Emmett nodded. “I’ve just… never had friends like you guys before.”
“Me either,” Kenneth said, sitting on a couch and patting the spot next to him. “I really only had my siblings before CJ and I reconnected.”
“I was pretty much just trying to survive before Tank,” CJ added, sitting on Emmett’s other side. “I was working so much I didn’t have time for friends, really.”
“Plus, you had shitty roommates,” Kenneth said, peeking around Emmett with a wide grin.
“That too.”
Emmett sank back against the cushions and smiled, looking around for Ollie and finally spotting him over by a cluster ofclub members. He appeared to be wagging his finger in their faces and then pointing over toward the sitting area.
“What’s he doing?” he asked the other two.
“Wrangling the bikers to play the white elephant game,” CJ said, taking a sip of his mimosa.
Emmett had lost his drink, but that was okay. He rarely indulged and probably wouldn’t be able to handle more than the few sips he’d already had. It didn’t take long before the rest of the group, led by the tiny and fierce Ollie, gathered around the sitting area with all the gifts.
Emmett and the other two moved off the couch, each migrating toward their significant other and getting pulled down into laps. He’d never played the gift exchange game, but he was familiar with the rules. Or he thought he was. The way Ollie explained it made him wonder whether he was mistaken or if Ollie was having them play by his own rules.
Probably the latter.
“Yes! Do you know how much scheming I had to do to make sure you ended up with that gift?” Ollie hollered from five feet away, nearly tipping off Six’s leg in his excitement.
Emmett looked from his friend to the box in his hands. They were penis-shaped cookie cutters. And he’d opened it in front of half of the club! His face was still burning, Rooster’s face buried in his back as he laughed.
“You should have just done Secret Santa,” Tank said, pulling the silk eye mask over his head and down to cover his eyes. He leaned back on the couch, smiling. “Why make us do white elephant and then change the rules so no one could actually steal?”
“Because I’d already announced white elephant before I found the cookie cutters, obviously,” Ollie told him, rolling his eyes. He turned around to look at Six. “Do you like your gift, Daddy?”
The big man was gently holding a white mug… shaped like an elephant. Someone had gotten very literal with their gift.
“Love it,” Six said, pressing a kiss to Ollie’s neck over a fresh-looking hickey.
Emmett ignored their cuteness to stare back at his own gift again. “But… why?”
“So we can make them!” Ollie exclaimed, like that was obvious. “Didn’t you have fun doing the Christmas cookies with us?”
“Well, yeah.” Though a big part of that had been because of Rooster, but he’d had fun with Ollie and CJ too. And Knuckles, even though he’d been kind of quiet compared to the others. “But… penises?”
Everyone laughed at his strangled whisper, but some of his embarrassment was lessened when Rooster wrapped his arms around him and tugged him back against his chest.
“They’re not laughing at you,” Rooster said softly in his ear. “And Ollie isn’t trying to embarrass you.”
“I know,” he whispered back and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Glancing back at Ollie, he was surprised to find some of his excitement had waned, and he looked almost nervous.
“Are you mad?”
Emmett shook his head. “No, I was just surprised. Thank you for thinking of me.”
Ollie beamed at him. “Of course! As soon as I saw them, I knew we’d have a blast decorating them.”
He was sure that was exactly what Ollie had thought. Emmett was pretty sure he would blush the entire time, but he was still grateful to have such a thoughtful friend. The group began to break up around them—with a few people exchanging their white elephant gifts while Ollie wasn’t looking—but he and his friends and their partners stayed put, along with a couple of other guys and Roni.
Emmett swiped Rooster’s gift from him to look at it more closely. It was a thousand-piece puzzle of the state of Michigan surrounded by the Great Lakes. The big cities and larger towns were listed on the map, but he was disappointed to see that Ridgewood wasn’t on it. Maybe he’d add it with a marker once they finished putting it together.
“So when are you two moving in together,” Ollie asked out of the blue, and Emmett almost dropped the puzzle box on the floor.
He jerked his head up to stare at Ollie. “What? It’s only been a month. That’s… that’s way too fast.”
