We Have Till Dawn

The man did not know how to sugarcoat.

He sniffled and kept playing, and I had to remind him to drink his coffee and eat his pastry. New York was covered in snow, and we’d taken shelter from the cold in a French pastry shop near Macy’s. Gideon had just survived a four-day man cold and didn’t need to get sick again. But since we were going to Nonna’s for Thanksgiving tomorrow—his first time meeting my whole family—he’d insisted we go out and buy something to bring them.

“I struggled forever with that level.” I side-eyed him and his damn phone.

“We all have our strengths and weaknesses, sweetheart.”

I snorted and shook my head in amusement.

All banter aside, downloading that game had helped him immensely. It’d started with his curiosity when I had bitched at a difficult level, and I’d ended up asking him for help. He’d crushed it in two minutes and then started playing too. And he said it was a perfect distraction for when his mind was too chaotic. He’d also come home to the apartment one day, sheepish as hell, and admitted that he’d lost track of time at lunch and played in his office when he was supposed to have been in a meeting.

“Nailed it. Again.” He shut his phone and pocketed it with a satisfied smile. “When is Anthony due?”

“Any minute, I guess.” My brother had texted when he’d gotten on the subway. He was the one with the original errand at Macy’s. Every Christmas, he gave Nonna her favorite perfume that could only be bought there, and he hated shopping closer to the holiday. He also didn’t have the patience for online shopping, which was a dumb excuse for the fact that he was bad with computers.

Gideon had picked Macy’s and asked me to ask Anthony if we could meet up for coffee.

My man wanted to make new friends, and he was so sweet about it. It was also possible he was still shell-shocked from meeting Ruby that he planned on latching on to the first option that wasn’t as wild as… Well, I couldn’t say it was just Ruby. It was more a combination of her and me together. Gideon was fascinated by her and found her “lovely,” but he couldn’t keep up.

Either way, Anthony was a perfect candidate.

“Can I try yours, please?” Gideon pointed his fork at my raspberry mousse pastry.

“It wasn’t as sweet as I thought it would be.” I slid the plate closer to him.

He made a grimace when he tried it. “No. Too tart.”

I chuckled.

He held up a forkful of chocolate cake for me to try, and I closed my mouth around it.

“Damn.” I chewed slowly, a bit overwhelmed by the sugar explosion. “Here, lemme try something.” With a little bit of mine and a little bit of his on the same fork, I fed him the combination, and his eyes lit up in approval. “Yeah?”

He nodded. “Definitely.”

“Oi, lovebirds.” Anthony appeared between the tables, looking sufficiently frazzled after a ride on the subway to the borough he hated.

“Hey!” I grinned and kicked out his chair. “You ready for a day of shopping?”

He raised his brows and shrugged out of his jacket. “Day? I’ll be in and out in ten minutes.”

Kinda like Gideon this morning. He’d been feeling “too sick” to come with me for my walk, but joining me in the shower for a quickie was no problem. So, I had walked Chester, something I’d started doing the other week when we spent the night at Gideon’s place the first time.

We were both in agreement that the studio was more for us; it was ours, in a sense, and he was ready to start fresh elsewhere. But when he had to work from home, I brought my ass up to the Upper East Side. Most of the time anyway. I spent the night at Anthony’s quite a bit too, ’cause work was busy right before the break, with all the recitals and so on.

Anthony went up to the register and ordered coffee, and I leaned over and kissed Gideon’s cheek.

“How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay. Anthony doesn’t make me nervous.”

That wasn’t what I’d been referring to—I was thinking about his cold—but that was good. Our first “official” get-together had involved Anthony inviting us over for pizza and beer, and we’d ended up having a great time. We’d even spent the night there because we’d been buzzed.

“Neither will Pop and Nonna after tomorrow,” I promised. Because I’d had a chat with both of them. Nothing big, I just wanted to make sure they’d go easy on the nosiness.

Gideon squeezed my leg under the table. “To be honest, I’m not as worried anymore. If there’s one thing I’ve learned lately, it’s to focus on what matters. Your family is accepting, regardless of how boisterous they might be. I’ll be fine.”