Love Me Forever - Juliana Stone Page 0,43

cheeks and arms, a Band-Aid on the knee hanging by a thread, and a new rip in his swim trunks, the boy looked like he’d had one hell of a good day.

“You did good out there,” he said, straightening and reaching for Benji’s outstretched hand.

Benji nodded and glanced up at Boone, sliding his glasses up his nose, though they were so dirty, Boone didn’t think it made much of a difference.

“Here, let me clean those.” He grabbed the glasses and walked over to the bench along the side of his boathouse. There was a bunch of cloths underneath. Once he rinsed the glasses over the side of the dock and cleaned them as best he could, he handed them back to Benji.

“Should we clean our fish?”

With a wide smile, Benji nodded, and the two of them got busy. It didn’t take Boone long, as he’d been cleaning his own fish since he was Benji’s age, but the bass and all those bones were proving difficult for his son.

“You want some help?” he asked.

Benji moved aside with a nod and sighed. “I’m not doing good.”

“Don’t worry about it. Bass are hard to clean, even for adults. Lots of bones.”

Boone finished the job, and once he hosed down the dock and locked up the boathouse, he grabbed the cooler and headed for the house. Boone ordered Benji into the shower, plugged in his phone, and headed for his own bathroom. Once he was clean, Benji joined him downstairs.

Boone prepared the fish while Benji sat on the island and washed their potatoes. There was salad already prepared in the fridge, so once they were done on the grill, dinner could be served.

Boone was just reaching for a cold beer when Benji hopped off the island. “Daddy, how old were you when you played football?”

Surprised, he glanced at his son and took a swig of beer. “Probably around your age, I guess.”

“Did you like it? Like right away?”

“Ball?” He nodded. “Yeah. I did. Not as much as hockey.”

“Is hockey fun?”

“I think it is.” Boone considered his son. Benji had never been particularly enthused about athletics. He’d rather snuggle up on the sofa with a book on pyramids or outer space, so Boone had never pushed it. He figured if his son was going to play hockey or baseball or football, it was going to be because he wanted to. Not because his father wanted it.

Boone wasn’t his old man.

“Are you thinking you’d like to play?” he asked, watching his son carefully. They were on the deck, and the fish and potatoes were foiled up and cooking on the grill.

Benji shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Something was up. Boone knelt down so he was face-to-face with his kid. “What’s going on, bud?”

Benji kicked at an invisible rock and took his time answering. “This boy Liam I met at the park asked me why I wasn’t playing summer football, and I told him I don’t like it all that much. I like hockey better. He says I’m a scaredy cat and that I’d never be as good as you anyway and that I’m a sissy with glasses and I’d suck at hockey because I can’t see anything.”

Benji’s chin trembled a bit, and he glanced away, sniffling and shoving up his glasses. Red-hot anger flushed Boone up but good, and he had to take a moment. The kid Liam was just a kid, with a streak of bully in him that one day would be his downfall. It wasn’t as if Boone could get up in his face and tell him off.

But he could take the time and do this right with Benji.

“Come here,” he said gently, pulling his boy onto his lap. “First of all, this kid Liam is probably insecure about himself, so he takes it out on other kids to make himself feel better.”

Benji nodded. “He’s mean to everyone.”

“Maybe he’s got stuff going on at home you don’t about. Stuff that makes him sad and insecure. Or maybe he’s just a bully. Whatever the reason, Benji, you’re gonna run into a lot of Liams in your life. You’re better off to ignore them and don’t engage. Got that?”

Benji nodded.

“And whether you play hockey or baseball or football is up to you. There’s no point playing for anyone other than yourself. And if you don’t have that love, if you’d rather go to science camp or the library or dance class—”

“Boys don’t dance,” Benji interrupted with a frown.

Boone chuckled. “Yeah, they do. Blue’s got a bunch of