by G. D. Cox
"He's trying to train me to give these out without any prompting," Blondie says to her after taking out his wallet from his jeans' side pocket and sliding a business card out of it.
She takes the business card from his hand when he offers it and inspects it. It takes her about three seconds to recognize the red-and-gold, elegant logo, and another two seconds for her to recognize the names printed on the card.
"Oh my god, you're Cole and Clyde of Cole & Clyde's Cakes!" she gasps, glancing up at them with wide eyes and a big smile. "I remember now! Your six-layer chocolate cake was featured in Chicago Food Magazine earlier this year and there were photos of you! And your cake was voted the best cake in Chicago by thousands of people on their website!"
"Yeah," Blondie - no, Mr. Clyde says, shrugging in a self-deprecating manner. He is also clearly trying not to smile.
Mr. Cole's lips are even more quirked up now in a fond and proud smile at Mr. Clyde.
"As you can see," Mr. Cole says, "my husband isn't too good at accepting praise for work well done."
"Ma deserves the praise! Not me!"
"Yes, she taught you how to make her six-layer chocolate cake. But she didn't teach you how to make the other cakes that all our clients love too, did she?"
Mr. Clyde rolls those large, wide-set eyes again. The action just makes the warmth in Mr. Cole's eyes intensify, as if Mr. Cole has seen Mr. Clyde do that countless times and it's as endearing as the first time. (And she has to admit, it is kind of adorable.)
"Stop it, you mushbag," Mr. Clyde says, giving Mr. Cole a playful shove on the arm. Mr. Cole doesn't budge an inch despite the strength in the movement.
"If I was in mushbag mode, I would have said, 'Your cakes are just as delectable as Ma's, and in every bite of every cake you bake for me, I can taste how much you love me and it is sweet.'"
Mr. Cole is exaggeratedly straight-faced, but she can tell that he'd also meant every word he said. Mr. Clyde can too, for he groans loudly and drags both hands down a rapidly blushing face.
"Oh my god. That's it. I'm gonna go over there and look for the other things we need until you stop being such a corndog."
Even a hand over her mouth can't stop her giggles from erupting out of her this time. She and Mr. Cole watch Mr. Clyde stomp off down the aisle to look at packages of cocoa powder. She knows he isn't mad, unless him being mad means having a red face and a soft, closed-lipped smile like the sun streaming its light through verdant leaves.
She feels brave enough to ask, "You're never going to stop being a corndog, are you, Mr. Cole?"
He bows his head and lets out a noiseless huff of laughter.
"No, I don't intend to ever stop being a corndog," he murmurs, and she knows what he's really saying is, no, I don't intend to ever stop loving that man.
Her throat tightens up for a long moment. She's abruptly conscious of how young she is compared to him and Mr. Clyde, of how inexperienced and ignorant she still is about life and all its tragedies and wonders. Now that she's standing just a couple of feet away from Mr. Cole, she can see the scars marring his forearms. She doesn't know how he ended up with them, but scars like that come from wounds bad enough that they bleed, from wounds that hurt deep.
Mr. Cole is a man who's bled and undergone deep pain, that much she can surmise. And yet, there he is, standing there with that little, contented smile. King of the world and happy as one. Love does that to a man, she supposes. Love heals a lot of things.
She slips the business card into the side pocket of her denim jacket. She takes her phone out from the same pocket and coughs to clear her throat.
"Uhm, my mom's birthday is coming up in fifteen days. Can I order a six-layer chocolate cake from you for her?"
"Of course you can," Mr. Cole says, also taking out his phone. "We do limit orders per week, and I think ..." He scrolls down the screen of his phone. "Yes, we can slot you in."
"That's great, thank you. Mom's been missing Grandma's cakes lately and asking about where to get a good chocolate cake. I'm sure she'll love yours."
Mr. Cole smiles at her again and yeah, the quirk of those dark pink lips still makes that thing in her chest skip a beat. She totally gets why Mr. Clyde married him.
Mr. Clyde returns to Mr. Cole's side with a few packs of Dutch-processed cocoa powder while she pays them via her bank's app on her phone and gets their address from Mr. Cole. She's pleasantly surprised to learn that they live several blocks away from her family home. That means she won't have to rush to pick up the cake for the surprise party at home.
"We'll message you when the cake's ready, okay?" Mr. Clyde says once she and Mr. Cole have finalized details for the order and put away their phones.
"Okay. Thanks again." She smiles at them once more and waves her right hand. "I'll let you guys go back to your shopping now. Have a good day!"
Mr. Cole and Mr. Clyde bid her farewell too and smile back. They amble away from each other in opposite directions down the aisle. She and the two men are the only people in it, and in the hush, she can still hear them chatting with each other behind her.
"I oughta try training all that mushiness outta you," she hears Mr. Clyde growl, and she doesn't even have to see his face to know that his large, wide-set blue eyes must be twinkling again.
"Well, you could," Mr. Cole replies. "But it's been, oh ... twenty-one years since we met? If I'm still full of mushiness now, that can only mean one thing."
"Uh hm, and what's that?"
"Clyde Barnett-Cole, you like that I'm a mushbag."
"I do not."
"Yes, you do."
"Do not!"
"Yes, you do."
"Do not!"
"You can say that how many times you want, sweetheart, and it still won't be true."
"Are you calling me a liar?"
"No, I am calling you an Expert Denialist in the Matters of Mushiness."
She glances over her shoulder just in time to see Mr. Clyde punching a smiling Mr. Cole on the arm.
"You are an ass."
"I thought I was a corndog."
"You are an ass-corndog!"
"I don't even know what that is."
"Look in the mirror and you'll know."
"Usually, when I look in the mirror, I see a very handsome and fine specimen of a man who happens to have the seal of approval of another very handsome and fine specimen of a man. If that is an ass-corndog, I will accept the title with honor."
"Ass."
"Yes, yes, I know you have a nice one."
She's still smiling to herself as she browses through the salt and pepper section. She tunes out their ongoing bantering. She's putting a bottle of whole black peppercorn in her basket when she suddenly hears Mr. Clyde say, "We never handed out cards when we were secret agents! Can you imagine Fabry's face if we did that?"
She stops dead in her tracks. Her head snaps up with her eyes wide open. She pivots around with her basket swinging at her side and sees Mr. Cole and Mr. Clyde still sauntering away side by side, calm and steady as can be. Mr. Clyde is pushing the cart while Mr. Cole has one muscular arm around his husband's waist.
She stares in disbelief at them. Secret agents? They were ... secret agents? Like James Bond? Was that how Mr. Cole got those scars on his arms?
"Nate would insist on his cards being embossed with real gold and embedded with poison capsules just for the fun of it."
"Hah! I woulda gone with mini explosives, myself. Kaboom! R&D could totally pull that shit off."
She stares at their retreating backs for a few seconds more. Then, she shakes her head at herself. Nah, she must have misheard Mr. Clyde. They're probably talking about movies, not about themselves. Mr. Cole probably got those scars from an unfortunate accident. They're just two lovely, married guys who live in Lincoln Square and bake fabulous cakes. That's all.
She turns around and takes several steps forward down the aisle. Then, she turns around again. This time, she sees the two men facing each other. Their arms are e
nfolded around each other's waists and their foreheads are touching. They look like it's just them and no one else in the whole world, like the world's going to go on and on forever for them and forever still won't be enough for them to be together.
"And there you were, thinking I was gonna be bored living here for the rest of our lives, when I got you," she hears Mr. Clyde rasp. "You dummy."
A lump forms in her tightening throat when Mr. Cole angles his head to kiss Mr. Clyde gently on the lips. They look like they've kissed each other many, many times before. They look like two people in this vast, crazy, unfair world who aren't lonely anymore and found their Happily Ever After in each other.
"You were right, sweetheart," Mr. Cole says, wise man that he is.
The two men turn to face their cart again and saunter on down the aisle away from her. Mr. Cole's arm is around Mr. Clyde's waist again, holding him closer. Their heads are tilted and their temples are touching.
"Of course I was right," Mr. Clyde says, assured and loved man that he is. "I'm always right."
"Yes, sweetheart."
"And didn't I tell you that burger place would be awesome, Mr. Chateaubriand Steak?"
"Yes, you did, sweetheart."
"And do I not still have the most perfect hillocks of an ass?"
"Yes, you do, sweetheart."
She watches them silently until they turn the corner and disappear from view. Her lips are quirked up when she turns around once more and returns to her own shopping, and if that lump is still in her throat, well, that's her own business. If that lump's still in her throat when she takes out her phone and presses a speed-dial number, when she hears the call connect and a familiar, reassuring, baritone voice say with affection, "Hey, you," well, that's her own business too.
"Hey, yourself," she murmurs past that lump, her whole face crinkling and glowing in a grin, her whole world shrinking down to his voice that flows to her ear from the other side of the country where he's waiting for her to go back to him.
"Everything okay, babe?"
For a second, she isn't sure what to say. She doesn't know where she's going to be after she graduates, not yet. She doesn't know who she'll be in a few years' time, or even in a few decades, if she's lucky enough to live that long. She doesn't know if he's her Happily Ever After, not yet. Maybe he will be. Maybe he won't. She still doesn't know about a lot of things.
But that's okay. She'll learn as she goes along. That's the way life is.
"Yeah. I just wanted to hear your silly voice."
"Silly voice, huh?" She hears him chuckle. "But you liiiiiike it, don't you?"
"I do not."
"Yes, you do."
"I do not!"
"Yes, you do! You keep saying that but I know you doooo."
"Yeah, yeah," she says, her grin softening to a tender, closed-lipped smile that he can't see but knows is on her face anyway. "You keep telling yourself that, you dummy, and maybe one day it'll be true."
Yeah, everything's okay, because it isn't every day that someone gets to see and feel a little more hope that maybe, just maybe, true love really does exist.
FIN.
About G. D. Cox
G. D. COX HAS BEEN imagining, telling and writing stories for as long as they can remember. An obsessed writer by day and an avid reader by night, they discovered their passion for writing gay romance in 2012 and hasn't stopped writing it ever since. When they're not writing or reading or spending time with their beloved piebald French bulldog, they're sleeping and dreaming of their next story to tell.
Email: [email protected].
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Other Books by G. D. Cox
Memento Amare
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Available on Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes&Noble, iBooks, Kobo and other online stores!
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"THANK YOU FOR GIVING me the chance to love you. And for giving yourself the chance to love you, too."
Agent Phelan Cole of the Global Anti Terrorist Force, one of the most respected and feared men in the classified military counter-terrorism and intelligence agency, is secretly and happily married to fellow agent Clyde Barnett. With their romantic relationship and marriage concealed from other agents, Cole and Clyde will face the greatest threat yet to their love for each other: A mission in the Eastern European country of Croenia leads to Clyde losing all his memories of Cole ... and reverting back to the gay man with severe internalized homophobia that he was before he met Cole, an openly bisexual man accepting of his own sexual orientation.
While the agency's intimidating Research & Development department races against time to reverse engineer the device that caused Clyde's amnesia, Cole is also racing against time to save his marriage and bring back his beloved best friend, lover and husband. Will Cole succeed in saving his husband? Or will he lose everything, even his own life?
Memento Amare is a standalone, 130,000+ word, adult gay romance novel by G. D. Cox. It has a guaranteed HEA ending.
Table of Contents
i. Copyright & Disclaimer
ii. Preface
All About the Memories
About G. D. Cox
Other Books by G. D. Cox