Mostly because they were so happy. The memories of making love to Dante were so superior to the memories of making love to anyone else—and so much more vivid. How unfair was it to worry that they had never been?
Cully got out of bed feeling achy and sad, like the day would only be of use to him if he spent it in bed, with soup and the dog and reruns of Schitt’s Creek.
And Dante Francis Vianelli, whom he couldn’t seem to pin down even though they lived under the same roof.
It wasn’t until he’d stood up, his classic button-down pajamas with the lapel collar and cuffs sliding silkily down his neck and wrists, that he saw the Post-it on his lamp.
Look at the calendar, it said. Now.
Cully frowned and, glancing around the room, saw another one on the doorframe.
LOOK AT THE CALENDAR, CULLY!
Huh. Okay. He’d bite.
He walked into the hallway and saw a series of Post-its. The ones on the right side of the hallway as he stood facing the front door had arrows pointing toward the foyer and the direction of the calendar, with that one thing printed on them.
LOOK AT THE CALENDAR, GODDAMIT!
Well. That was a bit rude.
The Post-its on the other side of the hallway had arrows in the other direction, toward Dante’s room.
My Secret Project is under the bed, one of them proclaimed, while the next one said, CALENDAR FIRST!
Okay, well, fine.
Apparently Cully had to go look at the damned football-player calendar. Whoopty-fuckin’-do!
Cully stumbled into the kitchen, following the Post-it Note brigade. On the table he found a homemade cinnamon bun with a note that said Love, Barty, which was nice. Cully picked up the cinnamon bun—mmm, Barty couldn’t be more talented if he cast a spell while baking—munched on it, and looked at the calendar.
At first he didn’t know what he was looking at. So. So what? It was mid-October. Ryan Ramczyk was featured.
That’s what the x’s on the days said anyway. Then he saw Dante’s last Post-it, with an arrow on it, telling Cully to flip the page back to September.
There, on September twenty-third (Drew Brees), was another Post-it.
Heart’s Desire Spell, it said.
And the cinnamon bun turned to ashes in his mouth.
“Three weeks?” he mumbled. “Three weeks? I’ve been without my dog for three whole weeks!” He was shouting by the end, and Dante’s response echoed from somewhere in the house.
“Whoa, Princess, calm down a little.” And that was Dante’s voice, the one that could chill Cully’s most fractious moment. But this time it only pissed him off. Those Post-it Notes…. Cully couldn’t even hold a thought right now long enough to get him across the house. Dante must have agonized over those notes, getting him to see what had been going on in their own home.
“I will not calm down!” he shouted. “Three weeks? What the hell is wrong with us that we’ve been locked in limbo for three whole weeks?”
“I don’t know,” Dante murmured, and now his voice sounded as lost—and as oppressed—as Cully’s did. “But it’s exhausting, holding on to what is real. Read the notes, Cully. Follow the arrows. I need to nap now. I’m sorry. I miss you.”
And then his voice faded away.
Cully looked at the table where he’d gotten the cinnamon bun and saw the pen and the Post-its. He sat down, ignoring the screeching of something from out on the lawn, ignoring the vacancy he felt by his feet where his dog should have been, and ignoring the seductive call of his sewing machine, which was singing sweetly in his ear.
Instead, he concentrated on the smooth metal of the fine-point pen in his hand.
What’s happening to us?
How do we make it stop?
How do I find you?
Do you miss the dog too?
He took each of the Post-its and put them next to the plate he was planning to leave deliberately on the table.
Wait. Why?
He stared at the plate for a moment, lost in it. He should put it back, right? Dante worked so hard not to be mad when he forgot, but he knew it drove Dante crazy.
“GAH! Cully! Do you ever put anything back?”
Their second week living in the house on the cul-de-sac and Dante was already out of patience with him.
“I’m sorry!” he said, feeling wretched. He was late on a deadline and worried because it was a big commission. “I’m sorry. I forgot, and then I forgot again, and now the coffee cups are….” He paused in dismay and truly took in the scene in front of him. The gang knew his affinity for coffee, usually well sugared and creamed in some way, and they’d been giving him coffee cups—from the cute ceramic ones with his favorite characters or snarky quotes on them to the sturdy aluminum commuter mugs that not even Cully could break—since their first Christmas in college.
Probably nearly thirty mugs in all now, ignominiously displayed on every available surface in the kitchen, with foul sludge in the bottoms.
Like a freight train, the scope of the mess—and what he’d been putting Dante through—hit him. “I’m sorry,” he said in a small voice, that voice cracking. “I… oh, I don’t…. I can’t….”
Dante’s arms, warm and reassuring, wrapped around his shoulders. “Hey, sh…. Don’t worry. I’ll tell you what. We’ll make a deal. You go nap—”
“But my work—”
“No. This deal only works if you go sleep for two hours. I’ll clean this mess up and fix you some food. Some real food, and after you eat, you can go back and finish. And tomorrow, after you get this lot out to the theater, I’ll work on my own deadline, and you’re up for vacuuming and dinner. How’s that?”
Cully stared at him, his eyes raw and gritty from lack of sleep. His hand shook as he wiped the back of it against his cheek. “Why would you do that?” he quavered.
“Aw… look at yourself, Princess. You’re at the end of your rope. I’m sorry I came at you so hard. I’d forgotten how long it’s been since you got some real sleep. Now go clean up whatever you’re doing and I’ll—”
“No,” Cully rasped into his shoulder. He’d been outside, setting up. “Why would you do this? I’m not… I’m not pulling my weight. I’m not keeping up with my chores… I’m… I’m flaking out. I—”
Dante sighed and turned their bodies toward the hallway, all but forcing Cully to accede to his plan. “You’re not flaking out. You’re working. And I get it. You’re afraid. We’ve got rent to make, and we’re both doing things that aren’t supposed to make us a steady paycheck. We both got ‘It’s a nice hobby, honey, but how you gonna live’ written all over us. So you’re freaking out about this deadline. I get it. But you’ve made deadlines before—and you do good work. So we’re going to give this moment a do-over, and you’re going to sleep and eat, and we’re going to fix it. You and me, we’re smarter than this. We’re smarter than a fight over coffee cups, for God’s sake. So come on, into bed….”
By now Dante had maneuvered him into his own bedroom, where he kept a twin bed to sleep on when he was deep in a project…
…or where he slept, because Dante got the room down the hall.