by Tia Fielding
Del had made the Stew. With a capital S. Wyatt explained to Izzy the significance of the dish and the fact that it was Del’s old family recipe just turned up to about a hundred or so. He said that none of the kids had really liked it at first, but now everyone loved it.
Izzy wasn’t sure what to expect, but the perfect tasting smooth as hell, slightly beer tangy stew wasn’t it. He actually made a happy noise, and Del chuckled.
“Well, I guess that seals the deal, then.”
“Welcome to the family,” Justin said dryly, making everyone else smile a bit.
Once they were all eating and got to the point where conversation was possible, Del took a sip of his wine and then looked at each one of them in turn.
“So. I’ve called this dinner for two reasons. One, because we won’t have time any other night before we leave, and two, because I think, while we’re gone, it’s time for Wyatt to put his bakery plans in action.”
Wyatt froze next to Izzy, and he quickly put his hand on Wyatt’s thigh, squeezing gently.
“What Del is trying to say, is that our real estate agent has been looking into rental properties and some that are for sale in several of the nearby towns. She has a short list for both types, and she just needs you two to give her a call so you can go check out some places.” Justin looked at Wyatt and Izzy, then smiled slightly. “I know it’s a bomb to drop on you, but Wyatt, you haven’t touched the money we’ve been saving for you.”
Wyatt exhaled and obviously made a conscious effort to relax. “Okay. What else?”
“What do you mean?” Justin asked.
Wyatt looked at Del. “What else, Dad?”
“Well, I may have had Paul come up with some names for helpful people. You get to vet everyone yourself of course, to find the people you work with the best.”
“Paul is our family lawyer,” Wyatt explained to Izzy. Then he looked at Del again. “What. Else.”
Del coughed awkwardly, avoided looking at Wyatt for a moment, and finally confessed, “I may have put down a deposit for the property I think you’ll like the most. It’s in downtown Redlands.”
Justin said “Del!” at the same time Wyatt groaned, “Dad…”
“I know, I know, and I’m sorry! But it was honestly the one I think you’ll like the most and it has room for growth. If you want to say, add a café later or just expand the business. And it has an apartment above it, too.”
“A whole building, Dad?” Wyatt made another groan-y sound and let his temple thump against Izzy’s shoulder.
“It was too good to not put a deposit in. They’re keeping it for two weeks. Well, one and a half now. But it’s too good of a building to let go to someone else.”
“And what if I don’t want it?”
“Then I’ll take the loss of that deposit.”
“It’s not like Dad can’t afford it,” Lettie said calmly, before eating some more of the Stew.
“Fine. Fine. But you’re the one who calls Harper after dinner and tells her what you’ve done,” Wyatt said, his tone snappish enough to make something in Izzy perk up.
As much as he loved the timid yet brave Wyatt, there was something about the assertive moments that made Izzy’s stomach clench pleasantly.
Del took in a deep breath, then looked at Wyatt and said, “Fair. I deserve it.”
Justin chuckled and looked at Izzy, and he looked genuinely warm for once. “Did I say ‘welcome to the family’ yet?”
Chapter 23
For all that he thought he was ready for this, Wyatt felt a little shaky when he hugged Dad and Justin goodbye. Twelve weeks suddenly seemed like a long time to be without them, even if they’d only ever be a phone call away. Justin looked like he was having second thoughts too.
“I’ll just—” he began.
“No,” Dad said firmly. “Sam and the team have everything under control. There is nothing you need to check for the hundredth time.”
“Buy me something from every country you go to!” Lettie yelled as Dad finally got Justin into the car.
“That was always going to happen, Lettie!” Dad yelled back, and then they were off, the tires of the SUV crunching on the driveway.
Wyatt let out a breath and squeezed Izzy’s hand. “We’ve got this, right?”
Izzy flashed him his cocky grin. “Course we do, baby, course we do.”
* * * *
It somehow felt easier than it should be to fall into a routine with Izzy. Wyatt was half expecting them to fight at some point, but the first week came and went with barely any tension at all, and Wyatt began to relax a little. He and Izzy were living together and sleeping together, but they weren’t in each other’s pockets all the time. Izzy had work, and he liked to walk the dogs with Lottie, and Dad made sure that Wyatt had enough to keep him busy. He researched small business loans in case he needed more money than Dad and Justin had set aside. He researched local zoning laws. He emailed Paul a few times, and Paul was happy to talk him through a lot of the stuff he didn’t quite understand.
“We gonna drive down to Redlands tomorrow?” Izzy asked him one night. “Kind of a waste if we don’t even check it out.”
“It’s farther away than Yucaipa,” Wyatt murmured and chewed his bottom lip.
“Not by much,” Izzy said. “And it’s bigger too. More customers.”
Wyatt jiggled his leg. “It’s gonna make it all real though.”
“Wy, everything you’ve been doing this week is already real,” Izzy pointed out. “Seeing a building isn’t going to change that.”
“That’s one of those things I know logically, but not emotionally.”
“We’ll go down tomorrow,” Izzy said. “We’ll buy some donuts, we’ll look at the building, and if it’s shit, we’ll walk away again, okay?”
Wyatt drew a deep breath. That sounded like a good plan. “Okay,” he said. “Yeah, okay.”
* * * *
From outside, all Wyatt registered was that the building was big. It was an old red brick building with green awnings. The faded signage on the front still said Hooper’s Books. It was on a corner, and it had a parking lot around the back. All of that seemed good, right? He wasn’t really sure. It probably meant really expensive too.
The realtor was a round middle-aged woman in a pastel suit and too much makeup. She met them at the front door of the building with the keys.
“Thanks,” Izzy said and took them off her. “We don’t need the guided tour or anything. We just want to check it out ourselves.”
The woman looked a little surprised. Then she pointed to a coffee shop across the street. “Okay, well, come and see me there when you’re done.”
“Thanks,” Izzy said again.
They stood still for a moment, just looking at the front of the building. Izzy’s hand was on Wyatt’s hip, and he slid a couple of fingers under the waistband of Wyatt’s jeans, stroking the silk and lace underneath. It was comforting, grounding, to have the lingerie under his clothing. It felt good, and it also reminded him that he could be whatever he wanted to be and that his boyfriend loved him no matter what. Izzy moved his hand on Wyatt’s lower back and guided him inside.
It took a moment for Wyatt’s eyes to adjust to the gloom, and then he found himself shaking his head as he looked around at the exposed brick walls and the miles and miles and miles of floor space. “It’s too big,” he said. “It’s way too big.”
“Maybe,” Izzy said. “But what if you put in some walls? Bakery on one side, with a little storefront to the street, and coffee shop on the other side?”
“I don’t know how to run a coffee shop,” Wyatt said. His tongue felt thick. “I don’t even know how to run a bakery!”
“I mean, you don’t have to,” Izzy said, and why did he sound so reasonable? “You can be the owner without being the manager. If you hire the right manager, all you gotta do is make cupcakes.”
Wyatt sucked in a breath and held it until his heart wasn’t pounding quite so much. Okay, yeah, he
knew that. He’d discussed that with Paul. Just…it was overwhelming, seeing the building for real. Everything suddenly seemed much harder than it was on paper.
Izzy drew him across the wide, wide floor. There was a door in the back wall. It opened up into a small corridor.
“Okay,” Izzy said. “Bathrooms, and door to the back, I guess? And…” He pushed open another door. “Found the stairs.”
Wyatt followed him up them. A flickering bulb illuminated the stairs, on and off.
Izzy opened another door at the top of the stairs. “Oh, wow.”
He got that right.
The top floor had clearly been renovated more recently than the downstairs. It was an open-plan loft. A wall full of windows let the light right in. The kitchen was at one end of the loft, and the living space at the other. Above the living space was a mezzanine floor with a set of steps leading up to it.
“Okay, shit,” Izzy said. “This is amazing!”
Wyatt nodded, heading for the kitchen first. It wasn’t brand new, but it wasn’t old either. He ran his fingertips over the counter tops. They were slightly dusty, but they were spacious. This was no cluttered little kitchen at all. Whoever had lived here last had definitely liked to cook. The oven was a top of the range electric double convection oven. Wyatt could work with that. He had visions of making dinner here every night, Izzy helping him chop and cook.
He turned to see where Izzy was and caught sight of him climbing the steps to the mezzanine level.
Maybe he was getting ahead of himself here. Maybe Izzy wouldn’t want to live here with him.
“Holy shit, Wy!” Izzy called. “You could fit a California king up here if you wanted! And there are plenty of shelves for all your books!”
“What about for yours?” Wyatt called back, marveling at his own audacity.
Izzy reappeared, leaning on the railing of the mezzanine level. “The last thing I read was the TV Guide,” he said. “But if that’s an invitation to move in with you here, then yes.”
Wyatt laughed, relieved and delighted. “It kind of was.”
Izzy walked down the stairs again He ducked his head and scratched the back of his neck. “Listen, I had an idea too.”
“What?”
“I was thinking, I really appreciate everything that Justin has done for me, but I’m not a fan of waiting to die of a bee sting, you know?”
“I’m not a fan of that either,” Wyatt said. He reached out for Izzy and drew him closer.
“So I reckon maybe I need to get a new job,” Izzy said. He held Wyatt’s gaze, looking strangely vulnerable. “I don’t really have many skills, but I think I could learn how to make coffee.”
“You want to make coffee?” Wyatt asked softly.
“I mean, if you hired a manager who could teach me how,” Izzy said. “I could work the early shifts or whatever, so we’d have the afternoons off together.”
Wyatt gazed around the loft, his mind’s eye filling it with furniture. With a couch and a TV, with a dining table, with a bed. He imagined coming home to this every afternoon—to this and to Izzy—and the thought of it was so perfect that he had to blink back sudden tears.
“Baby?” Izzy asked, his expression pinched with worry.
“I want that,” Wyatt told him. He pulled him in for a kiss. “I want that so much, Izzy.”
* * * *
The twelve weeks passed both more quickly and more slowly than Wyatt could have guessed. Quickly, because he had so much work to do. He’d signed a contract on the building—his hand shaking so much the signature didn’t even look like his—and now he was dealing with getting quotes from contractors who could refit the downstairs just how he wanted. It was nerve-wracking, and Wyatt was emailing Paul and Dad every step of the way. He didn’t even have as much time to bake as he liked, and that alone made him feel jittery. He couldn’t wait until he could just get into a kitchen again, and not worry about all this other stuff, but that was all still months away.
The twelve weeks also passed slowly because Wyatt missed Dad and Justin so much. It was like a constant ache in his chest that even Izzy’s presence couldn’t totally erase. It wasn’t the same relying on phone calls or Skype or Dad’s social media updates. It wasn’t enough to quell his anxiety, because the world was a dangerous place, and what if something happened? Nights like those were the worst, because even Ativan barely took the edge off his worry and Wyatt could hardly sleep.
It was a process though, and Wyatt worked hard at not letting his anxiety take charge, and Izzy was patient with him. He understood exactly what Wyatt was dealing with and he didn’t judge him for it.
The weekend Dad and Justin were finally due back, Harper arrived for a visit. Nobody was surprised that she turned up with a cat carrier holding the shelter cat she’d ‘accidentally’ found online, or that she was now dating the guy from the elevator who wore Hugo Boss suits.
“You’d think he’s got his shit together by looking at him,” she announced as she lugged the carrier inside, “but I wouldn’t trust him to watch a goldfish. Have you ever seen a grown man get his hand stuck inside a tube of Pringles? Lucky he’s good in bed.”
It felt like Harper had barely got the cat settled when Wyatt heard the crunch of tires on the driveway. Lettie and the dogs were the first ones outside, and Harper and Wyatt took up the rear. Wyatt looked back as he hurried outside into the bright sunlight; Izzy was standing by the front door, hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans.
“Dad!” Lettie yelled, as Dad’s SUV pulled up. “Justin!”
She and the dogs rushed forward to swarm the vehicle, and Harper followed with a brilliant smile.
Wyatt stopped and held his hand back in a silent question.
Izzy moved forward cautiously, linking his fingers with Wyatt’s.
Wyatt squeezed them. “Come on,” he said. “You’re family too.”
And they moved forward together to welcome Dad and Justin home.
THE END
ABOUT TINA FIELDING
Tia Fielding is a Finnish author who loves witty people, words, peppermint, sarcasm, autumn, and the tiny beautiful things in life.
Tia struggles with stubborn muses and depression, but both are things she has learned to live with. After losing the thread of her writing in her teens, Tia rediscovered the joy of writing stories through fan fiction, which later kick-started her publishing career. Tia is not ashamed of her past of borrowing other people’s characters, but has found creating her own much more satisfying, though she still writes fan fiction when the mood strikes her.
Tia identifies as genderqueer, but isn’t strict about pronouns. Why? Because luckily, in her native language there aren’t gender-specific pronouns. Being a reclusive author living with her fur-babies is another fact of life for Tia, among the need to write that seems to be a part of her psyche by now.
In 2013 Tia’s novel Falling Into Place was recognized by the industry’s Rainbow Awards in the Best LGBT Erotic Romance (Bobby Michaels Award) category
.For more information, visit facebook.com/authortiafielding.
ABOUT LISA HENRY
Lisa likes to tell stories, mostly with hot guys and happily ever afters.
Lisa lives in tropical North Queensland, Australia. She doesn't know why, because she hates the heat, but she suspects she's too lazy to move. She spends half her time slaving away as a government minion, and the other half plotting her escape.
She attended university at sixteen, not because she was a child prodigy or anything, but because of a mix-up between international school systems early in life. She studied History and English, neither of them very thoroughly.
She shares her house with too many cats, a dog, a green tree frog that swims in the toilet, and as many possums as can break in every night. This is not how she imagined life as a grown-up.
Lisa has been published since 2012, and was a LAMBDA finalist for her quirky, awkward coming-of-age romance Adulting 101.
For more information,
visit lisahenryonline.com.
ABOUT JMS BOOKS LLC
JMS Books LLC is a small queer press with competitive royalty rates publishing LGBT romance, erotic romance, and young adult fiction. Visit jms-books.com for our latest releases and submission guidelines!
