“If he’s staying the night, that’s boyfriend territory,” Rooney added walking into the staff quarters. He spotted the cupcakes—like a sugar bloodhound, he was right there. “These for everyone?”
“I agree,” Janey said. “That’s boyfriend territory.”
“You’re the one who told me to invite him over for the night,” I grumbled.
“Because I thought you were already going steady,” Janey said with a huge grin on her face—only smudged by the buttercream. “But you can’t ruin it now, or you won’t be able to get these cupcakes again.”
With a mouth full of food, Rooney spoke. “How come we’ve never had these before?” He smacked his lips. “Did they serve these after our fire safety demo at the community center?”
“Because you’ve never deserved them before,” I said, my eyes narrowing in on them both.
Tom walked in, let out one laugh, and commanded them both into the exercise room once they were done eating. He walked up to me. “You’re supposed to be telling them that,” he said. “Or has this guy made you go all soft, Rick?”
I grumbled, grabbing my cupcake and unwrapping it. “I’m not going soft,” I told him. “There’s just something about him that’s made me feel all at peace.”
“For what it’s worth, I could tell there was something troubling you,” he said, sitting in the armchair at the side of me, almost blocking all the natural light coming in through the window. “I’m glad you told us your truth. My wife’s brother is gay, you should’ve told me sooner.”
“The last thing I needed was more people trying to set me up,” I said, and practically inhaled the entire cupcake—not a single smudge of frosting glossedover my lips.
Tom shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said. “But we could’ve been brothers-in-law, if that’s how it had all shaken out.”
“If it would’ve made us family, I’m glad that never happened.”
We laughed. It was a playful back and forth. There were worse people I could be in-laws with, which had me thinking aboutmyfamily, and Caspian’s family. I didn’t want to bring him into my mess of a family situation, I didn’t even want to be part of it myself.
“What do you know about Caspian’s family?” I asked.
“He’s from Sugar Bay,” Rooney said. “Think they live a little north of town in the cul-de-sac, I think. I’m not sure.” Tom side-eyed me. “Why? You’re not already planning on asking for his hand in marriage are ya?”
“No, just wondered is all.”
And we were cut off with all-systems go as the alarm sounded.We knew what we were going into before we got there through the emergency services operator.Being ready to meet any fight—real or false—was an art, and we were ready and rolling out on the rig in sixty seconds. There was no job too small, and we got a lot of them. In fact, the one we were being called out to was a distress call from an elderly woman. Her parakeet had escaped up an old chimney chute she’d had sealed off years ago—or so she’d thought.
It was a considerably easy job, and one we weremore thankful for. When people were really in danger was when the ante was turned up to the max, and we all held our breaths a little. We had a surprising number of animal-related calls, not for any dangerous animals, but for missing or stuck ones.
***
There was only a beer with my name on it in the fridge of my bare-bones apartment, so before I could grab Caspian, I had to buy groceries.
It took me fifteen minutes in the local market to grab food, drinks, and a candle to make my apartment more people friendly. I hauled them all into the back of my Range Rover, and made right for the bakery. I was excited to see Caspian again, even though I’d only just seen him that afternoon.
At the street-level door to the apartment, he was standing in sweatpants and an even more cropped top, this one featured the wordLovebefore whatever it was beneath it was cut off. He lookedall adorable, holding a large teddy bear on his back and a brown paper bag in his arms. I looked him over, getting out to help with his things.
We kissed first, the bag of groceries he was holding pressed against his chest as we almost squished it from not being able to control ourselves. I’d opened the car door for his things to go in the back seat.
“It’s my backpack,” he said, turning around to show me the teddy bear.
His friends were standing in the stairway, watching and giggling as they had been every time I’d seen them now. “I thought it was just one big teddy you were bringing.”
“No, they’re inside,” he said. “I also went to the store because I—” He looked into the back seat where my bag of groceries was already strapped into a seat. “Oh, what did you buy?”
“Hopefully different things to you.”
With a cursory glance, I knew they were different. He’d packed an entire thing of whipped cream.
The drive to my place was only a couple of minutes. Then we spent several more minutes in the parking lot beside the apartment building, Caspian breathing heavily and me being quiet, trying to figure out how to tell him I hadn’t just moved in. I just hadn’t furnished the place.
“Is your bed comfy?” he asked.
