Return to Sender

by Ashlyn Kane

  “I couldn’t—I was never going to hit you.” Emerson said he knew that, but Jonah had to make sure, had to make absolutely sure, because otherwise—no. He couldn’t stand it if Emerson were afraid of him. “You know that, right? I’ve never hurt anyone. But I needed space. I don’t get mad a lot, but when I do I need to be alone to think. It’s been eating at me ever since.” His voice broke, but he was too emotional to bother being embarrassed. “I am so sorry I scared you.”

  Another step forward and then Emerson was within touching distance, and Jonah couldn’t stand it anymore. He reached out, and Emerson finally uncrossed his arms and took Jonah’s hands. “I know you wouldn’t hurt me, Jonah. I’ve always known that.” He took a shaky breath and smiled a little. “But don’t do it again, okay?”

  “I swear,” Jonah promised.

  Emerson let out a long breath of what Jonah assumed was relief. He was near to sagging with it himself. “So… do you think you might want to take your key back now?”

  God, if they were okay enough to be joking, they were okay enough to be hugging. Jonah got both arms around Emerson and squeezed. “Fuck the key. You’re right that we shouldn’t live together right now. I’ll never get anything done.” He smiled a little when Emerson hugged him back. “Well, except for you. What I’d really like is my boyfriend back, if that’s on the table.”

  Emerson pulled away just enough to look him in the eye. “I never wanted to be anyone else’s.” He flushed a little at the admission. “And you better take that key back, ’cause I am not getting out of bed at nine o’clock on a day off just because you want to come cuddle.”

  Liar. Jonah leaned their foreheads together. “Yeah, you would.”

  One of Emerson’s arms unwrapped from his back and went digging into his jeans pocket. When it came back out again, it was holding the brass key Jonah had left where Emerson was sure to see it. “It would be easier if you could just let yourself in.”

  “Hmm, okay,” Jonah said, pretending to think about it as he took the key and put it in his own pocket. He could put it back on his keychain later. “On one condition, though.” He rubbed their noses together.

  Emerson blinked at him, wide-eyed. “What?”

  He made it impossible to resist the impulse. Jonah leaned forward just a little further and whispered, “You have to start sleeping naked.”

  He pulled back just in time to see Emerson blushing and stuttering. “Jonah, I’m not—”

  Jonah cut him off with a kiss like a signature on all of their promises. He let it roll on and on, lips and tongue and just a hint of teeth, until his breath was short and Emerson was leaning into him obviously. “What do you say we get out of here?” he said finally.

  Emerson pretended to think about it. “Your place or mine?”

  Epilogue

  THREE YEARS LATER

  “THANKS for doing this,” Jonah said for probably the tenth time, looking over to the driver’s seat.

  Xie didn’t bother looking back, just rolled her eyes as she put the car in park. “Please. Don’t think you’re not going to make it up to me with free babysitting.”

  He smiled and turned around in the too-small space to peer into the back, where Tony was slouched adorably in his safety seat. “That’s not exactly a hardship,” he pointed out before twisting around again and unfolding himself from the dinky car. He loved Xie, but next time she took him house shopping? He was driving. “You know we love having him.”

  “Well, this is my job, you know,” she pointed out, slamming the car door shut behind her and somehow managing to wriggle her way far enough into the back to get Tony out of the hopeless tangle that was a baby seat. “So we’re kind of even.”

  She had a point there.

  “Can I get anything?”

  “The sling,” Xie said, pointing with her chin as she hoisted Tony out and away from the grasp of his seventeen thousand seatbelts. I’ve got his bottle and a toy in my purse just in case.”

  Once upon a time, Jonah reflected, Xie had refused to carry anything larger than a bare-minimum camera bag. Now, he could fit every book he’d ever be able to write in that “purse.” He opened the back door and started sorting out the sling. “Looks a bit big for you,” he said apologetically as he held it up.

  “It’s sized for Bryce right now,” she explained, shoving the car door closed with her hip and clicking the remote to lock it. “He took Tony for his bedtime walk last night.” A speculative light came into her eyes, and she looked him up and down. “It’ll probably fit you, though.”

  “You think?” Jonah fiddled with the straps. “Am I doing this right?”

  Giggling, Xie managed to help him adjust it one-handed, despite Tony’s attempts at sabotage. “It’s not rocket science, you know.” Then she stepped back, surveyed her handiwork, and declared the harness sound. Tony was summarily stuffed into the sling, and Xie dug her second set of keys out of her purse while Jonah got him settled.

  A year ago, when Xie had told him she was pregnant, Jonah had been completely over the moon for her. Then she’d added that she and Bryce were moving back to Texas—to Austin, specifically, as Bryce’s father had business interests in Austin—so she could be closer to her parents once the baby was born. Since then, he and Emerson had been spending a lot more time with Bryce and Xie—and, by association, Tony. So when he was finally settled snugly into the sling, he only spent a few seconds fussing about who was holding him. Then he leaned back a little and tilted his head up, waved one fat baby hand in the air until he hit Jonah squarely on his stubbled chin, and quieted again, leaning hard against Jonah’s chest like he expected a boob to pop out of nowhere. Smiling, Jonah put his hand on the baby’s warm back and rubbed it soothingly. “These people have a microwave?” he asked as he looked around.

  “Oh, don’t tell me he’s hungry already.”

  “That or he really takes after you,” Jonah joked, turning around to show her how Tony was rooting in his chest.

  Xie was too short to swat him on the back of the head, so she settled for his ass.

  “Nice neighborhood,” Jonah finally commented while Xie was unlocking the front door. Neat, cookie-cutter two-and-a-half storey homes lined both sides of the street, their tiny postage stamp yards all immaculately kept and occasionally even trimmed with the proverbial white picket fence. A variety of exterior paint colors and landscape designs kept them from looking too identical. Across the street, in a rare double-wide driveway, were a pair of identical sedans with the license plates “HIS1” and “HIS2.”

  “Very desirable,” Xie agreed absently, slipping into realtor mode. “This stupid lock—”

  It finally gave, and she pushed the front door open, immediately toeing off her heels. “Ready for the tour?”

  He nodded and stepped inside.

  This was not the first time Jonah had gone out house-hunting with Xie. Actually, this was the tenth or so house she’d shown him. Sooner or later he was going to have to confess to Emerson—there were only so many excuses he could make—but before he pitched the idea of buying a house together, he wanted to make sure they could afford a place where they could really be happy. He didn’t want Emerson to be disappointed. Xie had shown him some really nice places and some less nice ones, but so far none of them fit. None of them felt like home, though Jonah couldn’t quite put his finger on why.

  This particular house was obviously home to a few children, if the number of tiny shoes in the built-in cubby in the entryway were any indication. It was painted in cheerful but pale blues and yellows, making the rooms seem bigger than they were, with high ceilings and terra cotta tile floors. Jonah fell in love with it immediately.

  “It’s a little messy,” Xie apologized for the owners. “It just went on the market; apparently the husband is being transferred overseas.” She put her purse down in a vacant cubby while Jonah attempted the ballet of removing his shoes without overbalancing with a baby strapped to his chest. “Upstairs or main floor first?”
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br />   “Let’s start down here.” The kitchen would be a make-or-break point, Jonah knew—he and Emerson both liked to cook and entertain, and they were always stepping on each other’s toes in their tiny apartment kitchen. Ever since he’d moved in to Emerson’s apartment they’d been swearing to themselves that their next place would have a real cook’s kitchen, and they didn’t have the time or skill set—or the money—to renovate.

  But the kitchen was, if not perfect—the counter was water-warped near the sink, and there was a piece of tile missing near the corner by the fridge—certainly more than adequate. There was lots of room. It was open to the dining room on one side and slightly less so to the living room beyond that, bright and airy with lots of headroom below the top cupboards so that Jonah wouldn’t be smacking his forehead every five minutes. Tony burped softly into Jonah’s shirt—no spit-up, luckily, though Jonah was beyond used to that at this point—and Jonah grinned. “Yeah, I like it too.”

  Xie rolled her eyes at him like she thought he was crazy, but she couldn’t fool him; it was a totally fond eye roll.

  A tiny half-bath off the kitchen rounded out the ground floor, and Xie raised her eyebrows as Jonah met her at the bottom of the stairs. “So?”

  It was a surprising amount of work to climb the fairly steep steps with a baby strapped to his chest. Luckily, Jonah hadn’t quit working out just because he was no longer in school full-time.

  “The master bedroom is the first one on the left,” Xie informed him from two steps behind. Jonah took the door on his right and pushed it open.

  Inside was a child’s playroom, sparsely decorated but for kid-sized furniture and the presence of a plethora of multi-colored bins for toys, a great number of which were strewn across the floor. Interlocking foam puzzle pieces covered good-quality hardwood, while paintings of two-dimensional people and animals dominated the wall space—in some instances painted right onto the drywall.

  “I think they ran out of easel paper,” Jonah said drily.

  “Remind me not to let Tony have anything but bath crayons,” Xie said with a wince.

  Yeah, right, Jonah thought. If Emerson got his way, the kid would have his first set of oil paints by age three.

  The next room was obviously the kids’ bedroom. It was smallish, but big enough for the bunk beds pushed against the side wall and two child-sized chests of drawers. The ceiling was painted a dark blue, with stick-tacked, glow-in-the-dark stars pasted on to mimic the night sky.

  The fourth door turned out to be the bathroom—or rather, another half-bath separated by locking doors on both sides. Through the other door was a prefabricated tub and shower construction, simple and efficient, and then, through yet another set of doors, a master half-bath.

  “Well, don’t just stand there all day,” Xie prompted from behind him, and Jonah started guiltily. He was already thinking of the house as theirs, and what if Emerson didn’t like it? What if they couldn’t get a loan because his income was mostly royalty-based, and Emerson had only been at his job for a few months?

  Tony made a soft, discontented noise, and that was enough of a prompt for Jonah to get moving. One way or another, he had to finish this tour, because sooner or later Tony was going to get fed up with trying to find Jonah’s nipple and whine for Xie’s.

  On second thought, maybe he took after Bryce after all. Jonah pushed open the door.

  The master bedroom faced the street, which wasn’t ideal, though it wasn’t very busy; Jonah could live with it. It was spacious enough for a king-sized bed, two night tables, and two chests of drawers with plenty of room to spare. There was a decent-sized closet set into one wall, and under the big bay window, a cushioned, built-in bench overlooked the street.

  Jonah bit his lip. Looking at the bed, he could almost see Emerson in it, sleepy on a Sunday morning, naked with the sheets pushed down to his waist. Stepping out of the bathroom with a towel around his shoulders. Sitting on the window seat with both hands around a mug of steaming, too-sweet coffee.

  Jonah was so absorbed in his fantasy that he almost didn’t notice Xie standing tip-toe to work Tony out of the sling. “I’m just going to take him downstairs and heat up his bottle,” she said with a smile. “But there’s one more room you should check out by yourself.”

  The staircase to the attic folded up into the ceiling, and Jonah stepped back as he pulled the cord to make it descend. It did so with a loud creak, and Jonah coughed at the cloud of dust the action kicked up. Obviously the house’s current owners didn’t venture up here often.

  One sleeve over his mouth to block out the worst of the dust, he climbed the ladder into the attic.

  Upstairs was a long, narrow, lofty room stacked high with boxes, each labeled with a precise hand: Christmas decorations, summer clothes (David). The ceiling sloped on both sides; it was just high enough that Jonah could stand comfortably for about three feet on either side of the center line. He judged that Emerson would be just short enough to squeak by without injury.

  At first Jonah wasn’t sure why exactly Xie had sent him up there. It seemed to be simple, stuffy storage space. Then he realized that it wasn’t dim because of a lack of windows—a myriad of boxes and dust conspired to block out the natural light from the two large windows, one north and one south facing, at each gable end.

  Emerson’s studio, Jonah realized. This was what the other houses had been missing.

  Quietly, he descended the ladder again, pushing it back up into the ceiling after he was done. He found Xie feeding Tony at the kitchen table, a knowing expression on her face. “So?”

  Jonah rubbed his jaw. Then he smiled. Hell, it still might not work out, but…. “When can we move in?”

  §

  “WHY are we here again?” Jonah was dragging his feet, a hangdog expression on his face.

  “I told you, Mom is thinking about getting a cat,” Emerson repeated. His mother had made the announcement a few days ago. His father had been allergic to cats, and so his mother hadn’t had one since before they were married. The hurt that Emerson felt at the idea that his father’s absence would be so marked was outweighed by his pride for his mother at recovering somewhat from her grief. So here Emerson was on his way to the local shelter to see if he could spot any likely candidates and to show his support for her decision.

  Emerson poked Jonah in the chest. “And you should look into being a dog walker. Besides, don’t you want to go look at all the puppies?”

  Jonah pouted. “Yes… but I’ll also fall in love! I will, Emerson! I’ll fall in love and want to take it home, and then I’ll mope for weeks knowing someone else adopted them! I can’t handle this. I can’t be a dog walker, Em!” Jonah wailed. “What were you thinking?!”

  “That you are an idiot, but one who loves dogs and would want the opportunity to play with some? Also: cat.”

  Jonah sighed dramatically. “Fine. But there will be moping. And no complaining about it!” Jonah waved a threatening finger in his face.

  Emerson just shook his head at Jonah’s antics. He ignored his boyfriend’s melodramatic moment, pulled the door open and walked in the building and up to the front desk.

  “Hi. I’m Emerson, and this is Jonah. We were hoping to take a look at the cats and the dogs.”

  “Are you thinking about adopting?” asked the girl sitting behind the counter. She was young and pretty with a blond ponytail and bright smile. She was dressed in Hello Kitty scrubs and wearing a name tag that read “Samantha: Admin. Assistant.”

  “I’m scoping out the place for my mom—she’s thinking about getting a cat. And the dogs….” Emerson shrugged. “I’m trying to convince this oaf to be a walker.”

  “Ah. He looks thrilled at the prospect,” Samantha said with a flirty smile.

  “He’s convinced he will find his first child in with the dogs and that I won’t let him keep it.”

  She laughed. “Well then, cats first?”

  She led them into a room filled with cat cages and stood back to let
them look.

  Emerson began taking a circuit around the room, looking at all the cats, hoping to find one that might suit Linda.

  “What about him?” Jonah asked, pointing to the first cat.

  “The card says he’s twelve.”

  “So?”

  “I’d like to get one that lasts longer than three years.”

  “Whatever. Her?”

  “‘Shy and timid. Prefers small families and is frightened by tall or large men.’” Emerson turned to look at Jonah. “So, not planning on ever visiting my mom again?”

  Jonah looked back, his face mopey. “Him, then?” he pointed to the next one in the line.

  “Jonah… you know, normally you like cats. What’s with you?”

  Jonah pouted.

  “Calm down. You’re acting crazy. This day is not going to suck, I promise.” Emerson placed a quick kiss to the corner of Jonah’s mouth.

  Jonah’s eyes went soft at the touch. “Okay. Him.”

  “What?”

  “Him,” Jonah repeated as he moved to stand in front of a cage with a beautiful black and white cat. It was very friendly, judging by the way it moved closer to Jonah and began talking to him.

  “Hm. I think you might be right. I’ll bring Mom and Kierstyn by to see him.” Emerson turned to Samantha and gave her a nod.

  “Sounds good. Should I take you to see the dogs now?” she asked politely.

  “Sure.” Emerson grabbed Jonah’s wrist and dragged him down the hallway. They followed the girl into a room filled with cages and the noise of excited dogs.

  “So, here are our strays. Have a look around, say hello to our boys and girls,” she said before excusing herself to return to the front desk.

  “Aw! Em, this one’s missing an ear!”

  Emerson stepped up to Jonah’s side to see the dog. It was adorable with a white-and-brown coat, large brown eyes, and one torn ear. It cocked its head to look at them. Emerson watched Jonah talk to the dog before eventually saying goodbye and moving on to the next.