It was easy to spot. The front yard was charmingly fenced with a white-painted split-rail affair and then backed up with complete practicality with heavy-duty pig fencing. Nothing, no matter how small and wriggly, was getting out from under the buried part of that wire. The fencing extended to the driveway, with gates near the front of the house, and the house was painted white too, with red trim. On one side of the driveway there were signs for chickens, and on the other side there was a giant painted sign that said…
“Puppies!” Cully cried, his voice cracking. “Oh my God, oh my God, bichon frise! It says bichon frise and Pomeranian and Shih Tzu mixes. Dante, this is a—”
And then the owner of the place came around from the back, staying behind the fencing, leading what looked like two separate litters of puppies behind her.
It was the cutest fucking thing Dante had ever seen. Puppies—tiny puppies, in every conceivable color and every conceivable configuration of small dog adorability—barked, tumbled, tussled, and chewed behind that practical pig wire. As Dante pulled to a stop, Cully was still making high-pitched squeaks of excitement, and Dante turned to grin at him, pleased.
“So,” he said, waggling his eyebrows. “You wanna?”
Cully had thrown his arms around Dante’s neck and then bounded out of the car to talk to the plump, happy woman wearing an oversized T-shirt and bicycle shorts as she tried to get something smaller than a shoe to play fetch.
“You must be Dante and Cully,” she said, her cheeks appleing. “Dante?”
Dante waved.
“You called me yesterday. You said your friend got to pick?”
And Cully held a hand to his mouth and turned toward Dante. “I get to pick?” he whispered.
“Your dream,” Dante said with a shrug. He remembered all those pictures Cully had pulled up on his computer. The dog—a dog like this—had been his someday promise to himself. Well, Dante needed a today promise that Cully would take care of himself and not get so lost in his work that he’d let himself burn out. Dante figured that anyone as dedicated to a dream as Cully was to the idea of a small dog would learn how to take things easier to take care of it.
And there was the added bonus of watching Cully’s entire face light up with joy as he took in the prospects.
“It is,” Cully rasped. “It is my dream.”
Dante expected him to run over to the gate and go meet himself a companion, but instead, he came back to Dante and grabbed his hand.
“Come on,” he demanded, tugging on Dante’s hand. “Let’s go meet our new roommate. Which one do you think it’s going to be?”
Dante wanted to kiss Cully’s knuckles, but he settled for following in his footsteps. “I don’t know—what do you bet it’s the cute one?”
Cully laughed, a rich, ringing sound that made Dante’s stomach go warm, and what followed was the most charmed two hours of Dante’s life.
In the end, they walked away with a little bichon frise/Maltese mix, but Cully called her a bichon frise because he said that was way too many fancy names to remember.
As they were making their way from the puppy people (as he would forever remember that sweet woman, Patrice, and her husband, Jimmy) to the nearest pet store for all the puppy paraphernalia, Cully cuddled the little fluff-doodle to his chest and let her lick his chin.
“What should we name her?” he asked excitedly. “Something sweet, like Celeste or Odette, you think?”
At that moment, the puppy—who had been licking contentedly—decided Cully’s nose looked delicious and decided to go in for a nip!
“Oh!” Cully gasped, jerking his head back. “You little witch. Stop that!”
“So, you’re going to call a puppy named ‘Celeste’ a witch?” Dante laughed. “How’s that work?”
“Well,” Cully said with dignity, “maybe she’s a good witch.”
“Like in The Wizard of Oz?”
And he heard it—knew it was coming, even as Cully murmured things like “Stop that, sweetheart, be a good baby” into the puppy’s ear.
“You’re thinking it,” Cully said to him.
Dante grinned. “Oh yes, I am.”
“It’s perfect,” Cully said.
“It’s the gayest name for a fluffy white alien goober that I have ever heard.”
Cully made a happy noise, and the puppy went back to licking his chin. “Hello, Glinda,” he murmured. “How’d you like to come home with us?”
“See?” Dante said, triumphant only because the moment was perfect. “Wasn’t this a good plan?”
“It was,” Cully agreed. “I’ll never doubt you again.”
“DANTE, stop!” Cully cried into the echoes of the memory. “Stop! Whatever you were thinking, you were fading away!”
Dante gasped like a swimmer who had been in deep water and found he was still in Cully’s room, but that he’d moved backward, away from Cully and away from the door. With a conscious effort, he took two steps forward and put his hand on Cully’s back again, before Cully turned, keeping the contact between them and coming close enough that their chests touched.
“Where’d you go?” Cully asked, his voice tearful. “What made you fade away?”
“It was a good memory!” Dante protested. “It was a great memory, in fact.” Oh, he was getting a little tearful himself. “Remember when we went and got Glinda?”
“Yeah!” Cully seemed even closer as his face lit up with excitement.
Even more real.
“You do, right? And it was a great day and a great moment and—”
“But why did it make you go away?” Cully demanded, and Dante frowned.
“Because,” he said slowly, “I said, ‘Aren’t you glad you trust me,’ remember?”
“Yeah.” Cully nodded and leaned his cheek against Dante’s chest, which was pretty much the best incentive Dante had ever had for telling the truth. “And then what?”
“And then I wondered what it would take for you to trust me to be… you know. Your guy. For us to be lovers. Trust isn’t your strong suit, Princess. I wonder what I have to do to prove to you that I’m worth it, that’s all.”
Cully let out a soft sigh. “That’s what you were thinking when you started to fade out on me?” he clarified.
“Yeah.”
They were quiet for a moment, and Dante tried to control his fear. Had he said too much? Had he irritated Cully, scared him?
“It’s not fair to make you do that,” Cully said, voice breaking. “I know it’s true. I know you’re right. Part of my deal has been that I don’t… I don’t trust you’ll be there in the morning. I don’t trust you’ll be there in a month, a day, a year. My mom split, and my dad made it perfectly clear if I wanted anything I had to work for it my damned self, so I don’t… it’s not you I don’t trust. It’s… it’s that I’m not supposed to trust anyone but me.”
“That’s not a big difference,” Dante said. The bitterness came from deep within and surprised him. How long had he been harboring that? How long had he felt diminished, underestimated, because even after all this time, Cully was still so skittish, still so reluctant to lean on Dante, lean on the coven? Lean on anybody but himself? Even the small business that everybody participated in—Cully always had to go above and beyond, make more, better, more beautiful. It was like he was afraid if he didn’t deliver, even once, the people who had loved and supported him for so long would simply turn their backs on him, Dante included.