“Everything okay, Bo?” Everett asked.
“Mm,” Bo mumbled. “Are we gonna have to sit somewhere else?”
“Somewhere else?”
“Yeah.” Bo squirmed in his seat, then craned his neck to look over the driver’s seat at Everett. “We left… we left Parker outside in another place. This rest’raunt isdark.”
“Oh, no, bud, this is a parking garage. This is where we’re going to leave Uncle Caleb’s car. We’re going to walk down the street to the restaurant so we can sit where Parker is.”
“Oh.” Bo smiled, and just like that, all his concern melted away. “Okay.”
“You and Penelope and I are going to have breakfast with Jayne and Shep and Parker.”
“Penny and me had breakfast,” Bo said. “Shep made lots and lots of… of bacon.”
Always with the bacon. Everett grinned. “You know, your Uncle Caleb tried to make bacon this morning, too, but he burned it by accident.”
“No!” Bo gasped. It was incredibly dramatic, as was befitting of such a travesty.
Everett puckered his lips like he’d bitten something sour, but despite his best efforts, he laughed anyway. “I know, right?”
“Did he burn the eggs?”
“No.”
“Okay. Good.” Bo sighed in relief. “That would be so bad.”
“Very bad,” Everett agreed. “In fact, you might even call it ‘the worst.’”
For a moment, there was silence. Then, very shyly, Bo asked, “Are we gonna have eggs with breakfast?”
“Do you wanna have eggs with breakfast?” Everett rolled down the window and punched the button on the ticket dispenser next to the barricade. A yellow ticket rolled out from between the dispenser’s lips, and Everett had to wrestle with the machine to free it. Whatever mechanism held the ticket in place did its job a little too well.
“No.”
“Then you don’t have to have eggs with breakfast. You can have pancakes, or waffles, or crêpes instead.”
At last, Everett pulled the ticket free. The barricade lifted, and he continued on his way. Parking in downtown Aurora on a Saturday was a nightmare, but Everett was in luck—a parking spot was available not all that far from the street exit. With the kids there with him, he didn’t want to walk far.
“Are you gonna eat eggs with breakfast?” Bo asked once Everett had parked. He shifted his weight from thigh to thigh, already antsy—over the years, Everett had watched him grow from a timid and sickly baby into an energetic young man. It was astonishing how quickly Bo was learning and growing, but as impressive as it was, it left Everett feeling bittersweet. Until Bo and Penelope had come into his life, he’d never noticed how much could change in a single year, or how quickly time went by. On his next birthday, he’d be closing in on thirty—thirty—and yet he had nothing to show for it but a college degree he didn’t use and a relationship he couldn’t share with anyone for fear they wouldn’t understand.
A relationship that was on borrowed time.
Everett undid his seatbelt and tried to strip the thought from his mind, but it clung to him stubbornly, like tape residue that no amount of picking could pry off. One day in the not-so-distant future, Everett’s weekend nights would be spent managing a club, not partying in one. The string of temporary lovers would come to an abrupt end. Without a third to satisfy both himself and Caleb in the bedroom, things would start to get tense, just like it had been at the beginning of their relationship before they’d worked things out.
Sex, Everett knew, was not always the end-all, be-all of a relationship. Couples got along without it just fine. There were happy sexless marriages, happy sexless partnerships, and people who preferred not to get physical at all.
Everett wasn’t one of those people. Neither was Caleb.
Handjobs and blowjobs were great. Intercrural was fine. They’d worked their way through a whole chest of sex toys and had enough fun with them, but when all was said and done, Everett missed the feeling of slipping between soft cheeks into a tight, wet hole. He missed the tremble that worked its way through his lover’s arms while he fucked them from behind, and he missed the exhilaration of looking down his body and watching his cock sink into his lover’s ass while they rode him while on top.
He knew for a fact that Caleb did, too.
Love taunted them, and soon, it would destroy them.
“Yeah,” Everett replied, trying, and partially failing, to keep his unhappiness from his voice. “I think I probably will have eggs.”
Everett shut the door and went to fish Bo and Penelope from the back seat. Bo had already undone the seatbelt holding him in his booster seat, and he stood patiently by the side of the car while Everett undid the buckles holding Penelope in her car seat.
