August #3
His sister was going to make an amazing mother. It was true she’d already made the decision to do that, but watching her now, Isaac thought it was the thing that would make her happiest.
He suddenly felt incredibly lucky to be part of their lives when she did so.
And then Luca distracted him with a gentle hand smoothing his hair back from his face. “C’mon, baby,” Luca said throatily. “You guys can’t sleep all day or the kids will never sleep tonight.”
“We gotta go slow,” Isaac slurred. “It’s bad when they wake up cranky.”
“I hear ya,” Luca murmured. “Here, let me take her—looks like she woke up and fell back asleep again.”
“Yeah.” Isaac yawned and struggled to sit up after that warmth and weight was moved from his lap. “Here, let me go get Justice.”
Luca shook his head grimly—yeah, they’d both discussed how Falcon Justice was just not going to be a happy ending for the poor kid. He’d probably change his name to Franklin Justin before he hit puberty.
“Should we wake Roxy?” Allegra asked, blowing softly in Sparrow Anne’s face.
“No,” Isaac said decisively, remembering the way one good laugh had wiped his friend out. “She’s exhausted, and we’re going back to work next week. It’s still hot—it’s gonna be so brutal.”
With that, he managed to toddle down the hallway to turn the light on in the baby room.
He’d brought his phone with him, and now he turned the volume up a tad—enough to wake up instead of lull back to sleep.
He left it on the window ledge and went back into the front of the house, pleased to see Luca had set Patricia up on the booster seat Roxy left at his house and was excitedly pushing her chicken nugget around in the special sauce.
Allegra was cooing at Sparrow Anne, who was regarding her with open eyes.
“Practicing?” Isaac chided gently.
“Well, yeah,” Allegra said. She smiled at Isaac a little sadly. “I… I don’t have any friends who are doing this right now, you know? Have I thanked you yet, for giving me a home and a friend?”
Isaac chuckled softly, pleased that Allegra could play just like Roxy could. “I don’t count?” he asked, pretending to be wounded.
“You’re my brother’s boyfriend,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You don’t get to double dip.”
“Sure he does,” Luca said from across the table. “He can be your friend, my boyfriend, and Roxy’s friend too!”
At that moment they heard the stiff little footsteps and groggy whining of a child who wasn’t quite awake yet.
“Mommy?” Justice asked, his voice just as small as his four-year-old body.
“How about Uncle Isaac?” Isaac asked, holding out his arms. Justice didn’t care who it was, apparently, because he ran straight to Isaac, and Isaac hefted him up. “You’re big,” he said, nodding at the boy.
“Daddy says it’s ’cause I eat my weight in nuggets,” Justice said, leaning his head on Isaac’s shoulder. “Can I eat some nuggets to see?”
“Smooth, young man. So smooth. But we just opened a hot box of nuggets, so I think you’ll get away with it.”
The boy giggled into his neck, and Isaac gave him a squeeze.
He was almost done with the blanket, he thought happily, and enough sweaters to last Allegra’s baby through the next three winters.
It was time to start making Roxy’s kids sweaters so he could start knitting for his high school kids in November.
Having this many people in his life to create for felt like an embarrassment of riches, and as the kids settled down to nuggets and cubed watermelon, Isaac felt himself beaming, for no reason at all, into Luca’s eyes.
“You look happy,” Luca said, drawing near.
“It’s been a really good summer,” Isaac said on a sigh. “It’s going to….” Some of his happiness faded. “Have I warned you yet? About how bad the first six weeks suck?”
Luca frowned and shook his head. “You said it would be busy—”
“It’s exhausting,” Isaac said with a small smile.
“I… I know I complain about Todd a lot, but going back to school—it’s hard on a relationship.
It’s falling asleep before dinner and bitching about the coffee coming too slow in the morning, forgetting your lunch, living on Advil and caffeine, trying to control the kids in the street for playing too loud, the goddamned sunshine is getting on my nerves, and my bathroom is a science-experiment disaster.
Everybody cries during the first six weeks, even the straight men.
None of us are okay during the first six weeks.
And Roxy and I play movies during week six while we do our grades, and we both take strategic mental health days so we don’t lose our minds, but…
but you’ve got to know how bad it’s going to get.
I-I just hope you can hold on through it,” he said with a small smile.
“I really, really like where we are now.”
Luca returned the small smile, the expression on his face telling Isaac he’d heard, really heard, what Isaac was trying to say.
“Do I get a reward if I make it through the next six weeks?” he asked, teasing a little but also oddly serious.
Isaac blinked. “I… I don’t know. What sort of reward do you want?”
Luca shook his head. “I’ll think about it. It’ll be, like, one of those awful days you claim you’re going to have, if I get really pissed off, I’ll think to myself, ‘Oh my God, my boyfriend owes me so much,’ and then I’ll plan what it’s going to be that you owe me.”
Isaac had to smile, because from anybody but Luca, it sounded like a threat. But from Luca, it sounded like a promise that he’d still be there after six weeks.
And that made him stop smiling.
“Just promise me,” he said softly, “that… that if I get too frazzled, or too awful, you’ll say, ‘Isaac, honey, take a breath.’ Don’t…
don’t yell.” He knew he sounded wounded, but he couldn’t help it.
“Don’t get all cold. Don’t stop calling or stop coming by and not tell me why.
It’s okay if you say, ‘Listen, buddy, you’re getting a little intense, and I’m going to give you your space,’ but don’t—. ”
“Hey….” And in spite of the heat and the fact that they were both covered with the stickiness of sleepy children marinating in fruit juice, Luca pulled him into his arms then and spoke softly into his hair. “Baby. Baby, trust me, okay?”
Isaac heard the whimper and hated himself for it. It was just… just….
“Todd disappeared, didn’t he?” Luca asked.
“He used to schedule his business trips in late August, early September,” Isaac said. “He’d never call. I didn’t even know he was going until I got home and found the Post-it on the refrigerator. I… I get it. But it—”
“What a fucking coward!” Luca burst out, and Isaac whimpered again.
“No yelling,” he begged.
“Not even at Todd,” Luca soothed. “Baby, I promise. Look—you’ve seen me and Allegra in action, okay?
We’ll back you, I swear. You do all the cooking and planning ’cause you seem to like doing it, but let us do some, okay?
You’ve got a housecleaning service—let us help keep up in between.
I get it’s going to be rough, Isaac. I may only have seen a taste of it in May, but you’re not alone this time. Have some faith in us, okay?”
Isaac nodded against Luca’s chest. “Okay,” he whispered. “Okay.”
They couldn’t cling like that, not in the swelter of August, but later that night, after Roxy and the kids had gone home (to a grateful Brian, who had been working hard on a project and had happily met his deadline with everybody out of the house), and everybody had taken a cool shower, and the air conditioning had finally made a dent in the ambient eighty-five-degree outside temperature, Isaac stared at Luca in the moonlight as he slept.
“Whatcha thinking?” Luca mumbled, so not quite asleep. “Tell me so I can get some rest.”
“I’m thinking if we make it through to October, I’ll have to knit you something.”
The corners of Luca’s mouth turned up. “A watch cap,” he said. “Something warm that doesn’t itch. Any color that makes you happy.”
“Even magenta?” Isaac teased.
“Especially magenta,” Luca murmured. “Everyone will ask, ‘Hey, did your boyfriend make you that?’ and I’ll say, ‘How jealous are you?’”
Isaac chuffed out a breath of sleepy laughter. As he felt himself drop off, he heard his own voice say it, the words he’d held on to since July.
“I love you, Luca. Even if you’re gone in October, I’ll still love you. You’re like a gift.”
And he fell asleep, planning a green and magenta and blue hat more beautiful than stars.