Chapter 14
CASH
Igot a text from Chase on Sunday morning.
Are you coming for spaghetti night tonight?
Chase didn’t usually do the passive-aggressive thing. He liked to keep it simple by sticking with aggressive-aggressive. But maybe I wasn’t the only one of us growing and learning new things about myself.
I finished loading the dishwasher, wrote Mason a note because he was still in bed, then clipped a leash to Dog’s collar and took him for a walk to Main Street.
Main Street was pretty quiet at this hour on a Sunday.
The only places doing business were Gobble de Goose and, a block or so down, the church, and I bet that Gobble de Goose’s customers were a lot happier.
I tied Dog’s leash around the end of the newly installed bench outside Gobble de Goose and crossed the sidewalk to the entrance. The bells on the door jingled when I opened it.
Tyler, Gobble de Goose’s second baker, was serving behind the counter. He looked up when I stepped inside. “I thought you were—” And then he realized. “Cash, right?”
I nodded and lifted my hand in a wave.
“Chase!” Tyler yelled. “Your brother’s here!”
Chase came striding out from the back, tying his apron on.
He glared at Tyler, glared at me, and then glared at the display case for a moment before grabbing a pair of tongs and shoving something in a paper bag.
Then he came around the counter, held the paper bag out to me, and announced, “I’m taking five. ”
“You literally just had five,” Tyler said. “You’re still on it.”
“Then I’m extending that five,” Chase said with a shrug. He took me by the elbow and steered me back out onto the street. “Holy shit. Did you steal another dog?”
“Shut up.” I untied Dog’s leash. “This is Dog. He’s just been washed and brushed.”
We sat on the bench and I checked the paper bag. There was a spinach and feta pastry inside. It was still warm. I took a bite and gave Dog a corner of the pastry. “I got your text.”
Chase’s glower was back. “So, are you coming?”
“Don’t be an asshole. Of course I am. Why’d you even text me about it?”
Chase dragged the toe of his sneaker along the grit of the sidewalk. He shrugged. “Avery asked me to.”
“What?” That didn’t make any sense. “I always come to spaghetti night. Why would he ask you to ask me?”
Chase’s glower deepened. “He said you could invite Mason.”
“Okay,” I said. “I will. You could have put that in your message.”
“I would have,” he said, “except you didn’t even answer. You just came down here instead. You were supposed to say you were coming, and then I was going to tell you to bring Mason. So I didn’t just ask with no context, okay?”
“Since when do we need context?”
He rolled his eyes. “Since you basically moved out to live with some guy and I don’t even see you anymore.”
“It’s been like a week, Chase.” But I felt guilt bite at me anyway because we’d never been apart for this long before, not at any time in our lives.
A week might as well have been a year, and the worst part was that I’d hardly noticed because I’d been busy with Mason and Dog and the kittens.
It hadn’t occurred to me that Chase would miss me. I should have known better.
“Whatever.” He glared as he scritched Dog’s head.
“I’m sorry.” I leaned against him. “It’s going good, by the way. Everything with Mason.”
“Good,” he said, still glaring. “It better be.”
I nudged him with my shoulder and nodded at the flyer in the window of Gobble de Goose. Goose Pride, it said, and then in Sharpie: GAY. “I see Bobby’s been here too.”
Chase snorted, a smile threatening the downturned corners of his mouth. “He’s put in an order for two thousand rainbow cupcakes. Can you imagine any event in Goose Run getting two thousand people? He’s crazy.”
But he said it in an admiring tone, because Bobby’s craziness was exactly the sort that the world needed. Like, maybe it wouldn’t be such a fucking dumpster fire if more people were like Bobby Merritt. And I, for one, would welcome our new goose overlords.
“Yeah,” I said. “He really is.”
“And you know who’s gonna cause a big stink?” Chase asked, eyes brightening. He jerked his head in the direction of Goose Run First Baptist Church. “Pastor Asshole.”
“Bobby can take him in a fight.”
Chase’s mouth quirked. “Fuck yeah, he can.”
He tilted his head sideways, bumping it gently against mine, and I knew we were good. I relaxed and dug into the paper bag again. Chase gave Dog pets while I finished the pastry. It was good, but everything Lee made was good. Except biko. I didn’t like that.
“So, spaghetti night?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, ignoring the thrum of anxiety that spiked through me.
Would Mason want to come? Did I want him to come?
If I invited him, would that be the same as telling them we were dating or something?
Did I want to share that yet? What if the guys were weird about Mason?
What if they were weird to me now because of Mason?
I didn’t think they would be, but what if they were?
What if someone told him about how sometimes I had to burrito myself in a blanket and not come out for hours when everything got too overwhelming?
Mason hadn’t seen me go full pill bug mode, and while I thought he’d be cool about it, what if he wasn’t?
Jesus. I hadn’t even known I had this many insecurities about being with Mason until the prospect of inviting him to meet my family had been raised. Was that normal?
Chase slung an arm around me. “Don’t overthink yourself into a spiral, idiot.”
“I wasn’t,” I lied.
He snorted. “Yeah, you were. Know how I know?”
I nodded. Chase had done everything he could to talk himself out of a relationship with Lee when things had first gotten real between them.
We had a lot of messed-up stuff in our past that meant we were both pretty blind about what a healthy relationship looked like.
Luckily we had good role models surrounding us now, but a whole army of them wouldn’t be enough to undo all of the fuckery we’d internalized as kids.
We were works in progress, Chase and me, but we were both trying.
A couple of women in yoga pants, with mats rolled up under their arms, walked past us and into the bakery.
Chase stood up. “I should get back. Wait here a second, okay?”
He hurried inside.
I stood and looped Dog’s leash around my wrist. He sniffed very carefully at the end of the bench, so I moved him away so he didn’t piss on it. Chase darted back outside and shoved a bigger bag into my arms.
“If you need me, call me,” he said with a glower. “And send more kitten photos.”
“Okay.”
He flipped me the bird, which was his way of waving goodbye, and Dog and I headed back to Mason’s, the smell of fresh bread, warm cookies, and sugary pastries wafting from the bag.
When I got back to Mason’s place, I fed the kittens and made a pot of coffee.
When Mason finally came downstairs, he found me in the kitchen holding up the bag of pastries.
A warm smile lit up his expression. His hair was still tangled from sleep and he had a crease up the side of his face, and the soft, rumpled look suited him.
“Have you already been out?” He checked his wrist for a watch he wasn’t wearing. “Shit. What time is it?”
“It’s not even eight yet,” I said. “And you’re allowed to sleep in.”
He pointed at me. “Careful. If you keep saying stuff like that, I might never let you leave.”
I snorted, ignoring the stupid, hopeful flutter in my chest, and passed him the bag. “Dog and I went and saw Chase.”
He pulled out a cookie and bit into it. “Holy shit, that’s so good.”
“Lee’s a great baker,” I said. “Um, he sometimes makes dessert for spaghetti night. That’s when we all get together and have spaghetti.”
Mason’s mouth twitched. “I figured.”
My face felt hot. “Yeah. Anyway, it’s tonight, if you wanted to come.” And now my face was even hotter, but I remembered about asking for what I wanted. “I’d like you to come.”
I felt a moment of triumph at getting all the words out before it turned to panic that maybe I was crossing a line somehow. Just because we’d gone to bed a couple of times, that didn’t mean Mason wanted to come to dinner with a bunch of strangers.
But before I could second-guess myself, Mason said, “Really?”
And there was enough uncertainty in his voice to remind me that maybe I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t sure exactly what he was doing. Maybe Mason was trying to figure it out as he went as well. Maybe everyone in the world was.
If that was true, it didn’t seem as scary anymore. Or at least it didn’t mean I was alone.
“I’d like you to come,” I repeated. “And the guys want to meet you. Like, in different circumstances than when you’re about to cost us hundreds of dollars, I mean.”
Mason laughed softly. “Yeah, I bet.”
“So you’ll come?” I pulled my own cookie out of the bag just to have something to do with my hands while I waited for his answer.
“I’d really like that, yeah,” he said. “I don’t know many people in town—I mean, apart from my clients.”
He looked kind of thoughtful for a second, almost regretful, and I remembered how lonely it was moving to a new place.
Except when Chase and I had arrived in Goose Run, we’d fallen headfirst into a family, and of course we’d had each other.
Who did Mason have? I should have taken him to meet the guys way before spaghetti night.
“It’ll be fun,” I said, and then rethought that. “It’ll be loud. But they’re good guys.”
Mason took another bite of his cookie. “Tell me about them?”
Not that long ago, someone asking me to tell them something would have closed up my throat faster than an allergic reaction. But I took a breath and nodded and said, “Okay.”