Page 57 of Nine-Tenths

Christ, and you love him.

But more than anything, I want him to hold utterly still and be totally quiet,oh my god.If the fam catches on that he's in the room, they'll force me to introduce him. I amnotready.

"Right, I'm hanging up if you're gonna be mean," I say. "Blame Stuart for cutting off the call, Mum!"

"Oh sure," Stuart says, laughing. "It's all on me, like always."

"You're the big brother," I agree. "It’s your job for it all to be your fault, Stu-pid. I'm just the innocent little kid who follows you around, even into the middle of a dock that unmoors—"

"That wasn't me!" Stuart yelps. "How many times do I have to tell you, I didn't untie it!"

"Sure, sure," Gemma says. "Bye Colin."

"Bye Gem. Bye Mum."

"Itwasn't me—"

I press the hang-up button, give myself a moment to scrub my face with my water-wrinkled hands, and then nod and open my arms to my cute dragon. "Okay, hugs now, please."

Dav crosses the dingy linoleum in his lemon-yellow, monkey-printed socks, and wraps me in his arms. "That was fun."

"That was the worst ordeal of my liiiiiife," I moan into his shirt. "I can't believe my Mum didn't like, sense you there with her magical Scottish Mind Reading Magic."

"Would it be so bad?" Dav asks, stiffening.

I wriggle to prop my chin on his collarbone and look up at him.

"Hey, it would not be a bad thing to introduce you to my family. Just… not yet."

"Okay," Dav says, and then peels away to fetch the tote and root through the dishes drip-drying in the rack. He starts doingsomething fancy with butter melting in a pan, then a knife and the biggest leek I've ever seen in my life. "I liked hearing you talk with your brother—Stuart?"

"Yeah." We sort of dance around one another as I set the table, an echo of the way we move in tandem in the café's much smaller kitchen. Noticing how well we move together evaporates the last of the grief. "Stuart and Gemma are twins."

"Stuart and Gemma," Dav says, committing it to memory. It occurs to me that if he has siblings—clutch-mates? Egg-lings?—he's never mentioned them. "I liked hearing you use your expertise. You're clever, Colin."

I clear my throat, trying to sound cool while my heart jumps up to double time: "My thirty thousand dollar piece of paper should be worthsomething."

Dav's knife slams down hard into the cutting board, scattering leek everywhere. "How much?"

"Thirty thousand bucks."

"That's absurd."

"Welcome to late-stage capitalism. Still have all your fingers?"

"What? Oh, yes," he waves his intact hand at me, wiggling said fingers cheekily.

"You sure? Maybe I should check." Feeling silly and bold, I take his hand and make a point of kissing my way down the backs of each of his fingers, ignoring the fragrance of onion. By the time I'm done, Dav's let the knife clatter to the counter and is pitched toward me like a magnet to iron. His free hand brushes lightly up the side of my hip, fingers dancing across the denim. "Yeah, all good."

His kiss, when it comes, is hot, and heavy, and open-mouthed. He crowds me up against the corner, and I am happy to let him push me up to sit on the countertop so I can wrap my calves around his ass and hold him there.

"I hear charcoal is coming back as a food trend," I whisper, when he breaks away for long enough for me to get use of my tongue back.

"Huh?" Dav asks, kiss-drunk and pillow-eyed.

"Butter. Burning."

"Coc y gath."