“Read it! Ow, you monster.” Dolly chirps, and I leave her and Reid to their negotiations.
In the kitchen, Gideon’s frowning at an off-white envelope addressed to Mr. Gideon Bell and Mr. Reid Bell, and even though I haven’t seen Elliott in twenty years, I like him already.
When Gideon pulls the card out, a second piece of paper flutters to the ground. For a long moment he looks at the card, then picks up the slip of paper and reads it.
“June twenty-first,” he says, then glances up at me. Suddenly, I don’t know where to put my hands. Gideon clears his throat. “You busy?”
“On June twenty-first?”
“This says I get a plus one,” he says, and looks back at the card. “If you’d—um. Like to come. It’s in Boston.”
This is definitely quiet and subdued, even for Gideon, and it’s making me wonder if something is wrong and if I’m the something, so I plaster on my smiliest smile and beam at him.
“Sure!” I enthuse. “Sounds great!”
“Did you see the note?” hollers Reid. Gideon rolls his eyes and glances at the other piece of paper again.
“What’s he want?” Gideon hollers backs.
“You know you could go into the same room,” I point out.
“Call him and find out,” Reid says, ignoring my great suggestion. “Do it now!”
Gideon frowns at the paper, then frowns at me, then frowns in the general direction of Reid.
“Later,” he tells me, shoving the note into his pocket, and then he smiles but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “You hungry?”
“How jealous should I be of these prayer requests?” I ask Gideon a few days later, my head against his arm. I push one toe against the railing of his back porch, and the swing we’re sitting in wobbles a little.
He grunts as an answer. He’s been doing that a lot this week. I try not to get anxious about this one, but it feels like something is up and I hate it.
“And how come there’s a huge hullabaloo over Sadie getting laid and nothing but passive-aggressive matchmaking attempts for you?” I go on.
“You know why,” he says.
“They can’t possibly think we’re not fucking,” I say, and Gideon turns the faintest pink. I can’t help how much it delights me. “I mean, look at you.”
That gets a huff and the world’s tiniest smile, so I reach down and squeeze his right thigh. It’s warm for late February, somewhere in the upper fifties, and Gideon insists he saw a golden eagle yesterday and wants me to see it, too.
“I don’t know what they think,” Gideon admits. “And I don’t particularly care.”
“Beyond people trying to set you up with their virginal daughters who bake cherry pies and know how to knit socks,” I say, then swallow because shit, that came out differently than I meant it. Or, worse, maybe it didn’t.
“Andi,” Gideon says, and now he’s frowning, and I feel like an asshole.
“Sorry.”
There’s a very long silence, and, fuck. I feel like I’m doing nothing but making waves in Gideon’s life, and not the fun surfing kind, the violent kind with too much seaweed and flood the ground floor of vacation homes. I should keep my mouth shut about cherry pie.
“I talked to my parents about it,” he finally says. Oh. There’s another long pause. “I don’t know if it’ll help.”
“You didn’t have to,” I blurt. “I mean, you’re gonna have to do worse than that to make me jealous.”
Gideon’s frown just deepens. He was supposed to laugh. Shit.
“Well, they can’t just do this,” he finally mutters, and looks away, over the brown and gray of his winter back yard.
“I don’t know how to bake a cherry pie,” I say, because it’s the only thing I can think of.
Gideon shrugs. “I do,” he says. “It’s not hard. You could learn, no problem.”
We swing for a moment, watching the trees. We’re supposed to be looking for eagles out here, all bundled up, swinging. Nothing moves.
“Or I could make all the cherry pies and you could mix all the cocktails and we could call it even,” he says. “Which they’ll never understand.”
“That you can bake?”
“That I’m not missing some key ingredient of my life,” he says. “They think I’ve been lonely this whole time and I’m with you because I finally got desperate and you were available, but I never was. I liked being alone until you showed up.”
He swallows and looks over at me.
“And then I liked being with you,” he says, and it sounds so simple when he does, like he’ll never get tired of navigating the whirlpool-riddled channel between me, our shared past, and his family. Of me.
“I told my parents that we were dating and that you’re not Steve Wheeler,” I say, just to change the subject slightly.
“And?”
“And they took it pretty well. We talked about Captain America for a little while.”
He lifts one eyebrow.
“They confused Steve Wheeler with Steve Rogers,” I explain. “It was a whole thing, they’re ridiculous.”
“I always liked them,” Gideon admits. He doesn’t look at me. “I wasn’t supposed to, but I did.”
“They’re not angry at you.”
I think it’s true. It feels true, even though I didn’t ask them outright. When we talked they were clearly a little hesitant about Gideon, even though they’re too supportive to say that to me. They’ll come around. Gideon’s looking out over his back yard again, green eyes darting from tree to tree, his hair a little too long and curling at the ends.
“I cleaned out a drawer in my dresser,” he says, and glances over at me. “I was thinking that maybe, you spend a lot of time here, if you wanted, you could just keep some clothes here. It seems easier.”
“A whole drawer?” I ask, and I can’t help but smile.
“And some closet space,” he grumbles.
Since being in the cabin with Gideon I’ve learned way more about bird mating behavior than I ever expected to. There are birds like peacocks, all bright plumage and displays of puffery. There are birds like grouse, who do calls and dances. And then there are bowerbirds, who spend days carefully crafting the perfect nest, hoping to bring their mate home.
“Can I have a hook on the key rack?” I ask, and he sighs dramatically.
“I guess,” he says, so I lean over and kiss him on the cheek.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
GIDEON
Beast seats herself at my feet and looks up expectantly as I put a tortilla chip in my mouth. After a moment, her front feet wiggle impatiently and she blinks once.
“They’re tortilla chips,” I tell her. “You’re a cat.”
“Barry likes chips,” Wyatt says. He’s leaning on the kitchen island next to me, on the other side of Beast, also looking down. “And if I leave bread out she’ll tear through a plastic bag to get to it? Especially pitas, for some reason. That can’t be normal.”