SO JEFFwas already stressed as he prepared to leave for Ottawa. He’d had almost complete radio silence from Max, broken only by updates via Trix, which came by text. Apparently he called her from the retreat’s phone every few days to catch up. The contractors wouldn’t be able to get an electrician in until after the holiday.
And Carter was being weird. He didn’t linger over the good-morning kiss he gave Jeff when Dave picked him up for their workout, and he was unusually quiet during dinner too.
“Hey.” Jeff put his hand over Carter’s on the table.
Carter startled. “What?”
Jeff looked at him as though he’d grown another head. “I’ve been asking you the same question for three minutes and you haven’t answered. Where are you?”
“Sorry.” Carter looked down at his plate and shook himself. “Just… weird day.”
“Yeah?” Was he going to talk about it or just sit there acting strange? “How so?”
He exhaled dramatically, puffing out his cheeks. “I just… do you ever get the feeling that someone’s keeping something from you?”
Fuck.Alarm bells went off in Jeff’s head, volume cranked to eleven. “I mean…. Max hid his drug addiction for the first couple years. We never really knew how bad it got until later.” That totally wasn’t what Carter meant, though. He meant Jeff. Unless…. “Did something happen at work?”
Did that come off as sounding hopeful?
Carter shot him a sideways look. “Kind of.” Holy shit, really? Jeff couldn’t believe he was getting off the hook. “See, this afternoon Kara’s truck got a flat while she was out at the dog beach, so I had to go meet some people at the rental cabin.”
Fuuuuck.
Jeff knew his panic was written all over his face. He could feel his blood draining into his toes. How could he have been so stupid as to forget thatCarter worked at the park he’d rented the cabin in? How could he have thought he could keep it secret that he’d canceled that reservation?
He couldn’t think of a single thing to say in his own defense.
“Because they rented it,” Carter went on, pointedly.
Jeff closed his eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
“I’m feeling kind of left out of the loop, here.” Carter’s even keel was one of the steadiest things about him; hearing the hurt and frustration in his voice made Jeff feel like crying. “What’s going on? Are you… are you leaving?”
“No,” Jeff answered sharply. “No, fuck. I mean, just to the concert in Ottawa.”
“So you just moved in without telling me.”
Shit.Shit, and he’d sold his condo in Toronto, and with the renovations going on at the cottage, he was kind of technically homeless. “I really want to tell you everything,” Jeff forced himself to say. He looked at Carter when he said it, even though it hurt to see the betrayal and suspicion there. “And I will. As soon as I can.”
As quickly as the storm had come, it blew past, and Carter turned his hand—still under Jeff’s on the table—and squeezed their fingers together. “Just tell me it doesn’t…. It’s not about us? I mean—” He scratched at the corner of his jaw with his other hand. “—we did move kind of fast. Is it too much?”
“Carter, no.” Were they going to have a talk like this over dinner every day? If so, Jeff was never signing another NDA without Carter being read in at the beginning. This was miserable. “I was serious about the matching slippers, okay?”
“That was my idea.” But some of the worry smoothed from his brow. “Is everything else okay?”
No more lying. “It will be, I hope. I can’t tell you all the details yet because they’re not mine to tell. But I wasn’t using the cabin anyway. It would be a waste for it to sit unoccupied when someone could be enjoying it.”
“Mm,” Carter agreed. He glanced down at their hands for a moment and then back up, and now his eyes held a bit of a smile. “Did you leave the blackout curtains?”
HE DIDN’Thear from Max until the morning he had to leave for Ottawa. Even then, it was just a text:Let’s do this!!!!followed by a tower emoji and seven Canadian flags.
He figured that was as good as he was going to get until they saw each other in person, so he just texted backFucking rightand hoped Max understood that he meantwelcome back, I hope you’re doing well. For two people who communicated professionally, their language with each other could be kind of opaque.
He didn’t have that much time to think about it because he was too busy double-checking he had everything packed into the truck and putting off saying his actual goodbyes to Carter.
Despite the resolution to their… whatever that was… things didn’t quite go back to normal before Jeff left for Ottawa. Jeff couldn’t blame Carter; obviously Jeff was only reaping what he’d sown. But it still sucked to be standing in Carter’s driveway, getting ready to leave for a few days, and feel that things weren’t right between them. He and the band could not finish this album soon enough.
“You’re sure you don’t want to come?” he asked for probably the third time. Carter was going to say no again, but Jeff had this dream that if he came along, they could go back in time a little, relive the Vancouver trip instead.
