by Amy Lane
Joel sighed and flopped down on the couch, gazing sightlessly at the Christmas tree. They’d gone to a craft fair, and damned near every ornament was handmade—carved tin, quilted, sculpted, crocheted—you name a craft, and it was on the tree, but Joel might as well have been staring at a blank wall.
“Jesus, Ian, you couldn’t remember to put a shirt on in December?”
Ian scowled at him. It was an unaccustomed expression for Ian, and it looked more hurt than anything else. Joel tried to not feel like shit. He failed.
“Look, Ee, I’m sorry. I know better, I do, but- but that’s your room, and she was in it, and you weren’t even dressed!”
“She’s twice my age!” Ian pouted.
“I know that, Ee! She could have been anyone. I didn’t know who you had back there! Can’t you, I mean, I can’t do this! I can’t just walk in and not know what I’m going to see in your room!”
“It’s our room!” Ian shot back. “You haven’t slept in your own bed in a month!”
“Okay, our room. Our bed. But, can’t you see that you being in there with someone when you’re not even dressed is bad?”
“Don’t you trust me? You’re going to just throw this in and break up with me and leave me because you don’t trust me and I didn’t even do anything—”
“Wait a minute—”
Ian stood up and shouted, his face twisted by anxiety and unhappiness beyond anything the situation warranted. “You promised, dammit. You promised you wouldn’t leave!”
Joel stood up and shouted back. “I’m not leaving, asshole! I just want some sort of promise from you that you’re not going to change your mind in the middle of this and go back to being roommates!”
“Well, it’s not like I can go out and buy you a ring—not in this manky-assed state!” Ian said, sounding completely baffled. “What am I supposed to do? What do you want?”
“Just a promise, that’s all. We’ve said all sorts of ‘I love you’s, but not once have we said ‘only you’—all I want is a promise!”
Ian’s entire demeanor changed, a light going on in his face that was brighter than the thin December sun. “Oh,” he said equably. “I’ll be right back!” And to Joel’s surprise he took off for the front door.
“Ian! Your keys, maybe? Shoes? A jacket? A shirt?”
Ian’s unbreakable grin answered him. “Oh yeah, mate. Right. If I must!”
Ian was gone in less than thirty seconds, looking very odd and very, well, gay in one of Joel’s T-shirts that left his navel bare, cargo shorts, and a pair of leather loafers without socks. Socks, thought Joel in complete exasperation, would have interfered with whatever stroke of genius that had sent him bolting out of the apartment.
Joel looked around the empty apartment and closed his eyes. What had possessed him? Here he was, sleeping with a man for less than a month, and he’d just thrown his first overblown hormonal bitch queen tantrum.
Well, shit.
He scowled and looked over at Ian’s room, like the location itself had caused all the commotion. It’s our bedroom, dammit! Ian’s words rang in his ears, and suddenly he got an idea of his own.
When Ian returned, nearly two hours later, Joel was covered in dust. He had two cuts on his hand from disassembling Ian’s computer desk and a swollen thumb from putting it back together. He also had a bruise on his hip from running into his bureau when it was in the hallway, and another on his shin from tripping over one of the drawers on the floor of Ian’s bedroom after he’d decided the damned chest couldn’t be moved by just one person when it was full.
But he was done. In fact he was sweeping up the dust buffalo and spare pen caps that had littered the floor under the desk even as Ian walked in.
“What are you doing?” Ian asked, and Joel looked up and grinned.
“I’m fixing our bedroom… wait. What is that?”
Ian looked down at the little fawn-colored fuzz-bundle in his arms, and the thing looked back at him and mewed.
“It’s our new cat.” Ian licked his lips nervously and ducked his head and then powered through. “He’s a boy, but they chopped off his balls, because at the vets I guess that’s what they do. He’s had all his shots, and he’s a baby. So he’ll be around awhile. So, you know. You need to stay, at least as long as he does.” There was a hopeful look from those wild-sky eyes. “He’s my promise, right? I even had a tag made for him.”
Joel closed his eyes, opened them, felt them burn a little and squeezed them tight again. Carefully he set down his broom and walked over to the fuzz-bundle and stroked it between the eyes.
Unlike Manky Bastard, who had never really warmed to him, this one started to purr.
“He’s awesome, Ee,” Joel said softly, wondering what he was going to get Ian for Christmas now. Didn’t matter. This meant the world to Ian. Joel wouldn’t take it from him for the world. “I think he even likes me.”
“He’s your color too!” Ian said out of the blue, stroking the light-brown fur.
Joel choked on a rather weepy laugh. “Are you telling me you went out and got a Mexican cat, pappi?”
“I don’t think so,” Ian said with a rather shy smirk. “He doesn’t meow with an accent.”
Joel laughed and wondered when he’d become such a cat person, and Ian reached around the little neck and pulled out a tag. “See, it’s got our names on it.”
Joel read the tag and smiled, and his eyes burned some more. “Joel and Ian’s Manky Bitch. If lost call…”
He raised up on tiptoe, leaned over the kitten, and kissed Ian’s cheek. “It even has my cell phone on it.”
“Yeah, in case I lose the handsets again.” It had happened the week after Thanksgiving in an experiment involving radio vectors and Lobachevskian geometry that Joel never did understand.
“I actually found them,” Joel said with a smile. “They were under your desk. Here, want to see what I’ve done?”
Ian blinked and stepped gingerly over the pile of dust on the floor. “You’re moving out?” he said with enough uncertainty to make Joel thwack him on the back of the head.
“No, genius, I’m moving in. See, there’s your computer desk in the guest bedroom. And that’s my drawers, in our room.”
“But that’s your bed!”
“Not after I get a new comforter, and that way Mel don’t have to stay on the couch, because that girl can sleep!” Joel was nervous. His accent, which he let slip more and more these days when he was at home, had suddenly gotten even thicker. “Anyway, here’s your desk, in here. Even if you don’t remember a shirt, it’s like an office now. No sex happens in here, I don’t pitch a big queenie fit if you forget shit, you know?”
“You didn’t pitch a fit,” Ian said softly. “You got mad. I’m the one who pitched a fit. I’m sorry about that.”
Joel shrugged. “I wouldn’t have gotten that mad if I wasn’t sort of committed here, you know?”
Ian put the kitten down to go chase dust buffalo and wrapped his arms around Joel’s shoulders. “I know, Joel. You’ve got to believe that I know.”
“So, now we’ve got a cat and an office and a bedroom that’s ours together. Can you relax about me leaving? I’m not planning on going nowhere, pappi. I like it here. And I really love you. So, you know, can you just believe in me?”
“Yeah,” Ian sighed, resting his chin on the top of Joel’s head. “If I must, mate, if I must.”
It was the best promise Joel could ask for, the only one he wanted to hear.
Got Mistletoe Madness?
The Dreamspinner Press 2009 Advent Calendar is available at http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com.
About the Author
Amy Lane teaches high school English, mothers four children, and writes the occasional book. When she’s not begging students to sit-the-hell-down or taxiing kids to soccer/dance/karate—oh my! she can be found catching emergency naps, grocery shopping, or hiding in the bathroom, trying to read without interruption. She will never be found cooking, cleanin
g, or doing domestic chores, but she has been known to knit up an emergency hat/blanket/pair of socks for any occasion whatsoever or sometimes for no reason at all. She writes in the shower, while commuting, while her classes are doing bookwork, or while she’s wandering the neighborhood at night pretending to exercise and has learned from necessity to type like the wind. She lives in a spider-infested and crumbling house in a shoddy suburb and counts on her beloved mate, Mack, to keep her tethered to reality—which he does while keeping her cell phone charged as a bonus. She’s been married for twenty plus years and still believes in Twu Wuv, with a capital Twu and a capital Wuv, and she doesn’t see any reason at all for that to change.
Visit Amy’s web site at http://www.greenshill.com. You can e-mail her at [email protected].
Copyright
If I Must ©Copyright Amy Lane, 2009
Published by
Dreamspinner Press
4760 Preston Road
Suite 244-149
Frisco, TX 75034
http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design by Catt Ford
This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines and/or imprisonment. This eBook cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this eBook can be shared or reproduced without the express permission of the publisher. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press at: 4760 Preston Road, Suite 244-149, Frisco, TX 75034 http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/
Released in the United States of America
December 2009
eBook Edition
eBook ISBN: 978-1-61581-337-7