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“Especially if you’re filling up on Italian,” Luke joked. “Ask Italian Mary to cook for you. That’ll get right under Aunt Rosemarie’s freckled skin.”

Ryan laughed. Italian Mary was fifty pounds wet and older than God, but she terrified all of them. “I don’t want to upset my mum any more than I already have.”

In all honesty, he was sorry his moving out had upset her at all. She always took care of him and was his greatest champion. But it was time for him to find his independence. His mum, however, saw this as surrendering to the permanent life of a bachelor.

“You’re supposed to meet your wife first, then buy the house together,” she would say, as if there was only one way to move out. And she’d usually follow that up with something like, “If your father had bought our house alone, it would have been covered in buck skin, pistachio shells, and taxidermy. No woman wants that.”

A crush of disappointment punched low in his gut as he wondered if he was giving up and getting set in his ways too soon, but he quickly pushed that worry aside. He wasn’t buying a house with the woman he planned to grow old with. So what? He could still find her.

There came a time in a man’s life when the waiting game felt more like an excuse than a probability that Mrs. Right would eventually show. He’d done cyber dating, small-town fix ups, and even horribly awkward blind dates with friends of friends. Nothing stuck and he needed to get out on his own.

Maybe it was him. But he didn’t think he had any screaming flaws. He had a longstanding job at his family’s lumberyard, which he’d eventually take over with his cousin Finn once their fathers officially retired. When his cousin Kelly needed a hand, Ryan also took shifts at O’Malley’s Pub, the town hangout. He was respectful to women. He carried groceries for the older residents whenever he saw them leaving the market. And he even fixed Mrs. Waldron’s flat tire when she’d been stranded and unable to reach AAA.

Not that he wanted some sort of Boy Scout award for being a good citizen, but it would be nice if some of the single women in Center County appreciated these qualities the way the older, married women seemed to. His mum and aunts couldn’t understand why he was still single, and honestly, he didn’t get it either.

In the past year he’d started feeling like the family’s charity case, getting pity invites here, and relatives pointing out pretty women there. His single status had become a glaring mark on his chest, and he needed a change of scenery—a change of audience.

As Luke and Tristan pulled away in the moving truck, Ryan stared up at the old house and grinned. This was his house. A wave of pride swelled in his chest. He should celebrate.

His mouth twisted to the side as he glanced at the empty driveway of his neighbor’s home, doing a double take when he noticed the bike missing. Whoever it belonged to must have taken it when they were busy unloading. He was sorry he missed them.

He returned inside, greeted by silence and boxes. The open space and lack of furniture overwhelmed him. He supposed he should pick a place and just start unpacking. First things first, he needed music.

He grabbed a work radio from his truck, and Elton John christened the house with a live rendition of Rocketman as he used a box cutter to open boxes and deliver them to the proper room.

Music acted as a constant companion in his life it broke up the day, got him out of his head, and lifted his mood when the loneliness overwhelmed him. He’d grown so used to his relatives constantly popping by that the quiet seemed more tangible than usual. In such silence, he could physically feel the absence of people in his life. He rolled his shoulders and turned up the volume of the song.

Having never lived anywhere but home and a college dorm, he mostly had bedroom and bathroom stuff. His old college futon and TV made up the guts of the living room for now. He didn’t remember the futon being so small and uncomfortable. Maybe, after almost a decade in storage, it shrunk. He flipped a cardboard box and used it as an end table to hold his beer.

As he carried the last of the bedroom boxes toward the upstairs, he surveyed the hall, which divided the dining room and den at the front door and led to the kitchen at the back of the house. He caught himself smiling at the vacant space. It was a simple little house, but he had no doubt it would make a good home.

His smile faded as a tinge of emptiness whispered through him. Maybe the void he felt only had to do with the missing furniture. In time, he’d fill the vacant space. Life was a process, not a destination.


Tags: Lydia Michaels Jasper Falls Romance