Love Online(36)

I blew out a breath, deciding to concede. Ollie was going to flip out. “Bounce,” I said.

He squealed. “No way!”

Ryder turned around. “You said you wanted to come here, right?”

“Yeah, but I thought Eden said no.”

“Well, I rented out the place, so you won’t have to worry about anyone bumping into you.”

“How?” he asked.

Ollie had no concept of what it was like to have money. We always had to save for nice things.

“I pulled a few strings.”

When we entered, at least five people wearing the same neon orange shirts were lined up in a row, as if they were expecting us.

“Hello, Mr. McNamara,” one of them said.

Ryder nodded. “Hey.”

“The party room is set up for you. And you’ll have access to any of the trampolines on either level. The whole place is yours. We just need an adult to sign a waiver for him. We also have these non-slip socks for everyone.”

Ryder handed me the form to fill out. “Eden?”

Ollie was understandably confused. “Party room? It’s not my birthday.”

“The only way to rent out this place is for birthday parties,” Ryder explained. “So, I just asked them to give us all the party stuff, too. We get pizza and cake for twenty people. If I had more time, I would’ve had you invite your friends, but I wanted to surprise you, and I also remembered that it’s safer for you if no one else is around, so no one can knock into you. When’s your birthday anyway?”

“It was a few months ago.”

“See? I missed it. So, happy birthday.”

It was nice to see the smile on my brother’s face.

I signed the waiver, then began to remove Ollie’s socks to put on the ones he was required to wear.

Ollie looked up at Ryder. “You’ll jump with me, right?”

“Heck, yeah. Your sister’s gonna jump, too.” Ryder flashed me a smile that showed a glimpse of his inner child.

“Can we jump first, Ryder? Then eat?” Ollie asked.

“Whatever you want.”

I handed Ryder a pair of the special socks. “We all have to wear these.”

He examined them. “What do you know, Ollie? They make socks for Bigfoot-sized feet here.”

Ollie laughed.

We made our way up the stairs to the biggest room in the joint. It was just a series of connected, flat, rectangular trampolines. The space was practically the size of a basketball court.

Ryder kept a close eye on Ollie, so I didn’t have to do much except trail behind them as I admired the view. The way Ryder’s jeans hugged his ass was absolutely divine. I wondered if he and I would have alone time later, because I really wanted to taste his lips again. It was all I could think about.

As I watched him jump with my brother, I realized Ryder was definitely a kid at heart. They counted to three to coordinate landing on their butts at the exact same time.

I decided to venture away from them for a bit, giving myself my own space on one of the trampolines at the other corner of the room. I jumped as high as I wanted, feeling happier and freer than I had in a long time. But I knew that likely had little to do with flying freely in the air and everything to do with the man jumping onto his ass like a fool in the other corner.

When I finally returned to them, Ryder’s face lit up when he noticed me.

He patted his stomach as he turned to Ollie. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. Wanna go eat?”

Ollie slowed down his jumping and came to a stop. “Yeah. I’m hungry, too.”

We ventured downstairs to the party room. The table was set up with a couple of boxes of pizza, a pitcher of fruit punch, paper plates, and cups. On a table in the corner was a half-sheet cake that was supposed to be a trampoline. It had little people figures on the top.

After working up an appetite, we demolished an entire pizza and broke into the second. Ollie was working on his slice of cake when I took Ryder aside.

“I can’t thank you enough for this afternoon. No one has ever done anything like this for him. But please don’t feel like you need to do this kind of thing to make him happy. He would be just as happy with a pizza party at home.”

“I wanted to. I wanted to do something fun for him that he doesn’t normally have. It makes me even happier than it makes him. I promise, I won’t pull this over-the-top shit all of the time.”

“It seriously must have cost a fortune.”

“What good is having money if you can’t use it to make people happy? Do you know how much money I’ve spent over the years throwing parties for people I don’t even know? This day brought me more joy than I’ve had in a long time.”

I gripped the material of his shirt. “How can I ever thank you?”

“Again…so many ways I could answer that.” He winked.

“I know just how I’m gonna do it.”

He leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “Oh yeah? Do tell.”

“I’m taking tonight off.”

He slid his hand down to my ass. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to. One more night of missed work is not going to kill me. I don’t want to work when I could be spending this precious time with you.”

“You’re not gonna hear me complain about that, Eden.”