Page 47 of Gift of You
MATTHEW
The sun mocked me,glinting off the snow blanketing the landscape as my truck bounced along the county highway on our way to pick up Louis’s car. He’d explained over omelets that he’d left it at his friends’ cabin the night he’d drunk too much at their wedding. It hadn’t even occurred to me to wonder how he’d gotten from the wedding to my doorstep, but I was glad he’d chosen the safe option.
A week had passed since that day he’d burst into my life wearing nothing but a towel. A week of chaos and laughter. Of secret smiles and stolen kisses. Shared meals and shared orgasms. Seven days to not only discover I was into men, but to fall for a very specific man who wasn’t mine to keep.
“Turn right at the top of the hill, and then it’s about two miles farther on the left.” Louis spoke without looking at me, his voice devoid of its usual animation. His face had been practically glued to the passenger side window for the last fifteen minutes of our drive. In addition to our battle over shoveling this morning, we’d bickered over breakfast cleanup and then again over the music selection when we’d gotten into the truck. In the end, I’dflipped the sound system off, plunging the cab into silence, and Louis had been pouting ever since.
I flipped the turn signal, then made the turn as he’d directed. I wasn’t sure what was going on with him today, but he seemed determined to pick a fight. It wasn’t how I wanted his visit to end, but every topic of conversation, every step I took, felt like a landmine.
Usually one to prefer silence over idle chatter,thissilence felt wrong. So I broke it. “Tell me about your New Year’s Eve party. Is this something you do every year?”
He shot me a glance. “Yeah, actually, I do. My friends Salvador and Jesse have been hosting it for the last nine years, I think. Or is it eight?” He waved it off. “Doesn’t matter. They started it the first year they started dating.”
“Is it a dress-up deal?”
He turned to look at me fully. “A ‘dress-up deal’?”
I shrugged, feeling a bit defensive. “You know what I mean. Is it fancy?”
“I suppose you could call it that.” He pointed to the mailbox up ahead on the left. “There. Turn at the mailbox.”
I turned onto the tree-lined drive, switching to four-wheel drive since the driveway hadn’t been cleared since last night’s snow. It was slow and bumpy, not really allowing for further conversation, but we made it up to the cabin, which was smaller than I’d expected, but trimmed out in holiday decorations, giving it a cozy, welcoming feel, even though I knew the owners were away on their honeymoon.
Off to one side sat Louis’s car, buried in a pile of snow. He pulled out his phone and after tapping several times on the screen, the car started, tail lights barely visible underneath all that white fluff. Fancy.Just like his party, I thought sourly.
“Come on. Let’s get her cleared off.” Without waiting, I exited the truck, pulling out a couple of brooms and a heavy-duty ice scraper.
As it turned out, the ice scraper wasn’t necessary. By the time we’d used the brooms to push off the piles of snow, the car had warmed up enough that the ice underneath had melted.
“Thanks for your help,” Louis said as we loaded the brooms back into my truck.
“You sure this thing’ll be able to get back down that drive?” I nodded at the sleek black sedan.
“I’ll follow in your tracks. That should be enough. It does better in snow than you’d think.”
I eyed the car doubtfully, but figured he knew what he was talking about.
We made our way down the drive, my eyes on the rearview mirror at least as much as the path in front of me, and I breathed a sigh of relief once we made it back to the county road.
Twenty minutes later, I pulled into my usual spot behind my building while Louis pulled into the empty slot beside me. We got out of our cars and eyed each other awkwardly. And when had that happened? Things had been so easy between us for the last couple of days, I’d forgotten they hadn’t been that way at the start. Today had felt like a slow evolution back to our original status. We were becoming strangers.
“What are you doing for the rest of the afternoon?” Louis asked, breaking the tension-filled silence.
“I need to go into the shop for a few hours. I promised Stevie I’d relieve her as soon as I got back since she’s covered for me a couple of days this week.”
He nodded once. “I think...” He blew out a breath and tried again. “I think I’m going to finish packing and hit the road. If I leave in the next hour, I can be home before dark.”
“I thought you said tomorrow morning. I thought we had...” The rest of the sentence died in my throat, tasting bitter and sad.
“It’s snowed the last couple of nights. I think it might be good to get ahead of any potential weather this evening.”
I looked up at the sky where there wasn’t a cloud in sight. My stomach sank. If he wanted to hide behind weak excuses, I supposed I’d let him. He’d clearly made up his mind. “Okay. Um, will you come in and say goodbye before you leave?”
“Yeah, sure.” He forced a smile which didn’t come anywhere close to reaching his eyes.
I dusted shelves.I packaged online orders. I checked out a handful of customers who’d come in to do a little shopping. And as the minutes ticked by, caring, lighthearted Matty died a little more, leaving gruff and grumpy Matthew in his place. Okay, lighthearted might be a stretch, but the weight of the world that I’d shed during Louis’s visit climbed right back onto my shoulders, leaving my soul weary once again.
And then he was there, the bells above the door jangling as he entered the shop wearing his charcoal peacoat and amethyst scarf, looking just as gorgeous as he had the day he’d brought me an apple streusel muffin from the bakery down the street.
