Chapter 3: Puppy!

SCOTT WOKE up the next morning to a pair of brown eyes a lot like Ryan’s, only smaller and set widely behind a pert, freckled nose. He blinked and then opened his eyes again, and those eyes were still there, looking gravely at him.

“Heya, Ella-Jaye,” he murmured. Ella had Ryan’s brown eyes and her mother’s blonde hair and a divot in her chin that she might have gotten from Walter but that Scott didn’t want to give him credit for because Walter really was sort of a douche.

“Heya, Uncle Scotty,” the little girl said avidly. “No one’s awake yet, but there’s a really big present downstairs for me and Kylie and some more for Tommy and W.G. I knew you’d be here!”

Scott grinned at her. His sisters had kids—he loved them as a whole and individually—and Ryan’s nieces and nephews seemed to reciprocate. Suddenly Ella’s voice dropped and she leaned really close. “Uncle Scotty, there’s a dog in your room.”

Blitzkrieg, apparently knowing that this meant her, gave a low “whuff!” and Scott hurriedly sat up.

“Shh, Pumpkin. Tell you what. How about I put on my slippers and a sweatshirt and we go downstairs, okay? Uncle Ryan drove up last night; he’s real tired, okay?”

“Can you bring the dog?”

Scott slid out and found his moccasins and a hooded sweatshirt over by the drawers. He knew where to find them because they were neatly put away, because that’s what Ryan did for him and then shrugged and said it was no big deal.

Together Scott and Ella-Jaye tiptoed out of the bedroom, and Blitzkrieg preceded them out the door.

Ella, eight years old and comfortable in her grandmother’s cabin, ran straight for the tree, plugging the lights in, before she ran to the drapery cord on the other side. The drapes swung back—twelve feet long, off-white, and stately as hell—and both Scott and Ella gasped, because outside it was dark and the trees were harshly silhouetted by the snow. Over the horizon, in the twilight gray of dawn, they could see Donner Lake surrounded by mountains. And beyond that, the pale gold winter sun was turning the sky to fire and then watching as the snow reflected the sky.

Ella put her hand in Scott’s, and even Blitzkrieg sat down respectfully until the light in the big double-paned bay window was pure enough to light up the living room and kitchen area. Ella turned to him and smiled.

“That was great, Uncle Scotty. That was like God smiling.”

Scotty grinned back. “Absolutely. Here, you want some chocolate?”

Scott was actually the cook back at home. Ryan had served him the night before because Ry knew that Scott wasn’t that comfortable in front of Ryan’s mother, but once that disapproving librarian stare was gone, Scotty did know his way around a kitchen. It was never just hot chocolate with Scott. It was hot chocolate with a little bit of eggnog and some cinnamon and nutmeg with a marshmallow smiley face, whipped cream hair, and chocolate chip bows—or at least when he was making hot chocolate for Ella-Jaye and Kylie.

Kylie had woken up when he was heating the water, and for a minute, it was just Scott, the two little girls, and the big, silky, slobbery dog. The girls kept it down, but they also scratched Blitzkrieg’s ass until she whined, groaned, and collapsed to her side with a whump and then rolled over on her back looking for more. Kylie, who was a younger, brown-haired version of her sister, had to be forcibly pried away from the Christmas tree to come sit down and drink her chocolate, but he made them both sit up on the stools at the counter while he started cooking bacon to go into the omelets for breakfast.

“Oh, eww! Are we having eggs for breakfast?”

Scott wrinkled his nose at Kylie. He’d done this last year, and he’d forgotten about how picky Yvonne’s kids could be. “Okay, sweet thing, I give. What do you want for breakfast?”

“Oatmeal!”

Scott laughed softly to himself and went to work. After a couple of minutes of girl-chatter (“And Uncle Scotty, did you know that Barbie has a toy that has a toilet! It’s for her little sister and it has pee and poop in it. It’s so disgusting. Ella-Jaye wants it for Christmas.” “So do you!”), he was relieved to hear that the boys were up.

“Uncle Scotty! Uncle Scotty! Uncle Scotty!”

Eleven-year-old Tommy hurtled down the stairs, holding his four-year-old brother by the hand, and ran directly into the kitchen to hug Scott around the waist. Scott dodged fast to get the kids out of the bacon-spatter-zone and set them up on the remaining two counter stools so he could listen to them talk too.

By the time he’d been caught up on the ins and outs of fifth grade, preschool, and when four-year-old W.G. would be old enough to ride a big boy’s bicycle, Scott had managed to assemble a build-an-omelet platter with bacon, cheese, sautéed onions, mushrooms, and chili con carne (not Scott’s idea, but Tommy seemed to think an omelet with chili in it was high cuisine, and since the cabin had a plethora of canned chili, Scott didn’t see the harm).

He’d also managed the same thing with the oatmeal, except the oatmeal platter had sugar, brown sugar, walnuts, honey, and some pureed peaches that he’d found in the freezer. The kids ate their breakfast at the counter while Scott set the table for the adults, and yes, Tommy actually ate the chili con carne omelet. Scott was suitably impressed—and also a little nauseated. He was glad that Ryan padded down as he started to eat so Scott didn’t have to watch the kid dig into it. Apparently Tommy thought eating was a full sensory experience, and by the time Ryan came up behind him and made nom-nom noises into his ear, Tommy had chili on everything in his immediate vicinity—including his little brother.

“Oh geez!” Ryan laughed from around Scott’s head. “Tommy, who taught you to eat?”

Scott leaned back into Ryan and closed his eyes while Tommy said something about how his parents had been arguing about that very thing the week before. Scott had dated (term used loosely) a lot of men before Ryan had wandered into that bathroom, but none of them—not the ones in the closet or the ones proudly out of it—had ever held him with the ease and absolute possession that Ryan showed him. Even when Ryan hadn’t known the first thing about sex as a gay man, he’d known how to hold Scotty to make him feel loved. Scott had never forgotten the wonder in Ryan’s brown eyes when he’d turned around and seen Scott as… well, Scott never had been able to figure out what Ryan saw in him.

He just knew he never wanted Ryan to stop seeing it. He never wanted that wonder to go away. He might be Scotty-the-rebound-guy-who-worked-at-Starbucks to the whole rest of the world—including a lot of guys he considered friends—but to Ryan, he was Scotty-the-everything. The nom-nom noises in the sensitive hollow of his neck were icing on the cake.

“Wow,” Ryan was saying now to his nephew. “Tommy, that is way more than I wanted to know about how you got peas up your brother’s nose. How about you go get rid of some of that chili, and if you’re dressed by the time Uncle Scotty eats, you can help him take Blitzkrieg outside for her morning walk.”

“I’m taking the dog for a walk?” Scott asked, bemused.

“Since I’m doing dishes,” Ryan told him with a kiss on the temple. “Besides, you’re the one who’ll get cabin fever if you don’t go out and play for a while.”

“You’re not coming with us?” Scott couldn’t keep the disappointment out of his voice. He had never been a clingy boyfriend. In fact, quite the opposite—if the guy he was dating had other plans, very often, Scotty would find another boyfriend. But not with Ryan. With Ryan, it felt like all time spent in Ryan’s company was good time, even if they didn’t say anything.

“After the dishes,” Ryan said. “But first, c’mon—lookit what you did! Let’s eat!”

Well, first they had to wipe W.G. down with a washcloth pretty much from head to toe, because the parts not covered in his brother’s chili were covered in his own oatmeal. The girls needed hardly more than a napkin delicately applied to little Kewpie-doll mouths, but the boys apparently needed a pressure wash and a sandblaster with every meal. But finally all the kids were sent off to dress, and Scott had poured the omelet mix into the pan and started making an omelet for the both of them.

“I don’t get to choose?” Ryan asked, leaning against the counter, laughing.

“I know what you want,” Scott said, sprinkling some Swiss cheese, chopped spinach, and artichoke hearts onto the almost perfect circle. “The only thing you switch is mushrooms, and since we just had to pull one of those out of W.G.’s nose….”

Both men shuddered, and Ryan had to agree. “No mushrooms.”

Scott flipped the omelet and neatly planted it, and then grabbed two forks. “How long do you think we’ve got?” he asked, and both of them winced as they heard somebody yelling loudly “Mah-ahm! Ella stole my sweater!” on the upstairs side where Ryan and Scott didn’t sleep.

They exchanged pained glances as they sat down to breakfast and coffee, and Ryan said, “Um, I’d say eat fast!”

But Scott didn’t want to rush. He forced Ryan to slow down by tucking one of the forks under the plate and feeding him instead. Ryan didn’t complain, though—he never had. All of that self-assurance and burning ambition, and Ryan had no problems setting it all down to take a moment to make Scott happy. Scott had no problem asking him to do just that. Ryan ate his omelet at Scott’s discretion, making cracks about the kids in between mouthfuls, and Scott hung onto his every word.

“Where’s my sister?” Ryan asked bemusedly as he used his finger to get the last of the cheese on the plate. “Geez, her kids are loud enough bring the snow off the mountain; you’d think Vonnie could wake the hell up.”

Scott rolled his eyes. “You think she hasn’t gotten a little kid-deaf by now? When I was growing up, we were expected to get our own cereal by the time we were five. That meant Saturdays were Momma’s day off!”

Ryan winked at him. “Your older sisters waited on you, and you know it.”

Scotty grinned and nodded. “Totally true.” He had no shame at all at being spoiled. Especially because it meant he knew how to spoil Ryan when he needed to.

“Yeah, well.” Ryan stood and sighed. “If no one’s getting up, breakfast is going to spoil. How about I’ll put everything away and—”

“No, no, don’t put it away.” Taylor’s voice made her son jump, but Scotty had a lot of practice keeping his eyes wide and his expression neutral. A boy could not dangle multiple lovers on multiple strings and still call them friends after the fallout if he didn’t know how to be disingenuous on command.

“Of course not, Mother,” Ryan said. He shot his mom a look that was part willingness to please and part caution. “I’ll make you an omelet.”

“I thought Scott was cooking?” The look Taylor sent Scott was warm and kind, but Scott was not fooled. Taylor had been warm and kind before, but Scott had never left her presence feeling taller than a foot and a half at the outside. If Passive met Aggressive, had an offspring, and groomed her for prep school, she still wouldn’t have met Ryan’s mom’s approval.

“Scott needs to take the dog outside. I’m taking the adult half of the program.” Ryan grinned at his mom, and Scott looked at Ryan, feeling a terrible pang of guilt. The Adult Half of the Program—apparently, Scotty was excused from that forever and ever, amen.

But Blitzkrieg had just started to get really hyper, running back and forth between the two staircases and barking her black, curly ass off, and sometimes being an adult meant walking the dog literally as well as figuratively.

He ran up the stairs quickly and dressed in record time, including thin gloves topped by a charming pair of fingerless mitts that Ryan had bought him at a craft fair. They were very manly—dark blue topped with a thicker neutral color with an interesting design on the back. Scott had given Ryan a hard time about buying him something that wasn’t bright and flamboyant, but he had to admit, those gloves and half-gloves looked damned handsome. Besides, they kept his fingers really warm without being bulky or irritating.

By the time he got back down, a matching blue and beige hat pulled on his head (none of which matched his parka), Ryan was serving up a passable omelet to his mother. Scott could hear her “praise” it as he snapped Blitzkrieg’s lead on and started calling for the kids.

“Nice, Ryan, but we can tell you’re not the cook of the family, can’t we? Well, that’s just as well, since you’re at work, grinding away.”

“I like being a grinder,” Ryan said sunnily. “I do my job, I do it well, and no one expects me to perform miracles and die of heart disease at forty-five. It’s a decent trade-off, you know?”

“Very convincing—almost like cutting that artichoke heart really fine almost convinces me there was enough of it to put on this omelet.”

Ryan’s smile thinned and flattened. “That’s my fault—it’s my favorite. I’m afraid most of it went on my omelet.”

“I could have sworn I saw you and Scott eating off the same plate.”

“Yup. But we were eating my omelet. Otherwise Scott’s would have had bacon.” Ryan’s tone was pert, and Taylor’s return was straining to be in kind.

“Of course it would. Scott’s not old enough to worry about cholesterol yet, is he?”

And that’s when Scott started calling for the kids. “Tommy! Ella! Kylie! W.G.! If you don’t get down here now, Blitzkrieg’s gonna blow up! It’ll be gross but not nearly as much fun!”

The kids gave what felt like a collective shriek and started pounding down the stairs, pulling on scarves and gloves and thick coats as they went. The only one who was fully dressed was W.G., and he was such a little bundle of clothes that Tommy had to carry him or he would have rolled down the stairs like a snowball.

Everybody followed Scott out into the mudroom, where a little stair-step progression of rubber boots was slid on over small-sized tennis shoes, and Blitzkrieg, fueled by the hope of finally getting to go outside and relieve herself, hastened everyone along by lots of barking and bouncing.

When the kids were all wrapped, Scotty opened the door into the garage and then led the way out into the snow. He and the kids stomp-tromped-trudged their way through the new-fallen powder around the front yard and into the back, where the snow was just a little bit shallower. The kids were shrill and happy as they got to the back, and as Scotty unsnapped Blitzkrieg’s lead, he indulged in the pure physical relaxation of doing something fun on vacation.

He sighed and looked behind him at the cabin/mansion and wished that Ryan was out here in the snow with them. Because odds were whatever Ryan was doing with his vacation, it was not fun, and he was not indulging in anything but another stiff neck and some serious regret for driving up here in the first place.