Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
“Hm? Oh, yes. But I should probably be going. As much as I’d love to stay here all day, I’ve got places to be.
” She stood, and Joe followed her to the door and watched her don her boots and coat.
“Besides, if I leave now, I’ll have time to get a cappuccino on the way to my appointment.
” She kissed his cheeks and, with a gloved finger wave, headed for her car, giving Joe no time to process what she’d said, let alone to question her very un-Italian choice of a lunchtime cappuccino.
Only children drank that after breakfast.
And she’d refused a coffee just minutes before.
Well, if she’d decided to talk to his dad again and try to be a more active parent, maybe she’d also decided the rules about drinking only espresso after nine in the morning didn’t apply. Who knew? It wasn’t like Joe was going to tattle to Nonna.
He puttered around a bit for the afternoon—bought groceries, vacuumed the never-ending furballs from under the couch—until it was time to pick up Will from school and deliver him to his new part-time job at Tim Hortons.
“You’re not paying rent,” Joe warned when Will sprung this on him.
“Duh,” Will said, “I’m saving for college,” and Joe didn’t have an argument for that, so the discussion ended.
By three thirty he had dinner in the Instant Pot and Pepa hankering for a walk, and for the first time in weeks, Joe felt up to the job and the weather was warm enough that it didn’t make him cough. He buckled on her leg, clipped the leash to her collar, and off they went.
They were on the return trip when Joe heard the familiar cranky rumble of Austin’s piece-of-shit car, but it was coming from the wrong direction.
He stepped farther into the ditch, thankful that enough snow had melted he could see where his feet were going and not risk tumbling in headfirst, and cocked his head as Austin pulled over to the side and rolled down the window.
“Hey, stranger,” Joe said, leaning down. “Going my way?” At his feet, Pepa whined and jumped, obviously having smelled her favorite human. She didn’t have to make it so obvious that Joe was the spare.
Austin held up a Tims cup. “Had to swing by and see if Will’s barista skills were up to snuff.” That explained why he hadn’t hit up one of the two Tim Hortons on the way from the garage to the house. “You want a ride?”
Joe looked down the road. He was maybe a hundred feet from their driveway. “I think I’ll chance walking it.” He was enjoying the exercise. Then he looked back at Austin. “New coveralls?” He usually preferred black or gray; these were ultramarine.
“Ah, yeah.” He gave a half shrug as he glanced at them. “Boxing Day special.”
“It’s a good color on you.” It really wasn’t—honestly it kind of made him look like he was turning blue—but Joe had never claimed to be an impartial observer.
“Yeah?” Austin flicked his gaze up and down Joe’s body like he was checking him out, which was a bit ridiculous since Joe was wearing a puffer jacket and a hat, but maybe Austin couldn’t be impartial either. “You sure I can’t offer you a ride?”
Well. Joe smirked. “Race you home?”
JANUARY BLED into February, with the end of March and the optimal window to list the house creeping closer.
Joe’s mom started stopping by more frequently, and items Austin could only categorize as staging props appeared.
Scented candles in every room. Fluffy white towels that stayed in the linen closet with the tags still on, a note that read DO NOT USE pinned to the top.
A burlap table runner in the kitchen, a bowl of fake fruit (why couldn’t they just use real fruit?
It wasn’t like they wouldn’t eat it), fancy wrapped bars of soap.
Austin was of two minds about the whole thing.
On the one hand, the bathroom and Will’s bedroom particularly were improved with the application of scented candles.
The table runner dressed up Joe’s beautiful walnut showpiece and made the kitchen feel homey.
The soap wrappers had a whimsical farm animal print that DeeDee would’ve appreciated, and Austin smiled whenever he saw them, even though they took up valuable counter space in the tiny bathroom they all shared.
On the other hand, it was hard not to resent all the little items that kept reminding him that eventually this wouldn’t be his home anymore, and he didn’t have anywhere to go.
He did try, one evening when Will was at work and he and Joe were lying in bed, and Joe was making eyes like he wanted to fingerbang him to another orgasm, as if to make up for the time they lost when Joe was sick, as if Austin were in any way unsatisfied after riding Joe very thoroughly.
“Hey, uh….” He caught Joe’s hand before it could start to wander.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to do? With Will, I mean.”
Joe shrugged and turned his body closer to Austin’s. “There’s room for him at my place. Once we get a closing date, I can give my tenants notice.”
Right, sure. Because Joe had always made sure he had a place where Will could crash if he needed to.
The barndominium would probably be great for Pepa too—not that Austin had ever been inside, but the open-concept main floor would be nice, and the yard was already fenced, so she could go outside unsupervised.
“Right,” Austin said after an awkward moment. Did it sound like he was fishing for an invitation to come along? Was he? “Makes sense.”
“But,” Joe allowed, “I don’t want him to, like… panic about anything. There’s no reason he needs to think about us selling until we have a firm plan of what’s happening next.”
Austin would like to make that plan now, but he couldn’t explain why without telling Joe he’d sold the garage, and he still didn’t quite know how to do that. “That’s fair but, like… maybe stop leaving your staging crap and selling checklists all over the house, then.”
Joe grunted. “Good point.” He loomed over Austin. “But definitely a tomorrow problem.”
The following morning, Austin’s day off, he stood in the kitchen and locked eyes with Pepa. He was alone in the house, if you only counted humans, so he gave in to temptation.
“This is the kind of shit that doesn’t have a manual. How am I supposed to know what to do?”
Pepa wagged her tail.
“Right, experience.” Austin sighed, rubbed his face, and then consulted a doctor.
Linda arched her eyebrows when Austin showed up on her doorstep, but she let him and Pepa into the house and offered them coffee.
“Let me get this straight.” She rolled her eyes when Austin snorted. “You and Joe are living together, own pets together, are dating and sleeping together, and you want to know when you’re allowed to tell him you love him?”
“When you say it like that, it sounds stupid,” Austin complained.
“Right, the way I was saying it is the problem.”
“The problem,” Austin said, talking over Linda’s snort of amusement, “is, like—Joe’s last relationship was a train wreck, so we’re trying to take things slow, but my last relationship was never, so I don’t know what that means.
At the start, we said we’d sell the house in the spring, and he’s doing stuff to prepare for that, but telling him ‘I sold the garage so we can live here forever’ is, like, going to give him an aneurysm. ”
“Honey,” Linda said slowly, “I hate to break it to you, but there really is only one solution here.”
“What?” Austin didn’t like her tone.
“Talk. To. Him.”
He thunked his head onto the kitchen table and groaned. “I was afraid you’d say that.”
“You don’t have to open with ‘I want to have your babies,’” Linda snarked. “Just say you want to talk about things because that’s what adults do in adult relationships. They talk about expectations and boundaries.”
“I was afraid you’d say that too,” Austin grouched. “Why is adulting so hard?”
“Don’t look at me. If I understood people, I’d have become a human doctor.”
Maybe that was why they got along so well. Austin had just picked machines instead of something living. Neither of their patients could talk—not unless Linda had patched up any parrots—and somehow that made fixing them easier instead of more difficult.
Linda clearly had the patience of a saint, because when Austin continued silently lamenting all the choices that had led to this moment, she offered, “I don’t know why you’re having such a hard time with the idea of telling him what you want.
” He wasn’t looking at her, but he could hear the smile in her voice anyway.
“I’m sure he responds well to that kind of direction. ”
Austin had a mental flash of telling Joe he wanted to make the en suite bath usable and Joe’s dick getting hard in response. God. The behavioral conditioning would turn them both into monsters. Austin would get spoiled in every way and Joe would be so come-dumb they’d all die of starvation.
“Maybe too well?” Linda prompted when Austin didn’t reply.
He groaned and buried his head in his arms.
“Just start slow. Like… ‘Hey, Joe, is it cool if we go get screened for STDs and promise not to sleep with other people so we can stop wasting money on condoms?’”
Austin slithered off the chair and rolled under the table.
“The consequences of your own actions can still find you under there.” As if to prove her point, she pushed back from the table and crawled under with him. Her knees popped alarmingly. “Austin. If you haven’t even talked about that, you’re not moving slowly. You’re standing still.”
Ouch. He let that land and sink in, because if he didn’t he was afraid he’d find out in a few weeks or months that she was right. And the danger there was that the world would move on without him.
Then he took a deep breath. “The thing is,” he said finally, “I can’t pretend anymore. That this isn’t serious for me. I’m not standing still, it’s just… there isn’t any farther to go.”