by Amy Aislin
“Why? Did he say something?”
“No. But he seemed surprised by my choice of restaurant.”
“Good surprised or bad surprised?”
“Good?” Groaning, Tay dug his head into the back of the couch. “Maybe I should’ve taken him to the titty bar.”
Mom snorted a laugh, spilling coffee onto her leggings, which made her laugh harder. “Do you think he would’ve liked the titty bar better than a casual café?”
Tay bit his lip, thinking it through. “I don’t think so. I wanted to be able to have a conversation without having to yell across the table.”
“Good thing you stayed away from the titty bar, then.” Toasting him with her mug, she said, “How did the date go?”
Tay’s thoughts bypassed dinner entirely and went straight to their nighttime activities. Which was certainly not what Mom was asking about, but it was where Tay’s thoughts had strayed more often than not the last few days. To Dakota’s strong hands gripping his thighs; Dakota’s lips kissing him, alternately hard and firm, then sensuous and soft; Dakota’s smoky eyes eating him up like he couldn’t get enough; the taste of scotch on Dakota’s tongue.
“It was good,” Tay said, keeping it simple. “Really good.”
“Tell me about him.” Thankfully none the wiser about where Tay’s mind had strayed, Mom smiled at him. “What’s he like?”
“He’s confident. Determined. Honest. Really easy to talk to. Great with his kid.”
The mug paused halfway to Mom’s lips. “Single dad?”
“Mm-hmm. Divorced.”
“Is the ex still in the picture?”
“Minimally, as far as I understand.”
“Hm.” She side-eyed him over her mug. “For some reason, it doesn’t surprise me that you fell for someone with a kid. That’d be a deal-breaker for your sisters.”
Tay gazed past her to the kitchen entrance; although he couldn’t see what was happening, he could hear the water running, dishes being put away, his sisters’ voices and, intermittently, Dad’s.
Mom’s fingers brushed his arm. “It’s been a long time since you’ve talked to us about someone you’re dating. You like him, huh?”
“A lot,” Tay admitted, huffing a laugh. “It’s been so long since I’ve clicked with someone—since I’ve wanted to click with someone—that I kind of jumped in with both feet and didn’t look back. We fit right away. Sounds stupid, doesn’t it? Oh, never mind.” Chuckling, he waved a hand. “I’m talking to the wrong person.”
His parents had gotten married two weeks to the day after they’d met. If anyone understood fitting with someone, it was them.
“What’s his kid like?”
“Andy?” Tay smiled. “He’s great. Never stops moving.” He’d only sat still when they were doing the campervan puzzle.
Mom’s lips quirked up. “Like someone else I know.”
“Hey, I slow down.”
“Says the busiest guy I know.”
Tay crossed his arms. “I’m not that busy.”
“Still visit your grandmother every week?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Still have a rigorous schedule of practices and games and team meetings? Still attending classes and labs and doing homework? Still—”
“Okay, okay, I get it.”
Moms—good for not mincing words.
“It’s okay to hit pause every now and again.”
Tay pursed his lips. “I’m pausing right now.”
A snorted laugh. “This doesn’t count. Your dad had to shoo you out of the kitchen.”
“Still counts,” he grumbled.
“So,” Mom said, her tone unconcerned but her eyes pinched at the corners, “speaking of school.” Tay’s muscles locked. “How’s that going?”
Consciously relaxing his shoulders, Tay found a sudden interest in the giant floral-patterned clock on the wall. It was one of the only pieces of wall decor his parents had brought with them when they’d downgraded to this two-bedroom bungalow once Tay and his sisters had all moved out. “It’s fine. Only another six weeks or so in the semester.” And then he had four classes this summer to make up for the ones he’d missed in the fall and winter terms. Fuck.
“You’re still liking it?”
“Yeah.”
Either he paused too long or he wasn’t convincing; Mom squeezed his forearm. “It’s okay if you decide it’s not for you.”
Moms—perceptive as shit. “Why do you say that?”
“I never got the sense that you enjoy it. More like you’re toughing through it because you feel like you have to.”
The kid can’t cut it in a four-year degree.
What could he say to that? That the entire family held jobs that actively helped people and he felt like he needed to do his part? That he was toughing through it because he wanted to prove that he was just as smart as his sisters?
Problem was, his sisters’ smarts lay with books. His didn’t. He was just as smart as them, just in a different way.
Didn’t mean he didn’t want to prove himself.
“I like it fine. I like some classes better than others. That’s true of any program, though, right?”
“I suppose.” She sipped her coffee. “All I’m saying is that if you decided to do something else with your life after hockey, your dad and I would be okay with that. We want you to be happy.” Another squeeze to his arm. “Don’t force yourself into something that’s not for you.”
Before he could say anything to that, his second eldest sister flounced into the room and sat on the coffee table. Hair the same color as Tay’s was tied back into a long ponytail that reached her lower back, and—having come straight from the office—she was still in her work clothes: black pencil skirt and turquoise shimmery blouse.
“Kid,” Stella said. “I need a favor.”
Stop calling me kid and you can have whatever you want.
“Can I have your comp tickets to an upcoming game?”
His mouth nearly dropped open. At the beginning of every month, he gave his family first grabs at his home game comp tickets. Whatever they didn’t claim, he donated to the Foundation for them to give away to their donors, to the families that had directly benefited from their programs, or its employees.
Stella and Anna had asked for tickets . . . three times? They’d grown up on hockey—their parents made sure of it—but as a lawyer and a doctor, respectively, his sisters were as busy as Tay, and they seldom took advantage of free NHL tickets.
He rubbed his jaw, the bristles he hadn’t bothered to shave this morning scratchy against his palm. “I already donated whatever Mom and Dad didn’t claim.” He’d also set a Saturday evening pair aside for Dakota. You know. In case he wanted to bring Andy.
Stella pouted. “Bummer.”
“Why do you all of a sudden need tickets?” Mom asked.
“I just started seeing a guy and I’m trying to impress him.” Blunt as always, their Stella.
Tay shrugged. “Sorry.”
“Two of my children are dating?” Placing her mug on the side table, Mom sat forward. “Miracles do happen.”
“Tay’s seeing someone too?” Anna asked, wiping her hands on a towel as she came into the room and squeezed onto the coffee table next to Stella.
Elbows on her knees, Stella fisted her hands and rested her chin in them. “Ooh, tell us everything.”
“What’s she like?”
“What’s she do?”
“What’s she do for fun?”
“Uh.” Tay looked at Mom for rescue. She had the same wide-eyed expression as her daughters.
His dad walked in with his own coffee mug and sat in the love seat perpendicular to Tay’s couch. “Is this the guy you took to the titty bar for your first date?”
“Guy?” Stella sat back. “Huh. So you are bisexual.”
Anna slapped her arm. “That’s not nice.”
“In fact, that’s hugely insulting,” Mom admonished, voice hard.
�
��It’s just he’s never brought a guy home, and he’s only ever talked about women.”
Annoyance flared, hot and slithery in Tay’s belly. Yes, he was fucking bi. As if he’d come out to them for fucking fun. “I’m sitting right here.”
“Sorry.” Anna patted his knee.
“Sorry, Tay.” Stella’s voice cracked and she folded in on herself. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Tell us about your guy,” Anna prompted.
“And the titty bar.” Stella wrinkled her nose. “Not sure that was your brightest idea for a first date.”
Anna nudged Stella in the ribs. “If you took a guy to a titty bar on your first date, he’d probably stick with you forever.”
“What if I don’t want him to stick with me forever?”
Anna waved her hands in the air as though erasing the topic at hand. “We’re getting off track. Tell us about your guy, kid.”
Tay folded one leg underneath him, charmed by them despite himself. “He’s a single dad who works for the Foundation.”
There were the twin judgy expressions he’d come to expect from his sisters.
“You’re dating a parent?” Anna leaned back on the table. “But you’re so young.”
“I’m not sure what one has to do with the other.”
“Just . . . Are you ready to become . . . a dad?”
“Whoa, there.” Tay held up a hand. “Hold the phone. We went on one date. I’m not parenting anybody.”
“Yeah, but what if that one date turns into several dates, and then you’re in a relationship, and then you’re a step-dad? Not—” Anna held up a placating hand. “—that I don’t think you’d make a great parent someday. Just . . . is that what you want for yourself right now?”
Whether it was or wasn’t had nothing to do with them. “Why do you say step-dad like pumpkin spice latte?” Pumpkin spice lattes were forbidden in this house. Mom shuddered at the words. Leaning closer to her, Tay whispered, “Pumpkin spice latte,” which started a chorus of “Pumpkin spice latte” from Stella and Anna.
Mom made sure to look each of them in the eye. “I will disown all of you.”
“Here’s a question,” Dad piped in, raising his voice to be heard around his kids’ laughter. “If you need to impress someone so badly that you need NHL tickets, is he really worth it?”
“I don’t need to impress him,” Stella said. “I want to impress him.”
“Take him to the titty bar,” Tay suggested, which got them all laughing again.
“You haven’t asked him yet?” Dakota paused what he was doing to glance over the top of the lemon shortbread cupcake he was piping with raspberry-lemonade-flavored icing. On the other side of the dining room table, his phone was propped against a stack of books. “Owen.”
“Don’t Owen me.” His brother’s forehead was creased with lines. “I chickened out, okay?”
“Daddy.” Next to Dakota, Andy was decorating mini cupcakes Calder had made just for him, a kid-sized apron over his ever-present signed jersey. “What’s chickened out?”
Owen blew out a breath. “It’s a not very nice way of saying I was scared.”
“Daddy says it’s okay to be scared.”
“Ha!” Owen crowed, vindicated.
“An’ he says that if you can be brave, you can have whatever you want.”
The under-the-breath mumbling from the phone would’ve been funny if Owen was anybody else. That it’d been three weeks since Owen had first admitted to buying wedding rings and he still hadn’t asked Kas to marry him was concerning. What his brother wanted, he went after.
On Andy’s other side, Calder nudged the laptop aside and leaned toward the phone. “Could it be that you don’t actually want to marry him?” he said, voicing Dakota’s thoughts.
“But I do! I guess I just . . .” Head falling back, Owen rubbed his eyes. “What if he doesn’t want to get married? Not just to me, but ever. Marriage isn’t for everyone.”
Dakota went back to his icing. “Have you guys talked about it?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“I think we’re on the same page.”
“Uncle Owen, I can ask Uncle Kas to marry you if you want,” Andy offered.
“Would you?” Owen mumbled. A second later, his eyes went huge and he sat up straight. “He’s home!” he whisper-shouted. “I gotta go. Bye.”
“Bye, Uncle Owen,” Andy said, even though the screen had already gone dark. He split his cupcake in half to add icing to the inside. “Dad, can I get married too?”
Calder’s eyebrows went up while Dakota leaned over to kiss his son’s head. “Maybe in a few years, okay?”
“How many?”
“Let’s give it twenty, at least.”
Andy’s little nose scrunched. “That’s a lotta years.”
“Trust me, it’ll be here before you know it.”
They worked in silence for a few minutes, Andy licking icing off his cupcake every once in a while just so he could add more, and a furrowed-brow Calder on the laptop. Finished with the icing, Dakota moved on to the garnishing.
“Do you think we should do a sampler platter?” Calder scrolled through the menu section of the Once Upon a Time Cakes website.
Dakota pursed his lips and gently added a small raspberry, a mint leaf, and a thin wedge of lemon to the top of the cupcake. “Like an appetizer platter you’d get in a restaurant?” Carefully, he pushed a small yellow-and-white striped paper straw into the cupcake for perfect summer-themed, indoor pool party tomorrow.
“Yeah.” Bringing the laptop to Dakota’s other side, Calder clicked on Cookies. “We could do a version for the cookies—two each of the snickerdoodle, crispy chocolate chunk with coconut and pecans, gingerbread, and shortbread.”
“Our most popular.”
“Yeah. Or we could have a make-your-own ten-cookie platter.”
“Oh, I like that idea.”
Sinking into the chair on Dakota’s left, Calder scrolled down their order form, then back up to the top. “I’m not sure how to do this on the form, though.”
Dakota garnished his fifth cupcake and set it aside. “Make it a clickable option in the cookie section and then add a comment box below.”
They’d spent all week figuring out the logistics of who would be the point person for taking phone orders—it would still be Calder; it made the most sense given he’d soon be jobless—how many cakes and cookies Dakota could realistically decorate in any given week, and what Calder would have to take on himself. They’d even gone back and forth over whether they should include an order form on their website, but they weren’t a big enough shop yet to worry about having too many orders. When—if—that became a problem, they’d remove the form and take orders by phone only.
“You need Instagram, Daddy.”
He stared at the top of Andy’s head. “How do you know what that is?”
“Are they teaching social media in preschool?” Calder asked.
“It’s pi’tures,” Andy said, licking icing off his thumb.
Huh. “He’s got a point,” Dakota said to Calder. “A website’s good, but everyone’s on social media these days. Plus we’d be able to show off some of our more unique stuff that’s not on the website.”
Calder sat back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “Like that race car-shaped cake you did a few years ago.”
“I’m sure I’ve got a picture of it somewhere.”
“Dad, can I have a car cake for my birfday?”
Dakota ruffled Andy’s hair. “You just had a birthday.”
“For my next birfday.”
“Talk to me again next January. We’ll see if you still want a car.”
“I talk to you every day, Daddy.”
Chuckling, Dakota squeezed his waist and kissed his head. Out of the mouths of babes and all that.
Still on the topic of Instagram, Calder asked, “Don’t suppose Tay is a food photographer?”
“Um.”
Dakota pressed his lips together. “I don’t know. We haven’t chatted hobbies. My guess would be no.”
“What’d you talk about on your—” Calder’s gaze cut to Andy. Date, he mouthed.
“Tay draws,” Andy said before Dakota could answer.
He leaned forward to get a better look at Andy’s face. “How do you know that?”
“He told me.”
“When?”
“When we did the campervan.”
Dakota shared a glance with Calder. “What does he draw?”
Andy shrugged, running a finger through the icing he’d managed to get all over his plastic placemat. “A comic book.”
“Did Tay tell you that?”
“Uh-huh.”
Calder slapped Dakota’s arm with the back of his hand. “Now that’s cool. How come you didn’t know that?”
“We did other things on our—” Date, he mouthed.
A knowing expression crossed Calder’s face. “Good thing I took Andy, huh?”
“Tay can draw you a new logo, Daddy.”
That had both Dakota and Calder scowling. Calder navigated back to the homepage. As one, they leaned forward to inspect it.
“What’s wrong with our logo?” Calder asked.
“It’s chunky.”
“Chunky?”
“It is kind of . . . outdated?” Dakota said. It was a three-tiered cake and each tier was . . . well, chunky. Like a grade-schooler had taken blocks and fused them together.
“Think Tay will draw us something more classy?” Calder asked.
“I can ask him. He’s coming for lunch tomorrow after his morning practice and a visit with his Gran.”
“He’s coming to make my castle,” Andy announced.
“What castle?” Calder asked.
Dakota groaned. “That puzzle you got him for his birthday, with all the turrets.”
“Andy, you found a puzzle buddy in Tay?” To Dakota, “He’s a keeper.”
He was definitely something. A keeper? Too early to tell. Dakota was having fun, though, and he wasn’t panicking—surprisingly—about letting someone get close. Maybe it was because Tay was so genuine in his reactions. Dakota didn’t know anyone else who would’ve had the relationship talk on the first date. He was so open.
About his feelings, anyway. About himself? Not so much. Dakota hadn’t missed how Tay had changed the subject whenever he’d tried to get to know him better. Like that bit about knowing what it was like to question your choices? What had he meant by that? Dakota hadn’t had a chance to open his mouth to ask before Tay was leading them outside for a walk.
