“Only because you wouldn’t.” Tripp snapped, before pinching the bridge of his nose and reminding himself to check his tone. “Sorry.”
“No. You’re right. Now I am telling you that I will, and I need you to stay out of whatever it is.”
“I’m not going to sit back and be quiet if someone is spewing some bullshit or trying to tear you down!”
“I’m going to do my best not to get into the type of situation where I need to be defended,” Winter replied. “But if it happens. Let it be. I need to know that I can clean up my own messes. How the hell am I supposed to convince myself that I can help raise a kid, if I can’t get a handle on my own bullshit?”
Blinking, Tripp stared at his brother and the look of utter sincerity on his face. “Just a short time ago, you sounded absolutely certain you could handle whatever came along with fatherhood.”
“I know,” Winter said. “But isn’t the adage fake it until you make it?”
“It is.”
“Well….there ya go.”
Chapter 15
Redefining downtime
Board games and a juice bar were a far cry from their typical Friday night hitting a club, pub, or one of the handful of bars that had a private room where they could kick back and turn up without people aiming cameras at them. Zakk was good with it though, which felt both strange and utterly relaxing. When they’d decided to try a spin on traditional Monopoly by pairing up in teams, he’d had no clue how outlandishly amusing it would be.
The rules had been simple. Each team got two rolls, but as a team, they only got five hundred extra dollars from the bank, this was to ensure they didn’t run the bank down too low while things were getting started. Property was jointly owned, and each person could build on it, but, if one of them was levied with a penalty, like pay poor tax, then both would have to pay it.
It was well past midnight, and no one had gone bankrupt yet, though if things kept going the way they were, Winter and Tavis were going to decimate everyone now that they’d managed to gain control of one whole side of the board. It was worse than Dez and Riley putting hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place early, while also owning both utilities and three of the four railroads. That had been a failure on the rest of their parts when they hadn’t paid attention to what the two of them were up to. Damien and James had proved to be the spoilers of the group, grabbing single properties to block the couples from getting pairs. All in all, it kept things interesting.
“There’s something I’ve been curious about,” Tavis said as he rolled, and failed again to get out of jail. “That blue guitar you played at Rocktoberfest, where the hell did you find that? I’ve only seen a handful like it, and they were all being played by the same guy.”
“Adrian Lee,” Dez replied.
“Yeah, exactly. I thought I read somewhere that it was a custom design.”
Nodding, Dez casually rolled the dice before replying. “It is.”
“And yet you have one.”
“Yup.”
“How?”
“Like I said. Adrian Lee.”
You could have heard a pin drop in the room, for about two seconds, than an explosion of questions was fired Dez’s way, several of them trying to figure out the connection between the two. Meanwhile, Dez was sitting there looking nonchalant while moving the top hat past all of his and Tripp’s properties, again. Damn it all, it had been three rounds, at least, since someone had had to pay them rent. When he was done, he handed the dice to Riley, who closed them in his fist, refusing to roll. Instead, he stared Dez dead in his face and raised an eyebrow at him.
“What?”
“You know what, now spill, or we sit here like this until the world comes to an end.”
Snorting, Dez doubled over, laughing until Riley’s stern expression broke and he started laughing too.
“Okay, maybe that was a little melodramatic,” Riley admitted.
“Just a little?” Winter tossed in.
“He’s nothing without the theatrics,” Damien said.
“Long as he ain’t waiting for an Academy Award, it’s all good.”
“How do you know that’s not exactly what I’m waiting for?” Riley replied.