Page 7 of Karma Kitty Christmas
“Terrible?” Luca replied, stunned.
“Too loud, too gaudy, too precious—it’s not a room for grown-ups.”
“Too…?” Luca couldn’t breathe, he was suddenly so angry.
Isaac shrugged, still looking abashed. “It’s the one room I got to decorate—”
“I cantell,” Luca said. “It’s the best room in the house!”
Isaac glanced up, surprise all over his face. “You think?”
“My God, I was wondering where your soul was,” Luca burst out. “I… the rest of this house is so bland! This room”—and it was barely big enough for a desk, an armchair, and the yarn bins—“thisroom is just glorious. This room needs to spread to the rest of the house!Everyroom needs to be an Isaac room. You need to get more than new furniture. You need to dothisto the rest of the place. It will beamazing.”
Isaac stared at him, big hazel eyes wide and a little starry “Wow,” he said, his expression a cross between elation and absolute dismay. “That’s… that’s the nicest thing anybody has ever said to me.”
Luca gaped, fighting the temptation to fall to his knees, kiss the guy, and make wicked sexy love on the brilliantly hued area rug, surrounded by plastic yarn bins.
And that was when he knew he wasreallyin trouble.
Distractions
“WHATCHA WORKINGon now, Isaac?”
Roxy Michaels had wide hips, frizzy brown hair, and her clothing—button-down shirts and stretchy slacks—was constantly askew.
Isaac adored her, and his only regret about their friendship was that they’d met while they were both married, teaching, and respectable, because he thought the two of them would have beenfabulousat the club scene.
And because when Roxy met Brian, that might have pulled Isaac into respectability without him having to meet Todd, who literally yanked Isaac out of his post-college ecstasy rave haze with the force of an annoyed parent yanking a child out of traffic.
It would have been great to have been teaching and respectable—both of which Isaac adored—without having to be married first, because the more Isaac lived without Todd, the more he wondered what had happened to Isaac during the last ten years.
That moment in his yarn room had been a revelation.
Here was a guy Isaac barely knew, telling Isaac that the world needed to seemoreof his heart after being told for ten years that he had to show ratherlessof it, and Isaac’s only response had been to….
Well, he’d cried, but he’d kept his face averted as he’d focused on the totally mundane and secretly wonderful task of picking out soft, fine baby yarn for the patterns in the books that Luca liked best.
And he’d been so considerate too.
Appalled at his own audacity at taking full advantage of Isaac’s impulsive offer, Luca had been asking about the easiest blankets, the ones that would take less of Isaac’s valuable time. And the more Isaac thought of making a blanket for Sophia and Geordie’s great-grandbaby, the more he wanted this blanket to beamazing.
In the end their compromise had been… well, Isaac felt a little sneaky, because he felt like he wassneakingmore of Luca’s company, but….
“Isaac?” Roxy said, calling Isaac’s attention back to her original question. They’d both finished their lunches and were cozied up on the couches in the back of the teachers’ room while the rest of the staff got into politics. Isaac needed to ignore politics. He’d started teaching at a time when gay teachers could be subtly fired for a million reasons that magically had nothing to do with gayness and everything to do with, “Well, he just didn’t click.”
Yeah, his skinny twinky ass.
Anyway, the quickest way to find that he “just didn’t click” was to suddenly be interested in which administrator was a total tool, who was sleeping with who at the district office, and how they should protest all testing because it didn’t work.
He had a sixth sense for avoiding tools, he didn’t actually give a shit about who was sleeping with who at the district office, and he knew for a fact thatsometesting worked, so he ignored what didn’t really seem to matter.
Which was why he and Roxy got along so swimmingly. She kept him apprised of all the gossip (okay, it reallywaskind of fun to know who was sleeping with whom), and she also told him who was a total fucking tool and should be avoided at all costs.
And in return, he continued to keep her apprised on what the world was like when you weren’t elbows-deep in diapers and Desitin after you left your students.
And part of that was talking about his yarn work, because she’d always been the one person interested in it—and she had two different sweaters with flowered embellishments and a complete layette for each of the three kids to show for it. He would have made something for Brian, her husband, but he worked from home and wore, by her reports, a frayed hoodie and cargo shorts even in the deepest, darkest winter.
And part of his duty as best work friend was to tell her what he was working on and why it was making his face hot—and probably pink to boot.
