Gathered Up

by Annabeth Albert

  “I got you a flavor, too—no bacon. You’ll like it.” I held out the cartons.

  “I will put it in the freezer, but first: soup.” He led us to a surprisingly large dining room. I’d assumed the kitchen nook was their only eating area, but this was a real family dining room, with a round table covered in a crisp floral-print cloth and bowls of steaming soup and bread set out. The chairs all matched and the space had terrific energy—like you could sense the joy the room had held. I could almost picture Ev and his aunts enjoying a lot of happy meals there when he was a teenager.

  “Oh, I thought you’d just send us back home with plasticware,” I said stupidly. The kids raced around, grabbing seats.

  “Nonsense.” Ev shook his head. “Mira is set with her show. We won’t disturb her, but we can enjoy a meal together.”

  “Mira is not set with her show.” A weak-voiced Mira came to the door of the dining room. “We have guests. I will sit at my table a bit, I think. You will bring my cushions?”

  “Certainly, Hala.” Ev scurried away and returned with two pillows. He arranged her like a queen, fussing with her shawl.

  “And I think…” She winked at the kids. “I will be very naughty and have my ice cream instead of the soup.”

  “We had our ice cream first, too!” Madison announced. “Mine was lavender. Brady says it tastes like soap. But I love it.”

  “It is indeed good to have things you love,” Mira said indulgently. Her voice was weak and a bit slurred.

  “She’s had her pain meds,” Ev whispered in my ear. “She’ll probably sleep soon, but it is good, I think, for her to see the children.”

  I wasn’t so sure. My siblings were hardly low stress, attacking the soup and bread like they hadn’t just had the ice cream treat. They bickered over whose bread had more butter and reached around each other to trade napkins based on color preferences. The soup was really good, though—an interesting mix of barley and spices and ground meat. It was hearty and fortifying and I shared Ev’s disappointment that Mira couldn’t enjoy it. She ate two or three small teaspoons of ice cream, then put her spoon down.

  She mainly seemed to soak in our chaos. She kept smiling at Ev and me encouragingly. She doesn’t want Ev to be alone. My gut twisted because I got what she wanted for him and I couldn’t be that guy—my life was too much of a mess and I didn’t have time to give him the focus he deserved. Even a quickie at some point seemed like a pipe dream.

  The soup she couldn’t eat was a heavy weight in my stomach. She may not come back from this. I’d known that of course, but this was the first time the reality of her situation really smacked me. Ev was always so positive on the phone—another treatment, another drug, anything to strive for. He really believed she could beat the odds. Even now, he hovered over her so sweetly. What will happen to him if she goes? I didn’t want to think about that.

  “And now, I think it’s time for my TV. A movie perhaps? Would you children like to choose for me?” she asked in a thready voice.

  “Oh, we don’t need to stay. You need your rest.” I shot the twins a look so they wouldn’t contradict me.

  “Nonsense. I will doze better in the company of these young spirits. And they can choose me something uplifting. Evren will settle me nicely. And you can both have a visit.”

  The kids were already racing ahead of her to the living room on the promise of TV. I sighed. “I’ll help with the dishes. And you’ll tell us if they tire you out?”

  “We will watch about princesses. It will be lovely. Do not worry.” She patted my cheek as she slowly made her way after the kids.

  “She sleeps most nights in the recliner now,” Ev said, following to settle her in the chair. “Says she can’t get comfortable.”

  “I’m right here, Evren aşkim. My ears still work. And I’m an old lady now. I’ve earned my right to sleep where I wish…” she trailed off sleepily.

  “Absolutely, Hala.” Ev kissed her cheek as he drew the covers over her. “You are warm?”

  “Go, enjoy your friend.” She made a shooing motion.

  “Lead me to your dishes,” I said to Ev.

  We made quick work of clearing the table. Ev whisked off the cloth and replaced it with a sunny yellow one from a sideboard.

  “Sorry the kids ruined the cloth with soup spills.”

  “Nonsense.” His dismissive noise sounded exactly like Mira. “That’s why we have a cloth. And it has brightened Mira so much to have them here. Better than a pain pill.”

  We headed to the kitchen, and doing dishes with Ev was miles better than doing them on my own. For one, he had a dishwasher; for another, I got to watch his hands and experience a lot of accidental brushes and bumps as we worked. Or not so accidental. We were definitely wandering away from strictly friends territory, but I didn’t want to spook him until we reached the destination.

  Ev kept checking on Mira and the kids every few minutes. Finally, he leaned against the counter next to me as I washed the last big pot.

  “This is so fucking hard.” He almost never cursed, so he must have been worn thin by worry over Mira. “She’s lost thirty pounds. Withering away. And the chemo…Sorry. I don’t mean to vent.”

  “Vent away.” I rubbed his back. Not an I-want-to-seduce-you gesture. Two friends. He needed touch and I needed to give it. “I get it. This would overwhelm anyone.”

  “How do you do it? With the kids, I mean? Taking care of her feels a bit like parenting in a way. Like our roles are reversed now.”

  “Oh man.” I groaned. I’d never voiced this before. “I went from asking for permission to be out all night to having three kids who needed me for everything and a fourth who had to grow up way too fast. I barely slept the first year. Terrified the social workers would take them. Terrified I wasn’t up to it.”

  “I worry about that every night…” Ev relaxed into my touch more, stretching like a cat. God, it had been so long since I’d touched anyone like this. “I worry I can’t do this. But I am. And I have to.”

  “One day at time,” I said. “That’s what gets me through. I can’t think of the future. Just until the next school pickup, the next dinner.”

  “One doctor’s appointment to the next. That’s the space I’m living in right now,” Ev said quietly. “There’s not room for anything else.”

  There was heavy subtext in both our words. There was a huge gap between what we wanted and what we could have. And that gap did nothing to diminish the heat arcing between our bodies. We stood there in quiet commiseration for several long moments, me rubbing his back. I gradually became aware of him staring at my mouth.

  I glanced at the doorway. No kids. Happy singing coming from the living room. Glanced back. Ev was still staring. Fine. Two could play at that. I looked at his lips and his hands and all points in between.

  You need? Go ahead and take, I said with my eyes. I wasn’t going to make the first move. That wasn’t the dynamic I wanted between us. I could push, sure, but I wanted him to do the leaping on his own.

  He turned so that he was trapping me against the counter. Yes. My exhalation echoed through the small kitchen.

  “I find I keep thinking of our phone conversation the other night,” he said, his breath close enough to ghost across my face.

  “Yeah?”

  “Enthusiasm…it is maybe missing from both our lives, yes?”

  “Absolutely.” Let me show you how enthusiastic I can be.

  “And it is not so…casual to want just a taste?”

  “We’re friends. Not a bar hookup. Friends. And maybe we both need a friend right now.” An enthusiastic, kiss-me-senseless friend.

  “I think so.” Ev’s hands bracketed either side of me on the counter, and he leaned in, body a firm pressure against mine, lips against my ear. “Show me.”

  And then he was kissing me, deep sips of lips and tongue. He
worshipped my lips as if he’d been dreaming about them for weeks, and I was no better, inhaling him. I was usually good at taking my time, ramping up slowly, toying with who had control of the kiss, but with Ev, the kiss started in a desperate place and only got more frantic.

  “That’s very…enthusiastic,” he said, pulling back for air. “But you can do better.”

  Oh fuck yes. Give me directions. I nipped at his lips, inviting him to do the same to me. I opened for his tongue and sucked hard until he started the sort of tongue fucking that had me arching against him, dick straining to get closer.

  Heck, enough of this and I could come, no problem. My hands clung to his shoulders, trying to pull him tighter. And it didn’t feel like simple relief and release either—it felt an awful lot like comfort despite the roughness of our actions, and I wanted to sink into it.

  A loud laugh from the other room—one of the girls—wormed its way into my head. My hands relaxed their hold and my lips slowed, sanity returning in sips and gulps.

  “Brady, come watch,” Jonas called.

  Fuck. I slumped against Ev, my forehead to his chin.

  “That was not just a taste—it was a meal,” Ev mused, his breath ruffling my hair.

  “No, it wasn’t.” I groaned. “Fuck, that was good, Ev. Let’s do that again sometime?”

  “Without an audience would be ideal.” He still hadn’t released me.

  “Six hours with a locked door is now item one on my life goals list.”

  “Mine too, and I might add tying you to the bed for half of it,” Ev said lightly.

  “You’re killing me, Ev. You really are.”

  He finally let go of me and removed two bowls from a nearby cupboard. “But right now, we have ice cream.”

  “That is absolutely no consolation,” I grumbled, but I accepted the serving he dished up and followed him into the living room, brain still foggy from the kissing. The kids had taken over the couch, so I took the floor in front of them. To my surprise, Ev took a seat next to me.

  As the movie progressed, our feet bumped. At first it was accidental, then more deliberate contact, little reminders of what we’d shared in the kitchen. We smiled at each other, the best kind of secret between us. Across from us, Mira dozed in her recliner, breathing slow and steady. It was…homey. Made me sleepy, so much niceness.

  The twins were starting to nod off, too…“Oh crap.” I nudged them with my foot. “We still need to ride back, sleepyheads.”

  “Do not worry,” Ev said. “Mira is resting peacefully. I can take you in her Subaru. We’ll put their bikes in back.”

  “Will you carry me?” Madison stretched her arms out like she was four, not seven.

  “Me too.” Morgan repeated the gesture.

  And so I ended up carrying one twin and Ev, the best sport in the whole world, took the other, Jonas trailing behind us. Mira’s Subaru was peppered with knitting-inspired bumper stickers and was at least ten years old, but I was profoundly grateful not to have to herd sleepy kids home.

  It was a short drive, but all three kids were asleep in the backseat when we pulled into the apartment complex. Ev spent a long time looking in the rearview mirror at them, contemplating.

  “Yes, we can risk it,” I said and leaned in for a quick kiss. I was careful not to ramp things up like in the kitchen, but even this quick contact felt full of promise, and it made me want all sorts of things I couldn’t have.

  Chapter 7

  Dear friends, I find I am obsessed with blue and brown combinations lately. And not just any blue—a crisp ocean blue, more turquoise than pastel. The brown is a deep, tweedy nut brown, shot through with reds and caramel hints. Thus was born my newest project on the needles…—Evren’s Yarnings

  We kissed in the car. We kissed on my front step as I walked him out after we deposited the kids in their beds. We snuck a quick kiss in the back hallway of People’s Cup after Knit Night. We were the kings of sneaky looks and weighted pauses and lightning-fast kisses in this…friendship that neither of us paused to redefine as something else. We were friends. Now we were friends who kissed, which clearly was outside the boundaries Ev had set for us, but I wasn’t about to remind him of that. He still didn’t date casually or date bisexuals; I still didn’t have time for serious. But kissing? Everyone had time for a bit of kissing.

  What we lacked was time for more than kissing.

  “I don’t have to be in until two tomorrow,” I said to Ev on the phone one night. “Weird short shift. But it’s Knit Night, so I’ll see you there right?”

  “Of course. Violet and Mira and the triplets would come after me if I didn’t show.” He’d picked up on my nicknames for a number of the knitters, which was cute. Similarly, I occasionally found myself doing his habit of phrasing statements as questions. We were rubbing off on each other. But not the kind of rubbing I really wanted.

  “Yeah, they would. All the ladies want to adopt you.”

  Ev made a dismissive noise. He didn’t believe me that he had a huge fan club—attendance numbers were up at Knit Night and despite what Ev thought, he was the primary reason. And with Knit Night getting even more popular, a trickle-over effect had started with knitters showing up in clumps on other nights of the week and coming by to grab their morning coffee from us. Business was up for the first time since Chris left, and that had Randy doling out more hours to me and me grateful to Knit Night for a whole variety of reasons.

  “But why not come here for lunch?” he asked. “I will take my lunch break and cook for you. Mira is having a good week—it’s a rest week from chemo, and she will be downstairs in the shop. I have moved a rocking chair there for her to sit and knit while Adele works the counter. Mira is too social to spend all day with the TV. She takes her energy from others—”

  “Back up. You mean we could be alone? Like alone-alone?” A hot spark chased its way up my spine.

  “I do believe that is what I said, yes. My bedroom, it is over the stockrooms. Very private,” he continued conversationally. “But tell me, are you a screamer? Because we may have to entice you to be quiet…”

  I swallowed hard. I loved the little bit of kinky, pushy edge Ev showed from time to time. “I can be quiet. Give me something to bite if I’m not. I’m not crazy about being gagged.”

  “Something to bite? Oh, Brady, we may need more than a lunch hour.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Ev met me at the back entrance of Iplik, where we snuck upstairs like a couple of teenagers. He was older than me, twenty-eight to my twenty-three, but I liked how much more settled he was in his skin than most guys my age. Still, for all our comparable maturity, we laughed and pushed at each other on the stairs.

  I could have entered through the front of the store—I knew Ev had told Mira where he’d be and she was nothing if not supportive of Ev’s and my friendship, but something about having a secret lunch date had me kissing him before we even reached the top of the stairs.

  “Why do I feel like we’re getting away with something?” Ev mused as he broke away from the kiss to open the door.

  “Because we are.” I chased him into the apartment, trying to capture him for another kiss. Actually, to be more accurate, I wanted him to capture me. Push me up against the wall…However, to my dismay, he led me to the kitchen.

  “I want to show you what I made for lunch—”

  “Ev. Really? There’s food?” I groaned. “I thought—”

  “Dolma, köfte, and cacik. I thought you would like to try.”

  “I would.” I was trying desperately to be a good sport and not be disappointed that I wasn’t getting intimately acquainted with his bed.

  “Ah! See?” He opened the refrigerator to reveal a neat row of glass jars. “For you to take. After. And here is a lunch sack for you.” He picked up a small knitted cotton tote from the counter.

  “You m
ade this?” I fingered the thick spongy yarn. Blocks of blue and brown formed the sort of mosaic pattern I was starting to associate with Ev’s signature look.

  “Yes. The blue reminded me of your eyes.”

  Pile of goo, party of one. He noticed little things about me, like when I changed my earrings out or whether my hair was back or up on a given day. “You mean it’s for me? Not just to borrow?”

  “Of course it is for you. Who else did I make a takeaway lunch for?” Ev bristled a bit. “But it is for after. Don’t forget to grab it if you are…pressed for time.”

  “After.” I leaned against the counter, content to let him orchestrate this show. “And I’m going to be pressed for time?”

  “Very.” And then he was finally on me, pressing me against the cabinets with a hard kiss. He tasted like strong coffee and sugar and a whole lot of pent-up lust. Breathing hard, he pulled away to tug me down a side hall I hadn’t seen before. “Someday I’m going to do very improper things to you in that kitchen.”

  “Promises, Ev, promises. Show me this room with a door.”

  “And a lock.” He raised one dark eyebrow as he opened a doorway. “After you.”

  The bedroom was a very Ev space—lots of browns and grays held together with unexpected splashes of color like a teal pillow and a terracotta knit throw draped over the chair in the corner. A full-size bed sat against one wall, and I didn’t care that it wasn’t bigger. We didn’t need a lot of room because I planned for us to be mashed together soon enough. It was higher than normal beds, with drawers under it for extra storage and a thick wooden headboard and footboard.

  Because time was of the essence, I toed off my shoes and started to pull off my shirt, but Ev made that disapproving noise of his again.

  “Oh, right. Clothing on.” I laughed at him. “I forgot. You are a man of particular tastes.”

  “Yes, yes, I am. And right now, my favorite flavor is you.”

  Ev kissed me like we had all the time in the world, which was strangely relaxing. He slid his lips over mine with whisper-soft precision—light but expertly angled for maximum tease. I exhaled around the kisses, the rush-rush of my everyday life falling away. We stood next to the bed, but it seemed less urgent now, like it would wait patiently for Ev’s fantasy to unspool. I’d had a lot of kisses over the years from both genders, but Ev was the first to kiss me like I was precious, worth savoring. Ev kissed like I mattered.