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Chapter 35
“Make sure you hold up your end.”
Gavin glared at Troy from behind the couch he was holding from below, as Troy guided it from above and they struggled together to heave the heavy piece of furniture up the narrow staircase. “Don’t worry about my end, worry about your own.”
“Those are the brothers I know and love, working together like a well-oiled machine,” Donovan said, coming up behind Gavin on the stairs. “Now can you two hurry your asses up? This chair is heavy as hell.”
“Going as fast as we can, bro,” Gavin grunted in response.
Donovan laughed, the sound a little strangled as he held fast to the heavy chair. “The sad thing is, I think that’s actually true.”
They crested the landing just outside Gavin’s new apartment door and worked together to tilt the couch at the correct angle to be able to fit through it. When they finally set it down on the floor, in the general area that Gavin had decided would be the living room, they straightened up, both breathing a sigh of relief.
Gavin consciously let his hands travel to his back and rub a sore spot there as Donovan made it over to them and set the chair down at a perpendicular angle to the couch. He straightened and rubbed his shoulder, and Gavin then looked over at Troy, who was rubbing the back of his neck.
Gavin had to laugh, a small and bitter bark of a sound. “Shit, I guess were not as young as we used to be.”
Troy groaned. “Who is?”
Gen, Abby, and Ella came through the front door carrying bins and boxes just then, and Gen exclaimed, “Hey! Aren’t you guys supposed to be the muscle? And here you are, standing around, while we carry your boxes up three flights of stairs.”
“Two flights,” Gavin corrected. “We’re on the third floor. It’s one flight from the ground floor to the—”
“Not to be rude, but I don’t care,” Gen cut him off with a laugh, which set the other two girls off laughing. Then Donovan started laughing, probably more on account of how cute he thought his girlfriend was than how funny he found the comment. And that was enough to get Troy joining in, as well.
“Well, as long as you don’t mean to be rude,” Gavin said, a smirk tugging at the side of his lips. It was hard not to smile around Genevieve. Even if it did put them at risk of being “found out”– whatever that meant.
The response sent the five of them into gales of laughter, and Gavin couldn’t help but laugh along shaking his head. “Well, I’m glad you all find me amusing. If I can provide some comic relief, it’s the least I can do for all of your help with my move.”
“Oh, no way, buster,” Genevieve replied. “If you think you’re getting out of the pizza and beer you promised us, you better think again.”
“Hell, no,” he replied. “Believe me, I want that just as bad as you guys do at this point.”
“All right, then, let’s finish this thing up,” Ella said. “I’m starving.”
After a few more trips up and down the punishing steps, finally they walked through the door with the last few odds and ends and collapsed onto the couch and easy chairs that sat in the middle of the large room.
Damn. Between all of the boxes he’d dug out of the garage at his childhood home and the hand-me-down furniture that his grandmother had set aside for him, he actually had an apartment full of stuff. It was a surreal feeling. All those years in the service, he hadn’t collected much more than what could fit in a duffel bag, and now he had a home of his own, full of his own possessions.
He liked it.
“I feel like I’ve just done ten miles on the StairMaster,” Abby groaned.
“True,” Ella agreed. “I guess the good thing is that we don’t need to work out today. Or this week. Or maybe all month.”
“I’ll just tell you one thing, Gavin,” Gen said, in a comically exaggerated threatening tone. “You’d better not move again for a long, long time.”
They caught each other’s eyes, and suddenly the words took on a new and deeper meaning, much more than the simple joke about the grueling steps. He held her gaze, wishing he could assure her that she had nothing to worry about, that he was staying right where he was, that he was one hundred percent hers. But there were people around, and so he kept his mouth shut. Normally that wasn’t a hard thing for him to do. Right now, it was torture.
Gen flushed then, an even deeper red than the exertion had already painted on her cheeks, and popped up out of her chair as if her delectable ass were spring-loaded. “I’m going to the bathroom,” she declared, in a voice that was just a couple notches too high and too loud. “Order that pizza while I’m in there, will you? I’m starved.”
“Oh, God, yes, me too!” Ella chimed in, and Gavin was glad that the whole thing hadn’t devolved into a whole awkward moment. As he pulled out his phone and ordered the pizza, and then went to the refrigerator to check on how cold the beers were, it struck him that this apartment really felt like home, even though he’d lived here less than a day. He’d stayed in housing all over the world, some of it for as long as a year at a stretch, but none of it ever felt like home. This did.
“Okay, I’m back. Did ya miss me?” Gen asked the room at large as she re-entered.
Hell yes I did, he thought. God, what he wouldn’t give to be able to just tell her that, flat out, regardless of who happened to be around at the moment. In fact he wanted to say it more because other people were there. He wanted the whole world to know. Instead, he simply said, “Pizza should be here in twenty.”
Gen gave him her mischievous, crooked grin. “I hope you triple his tip because of all the stairs he’s gonna have to climb.”
