But my heart, it’s being weird again, and I don’t know what to do with myself when he waves me into his house ten minutes later.
He has Esme.
She has a pile of wrapping paper and a roll of sticky tape, and she’s not afraid to use it.
Sab has me sit on a coffee table I swear wasn’t here last time I came over. It’s made of reclaimed wood and smells like him. He tells Esme to look after my hands as he eases a heat pack under my T-shirt and holds it there while his adorable toddler tapes my fingers together and sticks bows on my fingernails.
It’s beautiful chaos, my favourite kind, and I almost doze off to it. Then he says something about food and I’m wide awake again.
That chicken and veg thing, it wasn’t a fluke. He brings me a bowl of potatoes, cheese, and bacon, and it’s so fecking good, I swear he’s Irish, even though he tells me the French name.
Tartiflette.
I’m not gonna remember that. My brain is mush. Least, I think it is until Sab massages the kinks and knots from my upper back, and then I’m basically dead.
The evening draws in. As ever, I should go home. But Esme falls asleep on me and it’s too easy not to wake her. To watch Sab move around his house instead, relaxed in sweats and an old tee that hugs his muscular frame, and pretend what we did the last time we were together isn’t strung between us like a lit flame.
“You have more decorations than last time,” I tell him when he sits down. “It’s like a grotto in here now.”
Sab focuses on Esme, doing the parent thing my cousins do.
I smile, can’t help it. “She’s breathing, boy. I’d notice if she wasn’t.”
“I know you would.” Sab takes my hand and unfurls my fingers. He drops a couple of ibuprofen into my palm to go with the water he’s already brought me. “C’est ça qui me fout la trouille, putain.”
I frown.
He waves away my questioning stare and gestures to the lights and tinsel that now decorate his slightly unfinished living space. “My brother said the place was depressing. I think he meant me, but I got in my head about it.”
“The table’s new too, right?”
“Yeah, I made it the other night. I need to keep busy sometimes.”
I take another glance around Sab’s house, as if I’m seeing all the woodwork dotted around for the first time. “You made all this too?”
He shrugs, like it’s nothing. “It’s good practice while I’m fitting kitchens for whoever’s paying their subbies the most. Keeps my skills up.”
“You’re…a carpenter?” I can’t believe I don’t know already. That I’ve never asked him what he does for work.
“Bit of joinery as well,” Sab confirms. “I did an apprenticeship straight out of rehab.”
“You like it?”
“I think so.”
I tilt my head, careful not to jostle Esme while she has her thumb in her mouth and her arm cinched tight around me. “Why’s that then?”
Sab has restless limbs. I see the effort he puts into stilling them while he percolates his answer. “I didn’t choose it. A support worker at St. Mark’s offered it to me and I took it without thinking beyond getting through the first day. It’s not the same as when Tam fell into calligraphy.” He’s lost me a little, and he’s astute enough to know it. To explain while I drink upevery drop of himself he wants to share with me. “Tam was all kinds of fucked up after the crash. Art therapy saved him and it was almost instant, you know? Like it had been waiting for him his whole life, like Bhodi had. I don’t feel that way about sanding wood.”
“How do you feel when you’re doing it, though? Or when something’s finished—something as gorgeous as that?” I nudge the coffee table with my foot. “Because that’s what it is, in case no one’s told you already.”
Sab looks away, the same shyness creeping over him as when we talk about fucking men. But sex is the last thing on my mind right now. I love these quiet moments with him, and I know I’m as privileged to be here as I was to have him naked on my couch the other night.
“I feel calm,” he says eventually. “Like Silverbell Lake when the ice melts and the sun comes out. The work doesn’t define who I am, but some part of me knows it’s good for me.”
I didn’t think he could be more attractive, but apparently he can. As if I didn’t already know he’s a thinker. “Sounds like it’s enough for you. And sometimes that’s all we need.”
Sab takes that in with a slow nod. “Did you always want to be a firefighter?”
