Chapter 8 The Bookshelf
“Maybe we should just wait and call the handyman we saw on the back of that truck yesterday,” Zane said carefully.
He sat curled on the overpriced chair that was—essentially—a giant bean bag in a fur coat, huddled beneath a thick blanket, while the storm raged outside. The chair swallowed him whole, all soft curves and faux luxury, his bare feet barely peeking out from beneath the blanket as he shifted.
Zane had never been so cozy. The fireplace crackled, the white lights in the garland and on the Christmas tree twinkled, Felix’s cinnamon roll candle burned somewhere nearby making Zane’s stomach growl with its realism.
It smelled aggressively like sugar and butter and nostalgia for a childhood he’d never have. It was soft, unusually peaceful.
Quiet.
Too quiet.
Zane missed his babies. He missed the weight of them, the constant noise, the way silence never lasted more than thirty seconds in a house with toddlers. He missed listening to Asa & Avi rough-house with them, missed them refusing to eat the same foods they loved the day before. Everything really.
But from what Dad said, they were not missing him…
or any of them. Apparently, Grandpas’ house was more fun.
They’d instituted something called “dessert before dinner,” which felt illegal but unsurprising.
But what could he do? Zane was grateful they still had one normal set of grandparents now that his former father was MIA and his mother had been slow-roasted.
Especially since he still hadn’t decided whether to reach out to his own father.
His real father.
But that was a worry for the new year, not now, not here, not when he could be cozy and content with the people he loved. All of them. He tugged the blanket tighter, Felix’s knee warm against his thigh, grounding him.
“He’s right, this is starting to look pretty dire,” Felix said, sipping his mulled wine, curled up beside Zane under the blanket in the chair they’d taken to affectionately calling ‘the poof’.
Felix smelled like fall and tasted faintly like cloves and oranges, his curls still slightly damp from their rushed shower earlier.
They were in the kids’ new playroom, staring down at a thousand screws, an Allen wrench and several slats of what Zane could only assume was particle board.
The pieces were laid out with good intentions and zero follow-through, instructions discarded somewhere under a pile of bubble wrap and optimism.
A short-term solution to a minor timing issue.
The insanely overpriced custom bookshelves they’d ordered for the playroom were coming from a carpenter in Italy.
They’d emailed to say there was a ‘supply chain breakdown’ and he wouldn’t be able to finish and ship the product for at least another three months.
The email had included several apologies, three photos of unfinished wood, and one very artistic shot of the Italian countryside, as if that helped.
The solution had been the world’s most inefficient trip to IKEA Zane had ever experienced.
While Zane and Felix had spent most of their lives like normal people—people who bought affordable furniture—Asa and Avi had spent their lives assuming that whatever they needed just appeared before them like magic.
Possibly because, historically, it had. They’d seemed quite put out to know that sometimes, they didn’t get what they wanted.
Felix and Zane had wanted to go alone. They’d envisioned a peaceful, child-free trip where they could shop at their leisure and maybe have lunch at a cafe somewhere, hold hands and browse to their hearts content.
Instead, their husbands had demanded to see this IKEA place they’d heard so much about, like it was a local attraction and not a store visited by thousands of people a day.
To them, it might as well have been Narnia.
Asa spent the whole time commenting on everything from the parking lot design to the flow of traffic within the store.
Why is the exit nowhere near the entrance?
Who puts a cafe in a furniture store?
Why Swedish meatballs?
What even is a Swedish meatball?
Meanwhile, Avi darted around picking up and examining everything from plushies to forks, studying them like ancient artifacts until Felix would pry them from his hands.
Instead of two whiny toddlers, they had Avi, who was the equivalent of six hyper-active toddlers hopped up on sugar, begging to buy every gadget he saw, throwing a fit when he was told no, and pouting until he got Swedish meatballs.
Which, to be fair, were delicious.
A trip for one bookshelf had turned into a near thousand dollar expense and a house full of cheap—but convenient—household goods that Avi had huddled over in the cart like a dragon with a hard-on for home goods.
Oh, God. HomeGoods. Zane could only imagine the damage Avi would do in a store like that.
They’d need a second home and maybe an intervention.
Asa scoffed, glowering at one of several screws scattered across the hardwood like it owed him money. He picked it up, turned it between his fingers, then dropped it again like it had personally betrayed him. “I’m an architect. This fucking $60 shelf is not going to best me. I went to Cornell.”
“Are you hoping to intimidate the bookshelf with your CV?” Zane asked, earning a giggle from Felix who snuggled closer beneath the blanket, their legs tangled together. Felix’s toes were cold against Zane’s calf, and Zane tucked them under his thigh without thinking.
“I also went to Cornell,” Avi reminded him with a smirk, “and I gave up on those instructions on page two.”
Asa waved a dismissive hand. “You went for fashion. I went for architecture. This is literally my job.”
It was, in fact, not his husband’s job to put together cheap furniture, but to build skyscrapers.
The two weren’t even remotely similar. Okay, Zane could see the correlation from an engineering standpoint, but that didn’t mean Asa could put together a bookshelf…
did it? There was a big difference between drafting a forty-story tower and deciphering a cartoon man holding an Allen wrench.
Zane hid a smile behind his hot chocolate. The mug was warm against his palms, marshmallows floating along the top, the steam fogging his glasses just enough to make everything feel soft around the edges. “It’s okay to admit defeat.”
He knew Asa would never, ever do that. But sometimes Zane got off on poking the bear. Especially when the bear was beautiful, dramatic, and currently being humbled by particle board. Also when the bear liked spanking him for his smart mouth.
Asa shot him a pouty look. “Et tu, Lois? Et tu?”
His favorite phrase to use any time Zane had an opinion that was counter-intuitive to his.
Zane’s face softened. He shifted forward, resting his elbow on his knee, voice dropping just a touch. “Baby, this is clearly stressing you out.”
“Maybe if you weren’t all staring at me…” he sulked. He gestured vaguely at the room like they’d assembled an audience just to judge him.
“We’re only here because you invited us,” Felix reminded him in a sing-song voice. He leaned his head against Zane’s shoulder, smiling into the blanket.
“Yeah, you said, and I quote, ‘Want to come watch me make this IKEA shelf my bitch.’ End quote,” Zane said around a laugh.
Felix nodded. “Yeah, Zane and I were gonna get bundled up and make the arduous journey across the neighborhood to see the Prince shrine in the gazebo. Apparently someone decorated it for Christmas. Noah said it’s very festive.”
Felix nodded again, warming to the topic. “Yeah, supposedly there’s reindeer, some elves and a tiny Santa hat glued to Prince’s picture.” He paused. “Not taped. Glued.”
The neighborhood stressed Noah out but since the others had moved there, they’d taken to treating their neighbors like a zoo exhibit.
Noah had compared it to Twin Peaks and he wasn’t wrong.
The people of Serenity Grove were off-putting on a good day.
There were no dancing little people or people talking backwards but there were other things that made absolutely no sense…
and Zane had grown up in the suburbs. This wasn’t normal suburban weird.
This was curated. Intentional. Upper-middle-class weird.
“I owe Noah an apology…maybe Adam too. This neighborhood is fucking cracked, right?” Avi asked.
Asa scoffed. “You’re telling me. The older part of the neighborhood is…bizarre. Have you noticed the roads on that side of the neighborhood?”
“The roads?” Felix asked, like he hadn’t anticipated the sharp left turn in the conversation.
“I know you didn’t notice the roads. You barely notice the pedestrians,” Asa muttered.
“Or stop signs,” Avi added.
Asa snorted. “Or traffic lights…”
“Traffic cones…speed limit signs…” Avi continued.
Felix gasped like they’d slapped him in the face. “I’m a good driver now!” He lifted his head, indignant. “I am. I haven’t had any accidents in over a year. Not even a fender-bender. And I use my blinker religiously.”
“That’s not a flex, kitten,” Avi said. “Most people don’t have a fender-bender every year, much less four. You don’t get a prize for not hitting people. Though maybe you should.”
“I still maintain that last one hit me,” Felix shot back, face flushing with righteous fury.
“They were in front of you, baby,” Zane reminded him gently.
Felix gasped. “They could have reversed into me!” When Asa and Avi laughed in tandem, Felix cried, “What? It happens! Stop laughing. It does!”
Zane let his gaze slide away to the dancing flames of the fireplace in the next room. The fire popped softly, sending a warm pulse through the house, the light throwing slow shadows that stretched and shrank along the walls.
“I am,” Felix said again quietly, almost like he was now trying to convince himself.
“You are…” Zane said, trying—and failing—to sound encouraging. “Much improved.”