“I think we still have the hammer in the back,” Collin offered.
Spencer, with his wide and panicked eyes darted into the back of the cafe, leaving Andy with Collin and Max. Something crashed to the ground and it sounded like a jar of marbles shattered and spilled.
“Help!” Spencer shouted from the back.
His two husbands shook their heads and Collin held up a hand. “I’ll go get him.”
Collin slipped into the back, and Max turned his attention to Andy. His arms were folded over his chest and Andy found himself wondering how these three seemingly opposite men had come together.
“Did you want some water?” Max asked, his voice as gruff as his beard.
Andy held up his iced coffee. “I’m good. Thanks.”
“So, you’re Charlie’s brother?” Max sat down at one of the tables and kicked a chair out, which Andy accepted.
“One of them.”
“Where have you been?”
“Everywhere,” he answered, biting the straw for his coffee between his teeth. “Nowhere. I don’t know. Here now.”
“Doesn’t sound like it.”
Andy clenched his jaw, his first instinct to snap and fight, but he knew he couldn’t. He took a deep breath, thinking about the things Luke had said earlier, the way he called Andy out for alienating everyone around him. He thought about Leonidas and his casual approach to everything, including Andy, that had somehow brought him half way around the globe to a small town that neither of them knew anything about.
“Yeah.” Andy pulled his beanie off and dropped it on the table, then ran his fingers through his dry and tangled hair. “I’m not all the way here. You’re right.”
“Small town life isn’t for everyone,” Max said.
“Is it for you?”
Max gestured to the cafe, the kittens scampering around the tiled floor and the decorations that Andy could tell Max hadn’t even had a say in, and he shrugged, pointing toward the door that led into the back of the shop.
“They’re for me,” he said. “And if this is where they want to be, this is where I am.”
“What do you do here?” Andy asked, wondering what it would feel like to be that sure of anything.
“Whatever I want?” Max chuckled and leaned back, stretching out his legs and crossing them at the ankles. “I fix cars, I go on walks, I dote on my husbands. Sometimes, if I get angry, I call up Birdie and go hammer shit.”
“What?”
“Birdie, the captain of the fire department. He has a blacksmith forge at his house. He’s let me come hammer out some anger in the past.”
Andy relaxed into his chair.
“That sounds…nice,” he said, finding himself envious of the life Max had built. “How long have you lived here?”
“Five years now? Six? I’ve lost count.” Max squinted a little, and Andy would have mistaken it for a glare if he hadn’t seen the twitch of a lip beneath the bushy beard. “You planning on sticking around that long or are you off again to see the world?”
“I’ve seen the world,” he answered quickly. “But I don’t know if there’s anything here for me.”
“Cherry Creek is what you make it,” Max said. “You just have to want to make it. I like it fine enough here, but as long as I knew I could come home to the two of them, I’d be happy.”
The doors from the back pushed open again and Spencer and Collin walked toward the cat tree. Spencer sported a red goose egg on his brow above his eye, and his cheeks were flushed enough to match what would surely be a huge bruise in the morning. Collin cleared his throat and ran a hand through his hair, but the strands didn’t quite settle back in place.
“Can you help us, babe?” Spencer asked, pointing toward Max and jerking his thumb toward the fallen tree.
“I’ll go.” Andy stood up at the same time as Max, not wanting to overstay his welcome.
