Ball & Chain(49)
Nick stared at his best friend for a few beats before saying, “What?”
Ty slammed his hand on the bar top. “He said no! Twice!”
“Ty.” Nick sighed, rubbing his temple as he recognized the warning signs of Ty winding up.
“No, no. Three times! Three times he’s turned me down!”
Nick reached for the aspirin Ty had brought him.
“Three times!”
“Tyler, listen, I’m really sorry about the . . . three times, but you seem to be handling it pretty well this far, and this isn’t one of those instances where I need to talk you off the edge, so could we maybe save this until after I eat?”
“Look, a beautiful beach in Scotland? Nope. Castle? Nuh uh. Rug in front of a fire?”
“Oh God, stop. Ty, please,” Nick said quickly. He put his head in his hands. “That’s . . . no.”
Ty cleared his throat and nodded. “Sorry.”
Nick watched him for a few seconds, still covering half his face with one hand. Ty looked absolutely miserable. He might have seemed like he was handling the rejections well, but Nick could see underneath the mask just like he’d always been able to. “Condolences on getting shot down. Repeatedly.”
Ty didn’t even glare at him. He looked like a kicked puppy, and it made Nick want to slam his face into the wet bar. “You need to talk about it, babe?”
“Please. I’m going fucking insane trying not to give him . . . puppy eyes and beg him to rethink it.”
“Well, you can quit giving me puppy eyes. You’ve asked him three times?” Nick asked, hating himself for giving in and feeling sorry for Ty instead of feeling sorry for himself right now.
Ty nodded. “He said I hadn’t thought it through yet.”
“He’s probably right.”
“You’re supposed to be on my side, here,” Ty grunted.
“I’m on the side of the righteous, babe; means I’m rarely on your side.”
Ty barked a laugh.
“What kind of time span are we talking here?”
“I asked him the night we got here,” Ty said as he began to play with one of Nick’s extra pens. “Before the dinner.”
“You’ve asked him to marry you three times in thirty-six hours?”
Ty smacked his hand on the bar again. “If I had you on the balcony of a castle with the motherfucking wilds of fucking Scotland out the window and I asked you to marry me, wouldn’t you say yes?”
Nick shook his head. “No.”
“Damn it!”
“It’s not the location that’ll reel Zane in, Ty.”
Ty looked almost desperate when he realized Nick was willing to give him advice. He leaned forward. “What do I do?”
“Well . . . he said you hadn’t thought it through. So think it the fuck through for him. Let him know you’re serious and you’re thinking about life instead of just wearing a ring. You know him. I mean, think about it, how would you propose to me?”
Ty waited a beat, then said, “Season tickets at Fenway and a ring in your beer during the seventh inning.”
Nick waved a hand. “And I’m yours.” They both laughed. Nick was still smiling when he dropped his voice to a more serious note. “What are Zane’s season tickets? What’s the thing that will tell him you’re in it for the long haul and you want him there with you? It’s sure as hell not a beach in Scotland.”
Ty nodded, his gaze losing focus. Nick let him ruminate for a few seconds, until Ty finally snapped out of it. “Thanks, Irish.”
“He’ll say yes eventually.” Nick looked back down at his notes, trying to remember where they’d been in the interview. “Okay, so you were on the beach getting shot down by the love of your life.”
Ty grumbled wordlessly.
Nick smirked and fought to recover a straight face. “Did you see anyone else while you were out there?”
“Yeah, there were two people walking. Guy and a girl. We passed them.”
Nick frowned at his notes. He paged through them. “What time was this?”
“Maybe . . . half past midnight.”
Nick pulled out every page of interview notes with a woman. No one, man or woman, had mentioned being out on the beach for a walk. “What’d they look like?”
“I don’t know.”
Nick glanced up, eyes going wider. “You don’t know?”
“I didn’t . . . look at them. I don’t know. The girl was wearing a dress.”
“Ty, every woman on the island was wearing a dress last night.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t pay attention to them.”
“Were they young, old? Flustered, composed? Hair color, height? Were they hot, not? Were they bloody and carrying a very large rock?”