It’s moments like these that I don’t need him to tell me that he loves me. I can feel it deep inside. It’s what makes me believe that I can do anything—even this.
Reluctantly, he lets me go, and I place my hand on Will’s shoulder, urging him to step aside. I take a deep breath and twist the knob.
“Ivy!” Tim exclaims, taking a step back. He clearly wasn’t expecting to see me standing there.
He looks terrible. His posture is slouched. His beard is unkempt with stubble trailing down his neck. His knit hat, while bright orange, is riddled with holes. But what gives me hope is that his eyes brightened the minute he saw me. I can still get through to him on some level.
“Come in, and warm yourselves up before you head out into the woods,” I encourage, indicating that I don’t plan on holding them up. “Eric has a pot of coffee going.”
I take a few steps back, giving them room to enter. But hearing me mention Eric’s name makes Tim hesitate. He knows what he’s about to face—and the person who’s waiting for him on the other side of the door—the second he steps over the threshold.
Will, sensing the general unease, moves beside me, smiling warmly first at Tim before his gaze comes to linger on Ben. Will and Ben are speaking furiously to each other with their eyes as Ben gives Tim a gentle shove, pushing him through the doorway.
Tim looks like a caged animal as he glances nervously around until his eyes land on Eric, who has his arms crossed, staring him down. If anyone’s going to break the ice, it’s going to have to be Tim, because Eric’s not going to budge. Tim starts to smirk, yanking off his hat and balling it in his fist. From the back, his hair is sticking out in every direction. I’ve never seen him so out of sorts, looking like he has nothing left to lose.
“If you’re still brewing that sludge you call coffee, I’ll have a cup,” Tim chuckles, brushing past Eric and into the kitchen.
That was a ballsy move, especially when I think back on how Eric reacted when Will pulled the same stunt the morning he brought us that bogus copy of the Gazette. I know that Eric doesn’t take kindly to being disrespected in his own house. Here I was, lecturing Eric on being polite, and Tim’s the one acting rude. These boys are driving me crazy.
But Eric floors me when he laughs instead of throwing Tim up against the wall.
“Yeah, screw you, man. At least I know enough to put a filter in first, unlike you,” Eric retorts, following behind his former friend.
I exchange a quick glance with Will and Ben, and they look as shocked as I do. No one’s seen this side of Tim and Eric’s friendship before. It’s kind of nice.
I don’t want to interrupt the male bonding that’s going on, so I tail them at a distance, and Tim starts filling two of the mugs Eric had out on the table. He hands one to Eric black, not even bothering to ask about cream or sugar, certain that the way he preferred it in high school is the way he takes it now. If there’s one thing about Eric, once he favors something, he sticks with it—end of story.
“So this is it, huh?” Tim asks, raising his eyes above his steaming mug, scoping out the place from his current vantage point. “I like what you did with it, especially the fireplace. That’s something else. Is it bluestone?”
“Yep. My aching back can attest to that,” Eric grimaces before taking a sip.
I’m still in awe over how they went from an all-out brawl the last time they saw each other to shooting the breeze like nothing happened. It’s going to take me a while to grasp all of the different nuances of their relationship. It’s clear they know each other well enough that they’re picking up on the unspoken cues passing between them that I’m completely oblivious to. Whatever’s going on, I’m just glad they’re not fighting.
There’s a box of doughnuts that Eric picked up at the store yesterday sitting on the table. Tim moseys on over, flips open the lid, and helps himself, chowing down while bits of glazed icing get stuck in his beard. Not bothering to reach for a napkin, he just uses the back of his arm to clear them away. Yeah, he definitely demonstrated better table manners when it was just the two of us. But Shep doesn’t seem to mind as he eagerly licks up the crumbs.
Distracted, I look over and see Will and Ben sneaking outside to talk, leaving it to the three of us to sort this out. We’ve engaged in enough small talk. It’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty.
Eric catches my eye, steering the conversation over to me. “Ivy’s the one who arranged all this for you, so be a gentleman and save her at least one of the doughnuts.”
“So I have you to thank, huh?” Tim teases me with a gleam in his eye, happy that I wanted to see him again. “But I’ll have you know, Eric, that she’d take my baking over the store-bought variety any day.”