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“That one’s from me. I paid with my own money, some of it.”
It was a bookmark. Cardstock, laminated at school, a tassel taped to one end. She’d drawn him on the front, tall, brown hair, and put his name on the back in green marker with the E backward.
“You lose your page,” she said.
He did. She’d sat on the arm of the couch one night last week and watched him thumb through half the paperback, hunting for where he’d stopped.
“Yeah.” Cole ran his thumb down the tassel. “I do.”
“Now you won’t.”
Ford handed him the other one without saying anything.
It was a book. Hardcover, heavy, still had the store sticker half-scraped off the back corner where Ford had gotten impatient with it.
Cole sat there with it in both hands.
“I asked Wes,” Ford said. “He asked Gunnar, and Gunnar had opinions, and then the two of them argued about it in front of me for ten minutes, so if it’s wrong, it’s a community failure.” He was talking a little too easily, giving Cole an exit. “You’ve been reading the same three books over and over since you moved in. Figured you were due for a new one.”
Cole opened it, read the first line, and closed it again.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know.” Ford was down on the floor pulling paper out from under the tree. “Tell me if they got it right.”
“I’ll tell you tonight.”
Ford looked up at him. Cole held it until Ford looked away first and went back to the paper with his ears red, and that was the whole of what they could do with Charlotte four feet away on the rug.
Nadine came at two with a bag of presents and a foil tin, and Charlotte hit her at the door at a dead run.
“Okay,” Nadine said, catching her. “Okay. Hi.”
“I got a bike.”
“I heard about the bike.” She got her coat off with the kid still fastened to her waist. “Hi, Cole. Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas. You want that in the freezer?”
“Please. It’s for Sunday. He doesn’t have to do anything to it but put it in the oven.”
Charlotte was already towing her toward the living room.
Cole washed up in the kitchen and watched them through the doorway. Nadine took the couch, Ford took the chair, Charlotte ran the floor between them. They got through the handoff on Sunday and what she was doing for New Year’s without either of them tightening up once.
Cole dried the same dish twice. As far as Nadine and Charlotte knew, he was the teammate in the spare room.
He went and started the potatoes around three.
Ford came in after ten minutes and leaned on the counter next to him.
“You don’t have to hide in here.”
“I’m not hiding.” Cole set the peeler down. “I just wanted to give Charlotte some time with her parents.”
“She asked where you were.”
Cole looked over at him.
