“Nah,” I smile, showing him the gold band that glints on my left hand, “this little thing seems to be imbued with magical properties. Seems to repel men and women alike.”
“I love it when a plan comes together, fiancé o’ mine,” he smiles as he leans in to kiss me.
By the time we part, I’m feeling flustered and a little too warm.
“What’s for dinner?” I ask, following him to the kitchen as the smell of something rich and delicious hits my olfactory system.
“Your mom’s lasagne.”
“Yesss. That’s exactly what I feel like. Did you invite Trouble?” Trouble moved down to LA a few years back and loves my mom’s lasagne even more than I do. He reigns hell down on us if we serve it without inviting him over.
“I did, but he couldn’t make it. Said something about using dark magic to manifest a three way with two straight dudes.”
I make a face. “D’you think that means he’s staying home and jerking it to porn?”
“That’s exactly what I think, yeah.” Jess rolls his eyes. “It’s his loss. This is the last one we had in the freezer, and I told him that.”
“Oooh, in that case I better call my mom and invite them to come up for a visit.”
“Way ahead of you, bud. I spoke to her earlier – they’re coming down next weekend. My dad has the day off on Friday, so they’re going to make a long weekend of it.”
“That’ll be nice.”
It will be, and I don’t just mean for the massive stock of home cooked meals my mom brings whenever she and Greg come to visit. We love having them over. They’re exactly the same. Cute if you ask me, cringey to the bone if you ask Jessie.
We sit down side-by-side on the sofa with our meals on our laps and eat while Adrian sits at my feet and looks up at us like an underprivileged pup who’s been severely neglected and starved all his life.
“No begging,” says Jess now and again.
Adrian ignores him flatly.
After dinner we put something mindless on, and Adrian falls asleep on the sofa between us. The dog bed we bought when we were under the impression we were the type of people who didn’t allow dogs on the sofa sits on the floor, tucked away under the side table, in pristine condition.
Jess watches TV and I watch him. He’s even more beautiful now than he was when we met, if such a thing’s possible. He’s grown into his features, his lips and jawline no longer compete for attention, they’ve called a truce and have settled into themselves. He wears his hair a little shorter now, but still long enough to fall into his face. His eyes are probably what’s changed most about him. The tension and pain they once held has released.
It took a while, but eventually, when she realized he wasn’t playing her game anymore, his mom moved back to the states. She lives in Portland near her family. Jess and I see her whenever we go up there. It’s not perfect and I can’t say I’m not glad we have a ton of miles between us, but it’s important to Jess to have a relationship with her, so of course I support him any way I can. As time has passed he’s gotten better and better at putting boundaries in place and calling her out when she does something manipulative. When things happen in her life that upset her, Jess no longer spirals with her. He’s able to see her pain or discomfort without feeling like it’s happening to him. She doesn’t always like the changes he’s made, but she tows the line because she can tell he’s not messing around.
I think I’ve more or less killed her with kindness because these days when we’re in Portland, she hugs me for way more than the obligatory two seconds that society demands when she greets me. When we called to tell her we were engaged, she sounded this close to being sincerely happy for us and completely missed her opportunity to make a barbed joke about us being stepbrothers.
The credits for the program we’re watching start to roll. I shift in my seat. Watching Jessie has started to have the same effect on me that it always has.
“D’you have work to do, or should we call it an early night?” I ask.
“Nah, I finished the cover I was working on this afternoon.”
Jessie didn’t have nearly as much trouble finding a job as he was expecting. He works in graphic design and while the pay isn’t great, he loves it and it’s super flexible. He usually goes into the office one or two days per week and works from home the rest of the time. The thing that’s really surprised both of us is how successful his side hustle has been. He started making TikToks of himself drawing when he was a student and a bunch of them went viral. It didn’t take long for indie authors to come knocking, asking him to illustrate covers for him. His waiting list is four months long at the moment and it shows no sign of slowing down. I probably shouldn’t say anything about it, as nothing’s been set in stone yet, but he’s also in talks with a really big name about doing the drawings for a graphic novel.
Watch this space, world!
My man’s coming for you.
“Bed?” I say, waggling my eyebrows at him in a way that always makes him roll his eyes, but never fails to get my message across. “I’ll put him down.”
I pick Adrian up and am rewarded with a sleepy growl as I do it.
Putting Adrian down is slightly more of a fanfare than one might expect from a fur baby. I admit it involves more tummy scratches, soft pats, and being swaddled in fluffy blankets, than is completely ideal.
Still, we are where we are.
