Cherish & Blessed

by Tere Michaels

  The true measure of adulthood.

  “Could we get through the weekend before we talk about Christmas?” Evan mock growled. He took his hand back and busied it with collecting some pancakes.

  “Dad, we’ve been talking about Christmas since Halloween,” Danny pointed out.

  “Maybe you can come up and see us around the holidays,” Cornelia said, breaking into the conversation with a slight quaver to her voice. “We decorate the nursery and have some carolers come in.”

  “Uh, sure. That would be nice,” Evan said politely. “I get a few days off.”

  He and Cornelia shared a moment. He realized she wasn’t as angry and that, strangely enough, neither was he. When she turned to smile at Matt, he realized that Matt had once again smoothed over a drama he’d started.

  He’d be pissed if he wasn’t so fucking grateful.

  Breakfast continued, conversations varied and flying fast, the noise level increasing. In between an offering from Miranda about her upcoming class schedule being screwed up and a hilarious retelling of the “drunk naked guy in the fountain” story from Katie, Evan noticed Shane and Helena across the table. They were staring at each other like no one else existed, shy smiles and goofy moments where they couldn’t seem to stem quiet laughter.

  He narrowed his eyes. He checked both her hands, but no ring. She was pounding back coffee like rationing started tomorrow, so he assumed no pregnancy. What the heck was her deal?

  As things wound down and everyone else took turns proclaiming their inability to eat another thing—except Danny, who mentioned more pie—Helena suddenly stood up, that excited little bounce starting up again. Shane stood up and moved to stand next to her, taking her hand in his.

  Matt twisted in his chair as they took up residence behind him.

  “Soooo, we wanted you guys to be the second—et cetera—to hear the news—”

  “We called Vic and Serena earlier,” Shane piped in.

  “Last night, after we got back….” Helena took a deep breath. “I asked Shane to marry me, and he said yes.”

  The table erupted into celebratory noises. Matt got to hug them both first, a crushing group thing that made Evan smile. He made his way around the table to the happy couple, waiting for the line of people to die down a bit.

  “So that’s a surprise,” Evan murmured as he wrapped his arms around Helena.

  “Yeah, right? I just… the words came out before I could overthink them,” she whispered, hugging him back tightly.

  “In the middle of chaos, you come up with this being a good idea?” he teased.

  “Well, yeah.” Helena pulled back to smile at him. “I realized that worrying and waiting wasn’t being honest with him. I told him how I felt, what I wanted, and he… wanted the same thing.”

  “Chaos.” Evan kissed her cheek.

  “Yeah. I expect pointers.”

  “Drink in moderation, hit your head on padded walls, and have a Matt.”

  Helena giggled.

  Not long after, the party started to break up. Helena and Shane clearly required a quiet spot to celebrate their engagement—one that didn’t include friends, recent strangers, and teenagers. They left, immediately followed by Blake and Cornelia gathering their things and making noises about doing the same.

  Evan asked Kent to step outside with him for a moment, much to Miranda’s horror.

  They stood on the walkway, the air filled with scents of wood burning and rain or snow at some point in the near future. Evan let the silence go on just long enough and tried not to think of it as an interrogation.

  “So you and Miranda had a talk about things.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes, sir. We had a really good talk, actually, like almost the whole night.” He cleared his throat nervously. “I think we both understand each other a little better now. And I want to be there for her, you know—about her mom and stuff.”

  “Good.” Evan rocked back on his heels. “When do you get back into the city?”

  “Uh, Sunday.”

  “Okay. So how about we have dinner—you, me, and Miranda. My treat.”

  “Oh. Wow. Thank you. That would be nice.” Kent paused, scuffing his shoe on the pavers. “What about your uh… Matt?”

  Evan paused. “Let me check with Miranda, see what she wants,” he said honestly.

  Kent looked genuinely relieved and something more. Approving of the response? “I think that’s a really great idea.”

  A knock from inside the house caught their attention. They turned to see Miranda waving nervously through the screen door.

  Evan gestured for her to come out.

  “Sorry.” Miranda came down the stairs slowly, wrapped in a throw from the couch. “Your mom and dad are packed. They’re ready to go.”

  “Are you staying, then?”

  “Yeah, Dad, if that’s okay.” She looked between them, clearly dying to ask what they’d talked about.

  “Don’t even have to ask. I’ll drive you back whenever you want.”

  “Thanks.” She and Kent clinked together like magnets, shoulder to shoulder, and shared a meaningful look.

  “Your dad invited us out to dinner on Sunday.”

  “Oh. Sure. The three of us?” Miranda half smiled.

  “If you want,” Evan said, and almost immediately Miranda seemed to realize what she’d said.

  “Well, if it’s an interrogation, Matt probably won’t want to come,” she said, breezy and casual. “But if we’re just eating….”

  “See, I’d call it just the opposite,” Evan teased, and the nervous laughter that followed was almost natural.

  “Let me go help my parents,” Kent excused himself. He gave Miranda the most basic and least passionate kiss on the cheek he could manage, as if to remove all question of sexual contact from the equation, and suddenly Evan added more to the list of stuff he just didn’t want to know was going on. Because acting like you weren’t having sex meant you were absolutely having sex.

  Once Kent was in the house, Miranda stayed where she was, gaze locked on the hibernating bushes that lined the walkway.

  “I’ve apologized to everyone,” she said finally. “Kent’s parents. The kids. Um….”

  “Okay.” Evan was neutral. There was a name missing from the list, and they both knew it.

  “So I’m saying sorry to you. Again. For my behavior. I am really, really so sorry for making Thanksgiving so uncomfortable. And I’m sorry for making you feel bad about… things.”

  “I don’t feel bad, Miranda,” he said gently. “It worries me that you are so upset. That’s what bothers me. Matt and I are… not the issue, at least for me.”

  That froze her words for a few minutes, but she nodded, tightening the blanket around her.

  “I know. And that’s maybe part of my problem.” She sighed, loud and dramatic. “But I also know it’s my problem. And I have to deal with it.”

  Evan bit his tongue, because yes, she had to. And it wasn’t his place to fix it. Even though he wanted the magic formula to make it so.

  “Soooo….” Miranda kept talking. “You should ask him to come to dinner with us. The four of us. It would be rude for you to intimidate Kent all by yourself.”

  A little smile bloomed on her face. It was suddenly infectious.

  Evan agreed. “He would be sad to miss that.”

  They saw Kent and his parents off. Evan and Cornelia shook hands politely, but Matt got a brief hug.

  Evan refused to be jealous.

  Matt took him by the hand after they pulled down the road, and led him into the house. The kids began a debate about which movie to watch, Danny mentioned food again, and then an argument broke out over who got to use the washing machine first, Katie or Miranda.

  “So we’ve got Christmas, New Year’s, the captain’s exam, the renovation of Bennett and Daisy’s house and the birth of their child….” Matt drifted over to the couch, claiming the prime real estate before the kids could descend. He pulled Evan down
onto him, a hug masquerading as a sprawl. “Helena planning a wedding—please God let her elope.”

  “Sunday we’re having dinner with Kent and Miranda so we can more thoroughly interrogate him.” Evan grabbed a pillow. He used Matt’s hip as a bolster, settling down with a nap in mind.

  “Wow. At least that’s a fun thing to add to the list.”

  Evan felt a bit of tension in his boyfriend’s body.

  “Miranda okay with that?”

  “Sort of. She’s trying.”

  “Duly noted. I will do the same.”

  Cabinets slammed in the next room, and the argument grew in volume.

  “You break it, it’s coming out of your allowance,” Matt yelled.

  The quiet was instantaneous. And lasted for about thirty seconds before starting up again.

  Evan laughed, content for a moment in the madness.

  BLESSED

  Prologue

  THE HOUSE had finally fallen quiet. They’d survived a tumultuous Thanksgiving, and even though a laundry list of potential potholes was already manifesting on the family calendar, Evan Cerelli let himself relax.

  Briefly.

  Matt Haight—boyfriend, coparent, chief household negotiator and peacekeeper—snored peacefully beside him as Evan stared up at the ceiling fan. Another wall scaled, another storm weathered. They were doing really well at this negotiating life together thing.

  Miranda had a serious boyfriend, Kent, and only a few months left before graduation from NYU. She’d agreed to work on their relationship and her own lingering issues from her mother’s death.

  Katie thrived at college, a fabulous social butterfly, living life like a campus brochure in Boston. But, Evan reminded himself, she was still a kid who needed, wanted, and deserved attention.

  Danny, the only boy and the quietest of all his children—sometimes Evan worried about what was going on behind those serious eyes. Trouble? Anger? Sadness?

  And Elizabeth, his youngest by all of ten minutes, wired into the family’s emotional heartbeat and empathetic to everyone’s moods. If he looked at Danny and worried about his walls, he spent his time looking at Elizabeth concerned that she had none at all.

  The captain’s exam was coming up in a few months.

  And Matt—his rock, his lover, his partner in every sense of the word. Could they keep this balance? Could they always right themselves so easily in the face of problems?

  Evan knew he was obsessive.

  Knew he overthought everything, with a negative spin, of course.

  He knew he wanted to do his best for his kids and for Matt, and for the people who depended on him at the station. There were expectations about him being a captain. Suddenly he had a visibility he had never experienced. An accountability to represent not only himself honorably but all the members of GOAL—fellow officers wanting to be respected and accepted by the department regardless of their sexual orientation.

  For a man who long resisted labels, the mantle held a weight beyond public opinion.

  Snick snick snick.

  The ceiling fan taught him one thing at least: no matter what your mind is prone to do, no matter what hoops it forced you to jump through, you couldn’t stop the world from turning. It was going to, whether you were ready or not.

  FOR CHRISTMAS, they went to the Caymans, thanks to the deep pockets of Bennett and Daisy Ames, a lonely vacation house in need of occupants, and a need to escape the cold. Six glorious days at a beach house that looked like it fell out of a movie, and not a snowflake in sight.

  Matt had never been so happy.

  Nothing seemed to put a dent in his good mood, except when Evan disappeared from the family fun to take three phones calls during the trip as his late wife’s mother complained about the decision.

  A stroke had claimed his father-in-law the year before; Matt didn’t go to the funeral because he wasn’t invited, very pointedly not included when Josie called Evan with news of the arrangements. No one felt like being an asshole during a funeral, and neither Evan nor Matt would do that to the kids. In the end, Evan went to support his children and his former sister-in-law, Elena, whose boyfriend hadn’t been invited either.

  The entire thing was fucked-up in a way that even Matt, with a family tree choked by rot, just shook his head and laughed at. Matt and Walt drank at a nearby bar as their significant others buried Phil MacGregor—drunk, racist, homophobic, and just generally an unhappy human being, who had somehow produced two really lovely daughters.

  “Should we toast to him?” Walt had asked, perched on the stool beside Matt and looking entirely out of place in this Long Island neighborhood bar, and not just because he could have been Morgan Freeman’s bespectacled younger brother. “Isn’t that a thing at Irish wakes?”

  Matt sipped at his Guinness, shrugging as he stared at their reflection in the mirrored wall behind the bar. It was quiet; most folks in this suburb were still at work on a Tuesday at four in the afternoon, so they had their place to themselves. “If this were my family, we’d have been invited then ignored and insulted until someone threw a punch.”

  Walt’s eyes got big behind his glasses, and Matt laughed.

  “I take it that’s not how your family does it?”

  “No, not at all. Passive-aggressive silence, maybe, but no punches thrown.”

  Matt considered his half-full glass. He touched on all the nasty phone calls he watched Evan manage over the years since they met, the many times he came back from picking up the kids with a look of fury in his eyes.

  “We should have gone,” he said finally. When they got the call, Evan didn’t have much to say, but Katie and the twins were sad. Even with all the drama their grandparents put them through after their mother’s death, he was still their only grandfather, and they grieved.

  Maybe that he was dead. And maybe because he stopped being a positive force in their lives for the past few years—and that would never be resolved.

  “That might have just caused more problems,” Walt said with a sigh. “Josie blames you and I for ruining the family.”

  “It’s a shame one of us isn’t Jewish. We’d have the bigot’s worst nightmare trifecta.”

  Walt laughed, folding up a bar napkin into an accordion shape. “Sorry—Presbyterian.”

  “Hell, I’m an Irish Catholic. You have a fancy degree. We’re damned impressive catches.”

  “Hmmm….” Walt played with the little fan shape. “My black isn’t going anywhere.”

  “And neither is my gay.” He air quoted appropriately, then finished off his draft, savoring every delicious sip. “We really were his worst nightmare.”

  “Maybe that’s what we should toast to,” Walt said dryly.

  Matt signaled the bartender for another round so they could do just that.

  Later, Walt took Elena home and Matt wrapped his arms around Katie and Elizabeth as the family met up at a diner parking lot halfway between the funeral home and the bar.

  And with Phil gone, that meant Josie MacGregor had nothing else to live for but guilting and shaming Elena into breaking up with her boyfriend, and forcing Evan to let her spend more time with the children.

  Evan was willing to let her have a relationship with her only grandchildren, but it was clear whatever he offered would never be enough. Josie was never going to forgive him for Sherri’s car accident or dating Matt or making him the twins’ guardian. Everything Evan did was an affront to his marriage to Sherri and therefore a slap in her mother’s face.

  So they went to the Caymans for Christmas.

  Miranda had gone home with Kent instead, which just a few weeks before might have caused hurt feelings, but in this case, she didn’t do it to be a brat. She did it to be considerate of Kent and his parents’ feelings, as she owed all of them a debt of gratitude for still speaking to her after Thanksgiving. She and Evan had a mature discussion over the phone and arranged a family celebration a few days before they left for their vacation.

  She even gave Matt a s
carf for Christmas, and it wasn’t covered in rat poison or dog poo.

  It was a new and exciting world.

  THEY GOT home the day before New Year’s Eve, disappointed that the perfect sunshine and crystal blue skies hadn’t followed them back to Brooklyn. As they were dumping suitcases of sandy clothing onto the laundry room floor, the doorbell rang.

  Helena Abbot, Evan’s partner, and Shane Lowry, her newly minted fiancé, stood on the doorstep.

  “We’re getting married!” she said brightly, stomping snow off her feet in the foyer.

  “I knew that,” Evan said cautiously, shutting the door behind them. He also knew his fellow cop, and the big eyes and overly wide smile were hard to miss. And a cause for concern.

  “Two days after New Year’s! So Thursday! Woo!” Helena spread her arms out.

  Shane ducked just in time so as not to get smacked by her flailing arm. “She’s had a lot of coffee,” he murmured as Evan nodded.

  “Her and her mom have been….”

  “Oh yes.” Shane fake coughed. “It’s been….”

  “We’re getting married Thursday! Because Mom wants to be there!” Helena chirped as if Evan and Shane weren’t talking. “Woo!”

  “Take her into the living room. I’ll get some tea,” Evan said, soothing and soft.

  Helena gave him a nasty side eye.

  “Tea” became beers and frozen pizza (everything they had in the fridge), and the whole story poured out.

  Helena’s parents—her mother, Serena, and stepfather, Vic—were visiting for Christmas, and the celebration over their Thanksgiving engagement had given way to wedding planning. Wedding planning at a level that sent Helena into fits.

  Hence their visit and the decision for a city hall wedding as soon as humanly possible.

  “You have to help me,” Helena whimpered from under Shane’s arm. “You remember her wedding?”

  Everyone shivered a little, even Shane, and he hadn’t been around for Serena and Vic’s nuptials.