Page 31 of Yard Sale

I startled. I hadn’t realized he’d come into the room, and I tilted my gaze slightly to the left until I could see most of him. With the clear bit of pinhole vision, I gave him a slow up and down.

It was much easier to make him out in here, and I hated how fucking good he looked. His hair was in a bun, but several strands had escaped and were framing his face. I was almost a hundred percent sure he had on a pink eyeshadow, and he was wearing a formfitting black T-shirt and very tight jeans.

He was walking sex, and I did not need to be fantasizing about him, of all people.

“Pretzel,” he said when I didn’t rise to his bait.

He disappeared out of my sightline, but I heard him take a seat beside me, and then there was the sound of him scooting the table between us.

A barrier. Yes. Good.

I grazed my fingers gently across the top—a trick I’d learned in the short two-week occupational therapy session my parents had booked me back when I was first diagnosed. They bumped into a little container.

“I got you the cinnamon and the jalapeno one. Just in case your delicate constitution can’t take the heat,” Aravind said.

I turned and glowered in his direction. “Why are you giving me shit?”

“Because I’ve eaten with white boys who try to prove themselves before, and it always ends with them blowing up a bathroom. I don’t know if you want to deal with that kind of humiliation in front of me.”

He…had a point. An annoying point. Luckily, I could eat spice just fine and grabbed the first pretzel, pulling it close. It was the cheesy one, and I lifted it to my mouth, grinned at Aravind, and took a huge bite.

“Oh my god. This has zero spice,” I said through a mouthful of the soft bread. It was jarred pickled jalapeno that had been baked into oblivion.

Aravind snorted. “I don’t know your life or your tolerance level.” He shifted around, and I heard paper rustling, then the sound of him chewing.

“What are you having?”

“Plain, extra salt, extra butter, and a giant vat of cheese dip.” His words were thick with the bite he was chewing on.

I fought the urge to pick up my phone and open the camera so I could see him. It was yet another trick I’d learned as my vision started to narrow. I could see my whole phone screen if it was close enough to my face, and on the screen, I’d be able to see all of him. But that would be creepy behavior. And I was not a creep, damn it.

“Want to try some?” he asked.

No. No. Absolutely not. Not going to happen. Not a chance in⁠—

“Yeah, sure.”

Come on, Tiago. What the fuck?

Aravind’s soft fingers brushed along the back of my wrist. “Here. Uh…I don’t know how much of the table you can see.”

I shifted my eyes from right to left until the cup of cheese sauce came into view. Turning my hand out palm up, I waited, and after a second, he laid a piece of pretzel along my fingers.

“I can’t believe you, of all people, are eating a plain salted pretzel,” I said as I carefully dipped the edge into the cheese and took a bite. Several layers of salt exploded across my tongue.

“Why is that?” Aravind said, like my words were a personal challenge. “Because I’m Indian? Because I’m spicy?” His tone went completely flat, though he popped the P in the word spicy.

I huffed and rolled my eyes. “Because you don’t seem like a salted pretzel kind of guy. You’re always very fussy and seem like you eat out of boutique cafés and wine bars.”

He was quiet for a beat, then said, “Honey, I grew up at arenas, okay? If I wanted to see my dad, I got to live off wings, hot dogs, salted pretzels, and nachos.”

I hadn’t ever really thought about what it would be like to have a dad in the NHL. Their schedules were the same levels of hell ours were. Morning practice, afternoon practice, training, meetings, sponsorship bullshit. There were home games and roadies, and the only real difference was that home games meant you got to crash in your own bed at night, even if that ended up being 2:00 a.m.

There were guys on my team who had kids, but I never asked what it was like for them. I never wondered how often they actually got to see their families.

“That sounds tough.”

Aravind let out a short breath. “It was fine when I was little. You know, I had my mom, and she was amazing. My dad’s parents also lived with us for a long time, so it wasn’t like I had no attention.”