For some reason, that felt like he was respecting me, too.
“It should be sunny all day,” I said, turning to the sky. “Maybe we could drag everything out first and then organize as we put it back in?”
Asher said something into the shed, and when I turned back, he was bent over a box. Without really thinking, my eyes landed on his backside. My gaze trailed along his thighs and lingered on his ass, both curvy and firm in his jeans. The denim looked worn, especially where it hugged his cheeks. My breath hitched in my throat a little, and heat tingled my groin as I watched his hips sway back and forth and studied the waistband of his boxer briefs…
I caught myself staring, and, with a startle, I turned away, directing my eyes back toward the yard.
“What’s that?” I said, measuring my voice.
“Just saying the yard should work,” he answered.
What the hell are you doing, Franklin? I scolded myself. Now only had I just creeped on a much younger guy who was working for me, I had let my eye wander from Rory. He wasn’t a jealous guy, I knew, and he wouldn’t be possessive of anything like that. But still, it wasn’t like me to go checking out some other man’s ass.
I shook my head and reasoned that I must have been overly tired and a bit stressed with everything going on. The last thing our family needed was some silly man my age getting delusional and thinking the hot young handyman was hitting on him.
“Great,” I replied, pulling myself back to reality. “Thanks, Asher.”
“No problem,” he answered. “And hey, Franklin?”
“Yes?” I said, swallowing nervously.
“Nice Furbies,” he said, lifting a pink and a blue critter in the air, then adding a wink for good measure.
RORY
I stood at the stove, flipping burgers while Frankie showed Ava around the house, reintroducing her to a place she had known only through a few vacations and one Christmas. I could hear him talking at about a hundred miles a minute, trying to tell her every little fussy detail and the history of every object. A part of me wished I were walking with them so I could stroke his back and help him calm down.
But then again, being the uncle who made her favorite meal was a pretty good role, too.
A few of my colleagues had made comments about Frankie and me being dads, but we didn’t feel that was the right word for our family. If Ava decided she wanted us to be her fathers one day down the road, that would be her decision, and of course it would mean the world to us. But for the time being, I definitely felt like an uncle.
Ava was still learning about me, just like I was still learning about her.
As Frankie’s family, though, I felt a natural urge to protect her. When Frankie had been a child, his parents had treated him and his sister horribly. They demanded two perfect children, and Frankie’s geeky habits, lack of coordination, and sweet temperament made him a failure in their eyes. Years later, of course, those exact same things made me fall in love with him.
Once they realized he was gay, the rejection was complete and total. When I had first met him, he believed those lies himself, and it had taken all of my love to show him his own worth. Now that we were grown, it seemed only right to extend that love to someone who needed it.
“Ta-da!” Frankie announced, entering the kitchen while spreading his arms wide. “And that’s the tour!”
Ava nodded. “Cool, Uncle Franklin,” she said in her monotone, then dropped down to the dining table. Even with her long hair in her face, I could see the dark eyeliner underneath her eyes, and when she brought her hands up to lay her head on the table, I noticed that she had even more silver and black bracelets on than the last time I had seen her.
A love so deep, I joked to myself, it shines through the night, no matter how Goth.
At least we had seen the fashion and attitude before her mother got sick, so we knew not worry that it was in response to the loss. It was simply her teenage self, taking shape to confuse all of us.
“What did you think?” I asked. “Look comfortable?”
“It’s weird to see my stuff in another house,” Ava replied.
“Indeed,” I agreed. “That is a weird feeling.”
I pulled together the rest of the food and announced that dinner was ready. Frankie and I chatted a little while everyone made their plates, but as usual, Ava didn’t say much, just responding briefly in her deadpan when asked a direct question.
Not that I blamed her. Frankly, I was impressed that she could hold herself together enough to shoot us the occasional sarcastic comment.
“You’ll be ready to move in tomorrow?” I asked. “The other half of your stuff will arrive in the morning.”
“Aunt Colleen’s guest bed is better than my bed.”
Frankie chuckled. “Does Aunt Colleen still have those scratchy sheets, though?”
Ava giggled as she rolled her eyes, then turned to her burger. I watched as she ate, feeling content just to see her fed and taken care of.
After finishing the meal and cleaning up the kitchen together, I finally caved and asked about K-Pop, throwing the only card I had to keep her from disappearing into one of her fantasy novels until Colleen came to pick her up. Ava dove into a long story about a group called Girls’ Generation and how some people in the group formed smaller groups within it, and so now the original group was kind of the same but kind of not, or something like that.
I nodded along, asking appropriate questions with Frankie for a while. When I offered her a cup of tea, I got to show her how we make it at our house and watch, even though I already knew, when she showed me how she did it. Soon enough, she had her backpack slumped on her shoulders, and she was scowling at the ground again and back out the door with Colleen.
“What did you think?” I asked Frankie as the sedan drove away. “Good first dinner?”
He stepped forward, then straightened my glasses for me. “I think so,” he said. “And she didn’t put her headphones on while someone was talking to her.”
I chuckled, then pecked a kiss on his mouth. “Glowing praise.”
We walked together to the living room couch. I thought about fetching us each a glass of bourbon, but when Frankie hooked his ankle over mine and leaned against my side, I couldn’t bring myself to move and tucked my arm over his shoulders instead. “You have everything you need for tomorrow? What time is Asher getting here?”
He shifted his weight, then smoothed down the front his shirt, fussing his nerves. “In the morning. I think around nine.”
“Something wrong?” I asked. “Didn’t it go as well working together today?”
“No,” he said quickly. “You saw how much we got done.”
I paused, waiting for him to continue.
“The thing is,” he said, “I kind of caught myself checking him out.” He turned up to me, and there was a wince on his face. “Sorry.”
I caught his eye, then burst out with a chuckle. “What are you sorry for?”
“Checking out another guy!”
I rolled my eyes, then pulled him closer. “Frankie, I know you better than that. I’m sure you turned your eyes on him for one brief second and then almost fainted once you realized what you had done.”