Page 73 of Crying in the Rain
It was mid-afternoon, and Shaunna was still at work, so they had the place to themselves, give or take a Labrador retriever. Casper couldn’t have been more pleased to see Ade and knocked him flat on the kitchen floor, alternating between snuffling him affectionately and sniffing him all over, no manners whatsoever.
“He knows I cheated on him,” Ade said when Casper finally bounded away and he was able to get up from the floor. He brushed himself down and accepted Kris’s offer of a damp paper towel to wipe his face. “He’s a lot less spitty than basset hounds, let me tell you.”
Kris grimaced. He loved having a dog and didn’t care about the hair or the wet-dog smell Shaunna spent a small fortune on candles and incense to disguise, but dogs with droopy jowls, all that slobber…he shuddered just thinking about it. Ade saw it and laughed.
“No spitty dogs.” He wrote in the air, finishing off with a tick. “Duly noted.”
That sounded a lot like future plans to Kris, and it kicked a few more of thosewhat-ifsinto the wings, though he was still anxious about their weekend together and sensed Ade was too. This was the first time they’d been alone somewhere private, and while they’d both made it clear outside that they were of the same mind in wanting some intimacy, everything seemed much more real and important than it had before Ade went to stay with his sister.
“I was thinking,” Ade began but got no further, as Casper was back with his Frisbee. He trotted straight past Kris and droppedit at Ade’s feet. “OK. Never mind. Is there something you want, Caspy?” He looked over at Kris and shrugged. “W-A-L-K-I-E-S?”
“We don’t have to—”
Ade silenced him with a look. “There’s nothing wehaveto do, but it would be remiss of me to refuse an invitation to accompany such handsome gentlemen for a promenade.”
“There won’t be much promenading, but OK,” Kris accepted and followed Ade and Casper back to the front door. He couldn’t help thinking the dog looked decidedly smug as the three of them set off for the park, where the Frisbee fetching commenced in earnest.
“He’s really good at this,” Ade remarked, circling his shoulder after having launched the disc for about the tenth time. “Did it take a lot of training for him to learn?”
“None whatsoever,” Kris admitted ruefully. “I’m pretty sure it’s instinctive, a case of ‘does exactly what it says on the label’.”
“Have you had him since he was a puppy?”
“Nope, although he was only young when we adopted him. He’s a failed Search and Rescue dog…I say failed, but he was channelling Lassie when we were Wales. Our friend’s six-year-old son went missing, and Casper found him.”
“Oh no! That’s horrifying! Was he OK?”
“He’d fallen and broken a couple of bones in his foot, but he was alive and well.”
“Thank God!” Casper brought the Frisbee back and Ade threw his arms around him, fussing and praising him for being such a clever boy—a hero.
“You realise you’ll never get a moment’s peace now?” Kris joked.
“I don’t care.” Ade launched the Frisbee again. “He deserves all the accolades!”
The fact they hadn’t talked about any of this before really pressed home how short a time they’d known each other. There again, they’d had bigger concerns than Casper’s heritage, so itwas perhaps a positive sign that their relationship was settling into something more normal, less fraught.
When they returned from walking the dog, Ade went straight upstairs to deposit his bag, he said, but several minutes on, he was still up there. Kris had a good idea why, too, but as much as he wanted to follow him, he needed Ade to initiate so he’d know he wasn’t pushing him into anything.
Several more minutes passed before Ade called downstairs, “Where should I put my clothes?”
“In the drawers next to the window,” Kris called back.
“Come and show me.”
Kris looked up at him from the bottom of the stairs. “There is only one set of drawers next to the window.”
Ade shrugged. “But still…I’d like you to show me.”
“OK.” Kris made his way up, sighing for effect. He arrived at the top, stepping into Ade’s space because there was nowhere else he could go. Ade stood his ground and captured Kris’s gaze.
“I think I know which drawers you mean, but I may need some assistance with the bed.”
“Is that so?” Kris’s voice wobbled as Ade caught hold of him by his shirt front and pulled him closer.
“That’s so,” Ade murmured, huffing warm breath over Kris’s lips before nipping lightly at the bottom one. “You play hard to get so wonderfully well.”
“Thanks. I’m a professional,” Kris said with a shaky laugh.
