Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“I love it when you smile,” I said softly.
“You make it easy, angel.”
I leant forward and brushed my lips against his, fully aware we were in the middle of the kitchen but too desperate to consider that an issue.
There was a small, pointed cough from somewhere over Owen’s shoulder, and the sound of someone loudly putting a bag down. I chuckled, keeping my arms around Owen as I tilted slightly to the side to see who it was.
“Good morning,” I said as I spotted Alfie pulling his laptop out of his bag and putting it on the rickety desk in the corner we continually prayed wouldn’t fall apart. There wasn’t much more than hope holding the chipboard together at this point.
I’d kept telling myself we didn’t have the budget for anything better, and that, if it collapsed, we’d find another for a tenner on Facebook Marketplace. But if I didn’t want to completely piss Alfie off, it would be worth making a trip to IKEA.
“Morning,” he said, glancing between me and Owen with a joyful smile. “You two look happy.”
“We are,” I said.
“Good, good. I’d assumed it was good news when you weren’t in yesterday morning. But I appreciated the message. It stopped Milo pacing.”
“Message?” Owen asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Er, yeah. I told them we’d made up but that we had lots to talk about so could they cover for us. But that we’d be in tomorrow—today—and you’d be coming back.” If they’d read any more into it, that was on them. I wasn’t going to say a word.
Mostly because I knew they’d have already filled in the blanks.
“I’m very glad you’re back,” Alfie said. He frowned. “This probably means we’ll need to sort you a new contract. We should talk about it today.”
I slid out of Owen’s arms and stepped around him so I could see Alfie properly. “Actually, that’s something I wanted to talk to you about. And Milo too when he gets back.”
“Yes, where is he? His bag’s here.”
“He went to help Rupert,” Owen said with barely contained smugness.
“Rupert?” Alfie’s eyes went wide with shock. “He went to help Rupert?”
“Totally his choice too. There’s definitely something going on there,” Owen said. “Twenty quid says they’re shagging.”
“Er, no,” I said quickly. “We are not making bets about Milo’s private life.”
“Agreed,” Alfie said with a nod. “I’m going to make some tea. Do you want anything?”
“Yes, please, that would be great,” I said. As he turned to walk towards the front of the shop, I lowered my voice and leant into Owen. “I’ll take that bet. But we’re including a blowjob.”
Not that I really wanted to speculate on Milo’s sex life, but he’d annoyed me enough this year it felt vaguely justified. Plus, with the way he and Rupert had been at each other’s throats for months, something had to be going on.
I just hoped it didn’t blow up spectacularly in their faces.
“Done,” Owen said, holding out his hand and shaking mine quickly before Alfie stuck his head around the door to ask what sort of coffee I wanted.
“Can I have one too please?” Milo asked as he stepped through the back door, smoothing out his hair and frowning in surprise. “Hmm, it’s raining.”
“Did you not notice when you were out in it?” I asked, trying to keep the amusement out of my voice. Had he been that distracted he hadn’t noticed it was raining? What had he and Rupert been up to?
“I was only outside for a second. It’s not exactly far from door to door.”
I was desperate to ask him more about what had happened with Rupert, but I knew if we started that conversation, I’d get totally distracted and never get around to discussing our winter plans with him and Alfie.
Those needed to come first.
Then we could get to the bottom of this apparent truce with Rupert.
Owen looked like he was thinking something similar, and as Alfie appeared from the shop with a tray of steaming mugs, I said, “Before we get distracted by… work, I wanted to talk to you both about the winter. Because, er, well, I wondered how you would feel if we closed the shop and Owen and I went travelling for a bit. Over Christmas. Maybe January. We’d be back before we open again.
Or, if you wanted to do reduced hours over the winter, I could teach one of you how to make the ice cream. Or we could hire someone.”
I looked between all of them, waiting, hoping they’d be on board.
“You know,” Alfie said as he began to hand out various hot drinks, “I think closing for a couple of months over the winter might not be such a bad idea. I don’t think we’ll get a lot of customers, and it might even be the better choice financially as we’d have massively reduced overheads.
As long as we make enough each summer to keep paying the rent, any bills, and our salaries—which I believe we already have—I don’t see why we couldn’t close between say, the start of November and the start of March.
We could then do reduced hours until the end of April, maybe with an exception for the Easter holidays, and then start summer hours in May…
run those until the middle of September. ”
He was clearly already running the numbers in his head, sipping his tea absentmindedly while muttering to himself about what he’d need to calculate.
“Oh,” he added, looking at me as Milo opened his mouth.
“I don’t think Jonathan and I will be going away over the winter.
It’s, er, his work gets busier over that period.
So, I’m happy to come and check in on the shop every couple of days.
And having a few months off would give me a chance to catch up on my painting.
I have so many minis waiting for my attention. ”
“I’m sure Jonathan would love it too,” Milo said with a teasing smile. “Getting you all to himself for a few months.”
“It would be nice to spend more time together. And there are some winter tournaments that would be fun to go to. We could make a whole weekend of them.”
“Only you two would think a wargaming tournament is a romantic weekend away,” Milo said. “How is spending time in a sweaty sports hall romantic?”
“It’s fun! And the romance comes afterwards. And before. Basically, anytime we’re not playing.” He grinned. “Besides, my boyfriend is hot as fuck. And everyone deserves to see that.”
“He is pretty cute. I’m guessing there aren’t many people at Sword & Flame tournaments in leather corsets and cunty eyeliner,” Milo said, leaning casually against the nearby counter, coffee in hand.
“I don’t have any objections either, by the way.
It would be nice to have some down time, maybe do some art. I haven’t really had time lately.”
“I think we could all do with some time off.” I looked up at Owen and then around at the others, thinking about how much we’d worked over the last few months.
How little sleep we’d had some nights. How few days off we’d had.
We deserved a break to catch our breath, recharge, and spend time with the people we loved.
“Agreed,” Owen said. He put his arm around my waist and kissed my temple.
There was a long moment of comfortable silence as we all thought about our plans. As happy as I was with everything we’d achieved this year, the thought of an extended break was a lovely one. And I was sure Owen and I could find plenty of ways to pass the time.
“Oh shit,” I said as I glanced up at the clock on the wall. “We should get to work. We’re supposed to be open in twenty minutes.”
“Eh, it’ll be fine,” Milo said, swirling his coffee around. “It’s raining. Who’s coming for ice cream in this weather?”
“About that,” Alfie said with a slightly flushed face. “Theo has some friends staying and he said he might bring them down. Um, how many of you know Austin Carter?”