Ichabod didn’t need to hear this. He didn’t want to know, but he smiled because what else could he do? “Is she? Well, cool, I’m glad she knows that about herself.”
He was going to die. Just bang, right on the floor, dead.
He remembered when he came out to his folks, and he knew that it had to be the same where they were sitting there going, “We don’t want to know who you’re sleeping with or that you’re thinking about sleeping with anyone. Or that there’s even attraction, because you’re our little boy and we don’t want to think of you as attracting or attractive or any of those things.”
So that was where he was with Zane. But he hoped he was in a decent place with Brian, and Ellis was smiling. So, Ichabod breathed a sigh of relief.
“Cool. I’m going to eat lunch and then I really do have to go back out there and get some work done at the studio.” Heoffered an olive branch. “Bri, you want to come sit with me and chat?”
Bri nodded. “I do. I’ll have to make some calls first, get some stuff settled, talk to Scott, but I definitely want to come out and sit with you while you work for a while.”
“Maybe we can all hang out and watch a movie before you go tomorrow,” Zane said. For his teenager, that was quite an olive branch. Zane tended to disappear into his room to play video games, no matter what was going on out in the front room.
Bri gave his son a happy look. “I would love that too. You guys are being super cool about all this.”
“Michael, you want to go work those new cows with me after lunch?” Ellis smiled at Michael. “And there are two new horses, too.”
“Oh my God! I have to be the first one to meet them all!” Michael bounced in his chair, munching on a piece of some kind of crunchy vegetable.
Ichabod had to snort and shake his head, because things were already getting back to normal. Just the idea of Bri leaving them before the holiday had made everybody so much happier. Not that the girls noticed. He wasn’t even sure they’d been listening to the conversation. They were singing some sort of song together and doing it with their mouths full, which was lovely.
But he did feel as though he had diffused a bad situation. So kudos to him. He got best friend points, he got parent points, and he got points with his lover. At least he hoped he did. If it didn’t do that, then he was going to be pissed.
But he had a feeling that it had worked, and now he could move on with all their plans for Christmas, which was exhausting, but that was okay, that was his job.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ellis breathed a sigh of relief the minute Brian’s rental car turned out of the drive and onto the main road the next morning. The guy wasn’t so bad, but he started out on a bad foot with Ellis, and it had not ever gotten a whole lot better.
He pulled the tote of Christmas lights across the porch where he’d set up the step ladder and pulled out one strand he’d sat and untangled while they’d watched movies last night. He needed to get these decorations up so the kids could do the inside of the house. It was getting late days.
“You want a hand?” Ichabod wandered out his big heavy sweater and jeans. It was maybe not the best defense against the weather, but it would work. At least it was sheltered here on the front porch, and it was a good look for him, made him seem like a wild bohemian artist, the way the sweater had a bit of a hole in it and the jeans were all frayed at the bottom.
That could work as some sort of sexy fantasy—sort of like the naughty librarian thing but more artsy.
“I would love a hand. That way I don’t have to move theladder quite as much.” If he had Ichabod’s hand in the strands of lights, he could do two hooks at a time.
Ichabod grinned. “I’ll do it for a kiss per strand.”
“Well, now that is a bargain and a half,” Ellis said. He hadn’t stepped up on the ladder yet, so he moved over to Ichabod to give the man a deep, long smooch.
“Mmm.” Ichabod wrapped both arms around his neck, clinging to him as they kissed, swaying back and forth a little bit. “Tasty. Coffee and Ellis.”
“It’s a good combination, huh?”
“Perfect. Zane is watching the little ones, so he can go out tonight, Michael is spending the night at Will’s, and I’m all yours.”
“Oh, damn.” That was an early present on its own. The girls would sleep like rocks tonight, and they could have adult time.
“We decorate the outside. Tomorrow’s all about trimming the tree. It’s all about us. I even have a bottle of wine.”
Now that was intriguing. It was very rarely that Ichabod imbibed, and he was interested in getting giddy with this lover.
“I can totally get behind that.”
They started stringing lights one after the other. The entire house was blinking and lit up with multi-colored lights that made rainbows all over the white snow.
They hung tinsel bells and whatever the hell that thing was that Chrissy had picked out at the Dollar Store and all this garland…
