I am at the counter with a knife and a board. In front of me is a pile of vegetables that Tristan handed me twenty minutes ago with zero preamble and complete confidence that I’d know what to do with them.
Thankfully, I do know what to do with them. I chop and listen to Jack’s story. I watch the room in my peripheral vision and I think:this is the third meal I’ve eaten here this week.
And then I think:so?
Which is new.
Here is the thing I’ve been doing, that I have not been fully acknowledging I’ve been doing:Choosingto be here.
Every time. Every meal, every evening. Every morning I’ve shown up at the stall before my scheduled start because the alternative was the ceiling at Doris Harrow’s and the ceiling has nothing on the stall. Every time Jack has saidcome onI’ve gone. Every time Tristan has opened the back panel of the stall in the late carnival quiet I’ve sat down.
I’ve been choosing it.
I’ve been labeling the choices as convenience or strategy or various other things that let me avoid the actual label, which is: I want to be here. Present tense, active, increasingly undeniable. I want to be in the room where Archer plays guitar unexpectedly and Jack cheats at ring toss and Tristan puts honey on things without being asked and Ryan…
Ryan, who I have not been thinking about.
Extensively.
He stood at the pier with his hand at my waist and saidI’ve got youand I stepped back and he saidokay.Just that one word, no faking of understanding, no retreat into cold, justokay.Then he walked me back and found the others and has been, since then, exactly as present and exactly as careful as he was before.
The hand. The warmth of it. The thumb.
I am thinking about this a normal amount. A completely normal and non-significant amount. I am aliar.
I finish the vegetables and slide them off the board. Tristan takes them without comment and the proximity of him is breathtaking. I have also been thinking about the honey jar a lot. His face in the low light, close enough to be kissed.
These are men. They are handsome Alphas and I have been pretending not to notice this for two weeks. I notice now, fully, without pretending otherwise. Ryan’s stillness and the cut of his jaw. His hands that are large and capable. Tristan’s forearms and the warmth that comesoff him like something structural. Jack’s laughter and the brightness of him when he’s pleased about something. Archer…
Archer is a problem I’ve been calculating since day one and only recently admitted is a problem because I’m attracted to him. This is inconvenient given that he spent the first four days treating me like a threat. But he plays guitar. He plays it like nobody’s watching and it’s the hottest thing I’ve seen a person do in years.
I also know he’s got the bedroom skills to back up all that guitar playing sexiness. Those fingers are magical.
I am deeply attracted to all four of them, which is inconvenient. I’m putting that in the acknowledged pile. I’m done pretending it’s not there. What I do with it is a separate question.
* * *
The next day, the carnival begins its transition. Sunday was full operation, Monday is the partial day, Tuesday starts the wind-down toward the closing weekend. The stall doesn’t need me for the Monday, which means my time is mine.
I go for an early walk and then return to the pack house at eight. Not because anyone asked. Not for any logical reason I can defend with a straight face. Because when I stood at Doris Harrow’s gate, I thought about here, and then I came here.
Tristan opens the door like he was expecting me, which he probably was. He hands me a mug of coffee. I drink it at the kitchen counter and he does prep work for the Tuesday stall. We exist in the comfortable silence that has become our default register.
At nine, Ryan comes through on his way somewhere and stops in the kitchen doorway.
“Morning,” he says.
“Morning,” I say.
He gets coffee and leaves, and I watch the doorway where he was for approximately three seconds longer than is strictly necessary. Tristan says nothing about this because Tristan is a man of extraordinary discretion.
Jack appears at ten with what he describes as a structural problem with the game alley wind-down, which I recognize as a pretext and follow anyway because the pretext is at least creative, and also I want to.
We spend two hours deconstructing the ring toss station, which doesn’t require two people but is easier with two. Somewhere in the middle of it, it becomes less about the ring toss and more about Jack making increasingly funny observations about the carnival patrons he’s seen over the weekend.
“The couple at the axe throw,” he says, handing me a section of the frame. “Saturday afternoon. I bet it was a first date. She was better than him and very careful not to show it.”
“I saw them too. She let one go wide on purpose.”
