bounce on the bed. “Oh, Dag, yes, give it to me!”
“Stop it,” I hissed. “Fine, please, I will read you the texts.”
As Elien bounced to a stop, he made a go-ahead gesture.
“Hi, Chad,” I read. “This is Dag. My dad said he met you at the grocery store. Super weird, sorry about that.”
“I mean, it’s not great,” Elien said.
“I do not need a running commentary.”
“Ok, ok. What’d he say?”
“‘Hahaha, no prob, your dad is really cool.’ And then I said, ‘No, my parents are the worst. Just murder me and you can pretend this never happened.’ And then he said, ‘Your dad said you were a deputy. I think murdering a deputy might be frowned on.’ And then I said, ‘Well, it’s justified if you get approached creepily while you’re doing your job.’ Elien, please, do I have to do this?”
“It’s cute. You guys are kind of bantering. He sounds smarter than I expected. A muscly twunk who works at Rouses and has a brain? You might be set for life.”
I stared at him.
Laughing, he said, “Ok, just tell me how you guys left it.”
“I said, ‘Maybe we could get a drink sometime,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, I’d like that.’”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Oh my God. What did he say when you gave him a date and a time?”
“I, um, didn’t want to annoy him.”
Elien gave me a look.
“And he brought up the deputy thing. It feels like more of the same badge buck shit.”
“He knows, like, two facts about you, and he learned them from having your dad proxy hit on him in a grocery store, while he was working. Maybe you can cut him a little slack.”
“Ok, we talked about this, so now let’s figure out where David—”
“No, no, no. We’re going to get you on a date, and we are going to get you boned within an inch of your life.”
“I don’t really want to be boned within an inch of my life. It sounds uncomfortable, and—”
Elien surged off the bed and grabbed the phone