“I must have fallen back to sleep after you got up,” Danny said with a mighty yawn. “What’s wrong with the mushrooms?”
“Nothing is wrong with the mushrooms. They’re perfection. But our guest here has a special request.”
Danny noticed Nick for the first time. Apparently it wasn’t that odd to find a strange man in their kitchen on a Sunday morning. “Oh. Of course. Hi…” He trailed off as if searching for Nick’s name.
Alistair rolled his eyes. “Relax. This is Nick. You don’t know him, so you didn’t forget his name.”
Danny’s shoulders sagged in relief. “Oh, thank God.”
“Forgive my husband. He refuses to actually use any helpful mnemonics I’ve given him for remembering names and faces.”
“That’s what I have you for,” Danny said, pausing his coffee guzzling to drop a kiss on Alistair’s cheek.
“Nick is the private investigator Roy was telling us about.”
“Roy. Roy. Which one is he? The head bobber or the guy with the car stereo?”
“Head bobber,” Nick answered.
“Right. You’re looking for that grumpy guy across the street with the cat.”
“Larry Rupley,” Nick added.
“Yeah. Grumpy guy. Cute cat,” Danny mused.
“Nick wants to have a look at the footage from our doorbell. We might be the last people to have seen Larry before he vanished,” Alistair said, gripping his husband by the biceps. “Isn’t that thrilling?”
“He probably just skipped out on the rent. The landlord was knocking on his door for the last three months looking for rent money,” Danny said with another yawn.
“And no one has seen him since,” Alistair reminded him.
* * *
It took nearly halfan hour and two more cups of coffee for Danny to backtrack through all the doorbell notifications. Long enough for Alistair to get bored and go back to setting up his omelet station.
Their house was a popular one. The doorbell rang at least three times a day with deliveries and friends dropping by. Most of them men asking for wardrobe and relationship advice.
“Alistair does some unofficial community outreach here,” Danny explained, peering over Nick’s shoulder at the screen. “He takes our neighbors and fixes them up so they can get back out there as a better version of themselves. Some win back their exes. Some move on to new relationships. Overall, he’s got a pretty high success rate.”
“Does he get paid for his efforts?” Nick asked.
Danny chuckled as they watched a clip of a UPS driver wander past with what looked like a keg of protein powder. Probably for Roy. “Alistair makes a killing narrating audiobooks for a living. His fixer-upper advice is free.”
“I’m providing a service pro bono,” Alistair said from the stove. “Most men aren’t willing to make any serious changes until they’ve hit rock bottom and lost everything. We’re not the brightest sex on an evolutionary scale.”
“What kind of advice do you give a guy when he’s starting a new relationship?” he asked as Mr. Pickles, a large black and white cat, eyed a squirrel scampering down the sidewalk.
“Oh, you know. The usual. Learning to be interested in another human being. Figuring out how to anticipate his or her needs. How to speak their partners’ love languages.”
“What are love languages?” Nick asked.
“The way people express and accept love.”
“What if you speak different languages?”
“You have that terrified deer in headlights look. You must be in a new relationship,” Danny observed. “Oh, look. This is it!”
Nick looked down at the tablet’s screen and watched Alistair and Danny discussing brush techniques. Behind them, Larry Rupley, dressed in shorts and a tank top, stepped out onto his stoop. Locking the door behind him, he stowed his keys in a pocket in his shorts and then ignored Alistair’s chipper “Hi, neighbor,” as he set off.
