Hold On (The 'Burg #6)(111)

My heart sank to my stomach.

That was so not Merry.

Mom looked at me and I instantly saw that her enthusiasm at having a new addition to her family dinner, this being a good guy who was into her daughter, had died.

She wasn’t freaking like me.

She was disappointed.

Then again, she didn’t go all out for dinner, cleaning her house, even putting out flowers Merry would most definitely see and know that was an outlay Mom didn’t splurge on often (her doing it to show Merry he was making the right choice of possibly wanting to be a part of this family) to have him act like the last place he wanted to be was there.

I had nothing for my mom, nonverbally and definitely not verbally, to explain what was going on with Merry.

What I wanted was to kick him in the shin, this my way of telling him to snap out of it at the same time asking him what the f*ck was his problem.

That was the Cher way of dealing with things.

But after nearly blowing it with Merry, I needed to learn not to do shit like that. I couldn’t react, mouth off, or do something stupid and then face the consequences later. Not without risking f*cking us up, and I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do that.

But this wasn’t Merry. Not even a little bit. I’d never seen him like this. Even when Tanner and Rocky were on the bumpy path of their reunion, something neither Merry nor his dad hid was just as bumpy for them, he didn’t get like this. Not when he had a shitty case he was investigating that took time and effort that, in the end if he closed it, only allowed him to give a small measure of relief to the people who’d had their lives irrevocably altered when the shit of life buried them under the stink.

“I hear you have a boat,” Mom noted, attempting to snap Merry out of it by engaging him in conversation.

“Yep,” he told his plate.

He said no more.

Well, that didn’t work.

“You got a boat?” Ethan piped up excitedly.

That got him. Merry looked to my son, the blankness leaving his face, and it softened.

“I do, bud,” he said quietly. “But, just to say, it’s for sale.”

I stared at him because I had no clue he was selling his boat. I’d actually never been officially informed he had a boat.

I didn’t do healthy relationships until now (arguably, especially at this moment), but that seemed like something to share, say, when he was hanging at J&J’s having a drink. Or perhaps when we were making out on my couch and feeling each other up last night after Ethan went to sleep. Or during dinner at Swank’s, waffles at my place, lunches (plural) at Frank’s, or in one of what I was now seeing were the not-very-informative texts he’d sent me.

“Why are you selling it?” Mom asked.

Merry looked to her. “In the market to get a house. Got a realtor; she sent some listings. Looked through eighteen of ’em. Didn’t like what I saw except for two, both outside my price range. To make ’em in my price range, I gotta liquidate some things for the down payment.”

I kept staring at him, because selling your boat might not be something that you’d share with the woman in your life but buying a house definitely was.

I wanted to be smart. Not get ticked or more freaked but instead twist that to something happy.

First, Merry out of that crappy apartment. Second, the idea he was doing that now, after he’d decided to take a shot at an us with me.

But the way he gave Mom that information, void of emotion, didn’t sit well with me.

Mom didn’t care about the void-of-emotion part.

She went straight to the twisting.

“You’re in the market for a house?” Her voice was an octave higher, filled with hope and excitement.

“Yeah, Grace. Don’t live in a great place. Time to move on,” Merry answered, no inflection in his tone at all.

Mom gave happy eyes to me.

Ethan declared, “A boat is better than a house.”

“You don’t have my view, buddy,” Merry replied.

“View is always better from a boat,” Ethan informed him.

Finally, one side of Merry’s lips curled up. “Can’t argue that.”

“Have more corn, Garrett,” Mom urged, seeing his plate almost clean and picking up the bowl of corn.

“Prefer seconds of that casserole, Grace,” he returned.

She dropped the corn so fast it clattered and nabbed the casserole.

With Merry reengaged (sort of), the rest of dinner and dessert went okay.

Not great.

Just okay.

And okay was so…not…Merry.

After we were done, Mom shooed the boys out so the women could do the dishes, something she’d normally never do because she wasn’t about “women’s work” unless that work involved pushing out babies, which was only women’s work due to biology.

Which meant she wanted to be alone with me to hash out what was going on with Merry.

The guys hit the living room and I hit the sink, wanting to hash out what was going on with Merry too. The problem with that was, in this scenario, it was me who had to provide the information and I had no clue.

Mom got close with the meatloaf platter and a Tupperware container.

“Garrett’s being strange. Are you two okay?” she asked under her breath, seeing as her house was nearly as tiny as mine and they were in the next room.