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“Okay, I have an idea, but I need you to not say anything until I’m done explaining it.”

Spencer stood on a drop cloth in Cat’s dining room with a roller dipped in navy paint. Cat was up on a ladder cutting in the line between the wall and the ceiling. Cat never let Spencer do that part. One time, he’d pointed out that he was a professionally trained artist, and she had told him to fuck off with his bullshit. He’d never mentioned it again.

Cat looked down at him skeptically. “Why do I feel like something terrible is about to happen?”

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

Spencer started rolling paint onto the wall. “So you know that house over on Plunkett?”

Silence resounded throughout the room. “Oh, sorry, am I allowed to say things now?”

Spencer momentarily considered upending his paint tray on her head. “The city owns that house on Plunkett, and they know it’s not worth anything. I was down by city hall, and I heard a rumor that they’re willing to sell it for a dollar to anyone who can prove that they have the means to actually do something with it.”

“Spence . . .”

“No, wait, hear me out. I will front the dollar.”

Cat barked out a laugh.

“I think that between the two of us, we could get the financing we need to bring it back to life.”

This was the kind of project Spencer had dreamed of doing since he’d started designing houses for a living—a historic home that would probably just collapse on itself if he and Cat didn’t step in and no one to tell him what to do with it. But he also knew it was a risk. Yeah, the house cost a dollar, but fixing it up would cost hundreds of thousands, money he and Cat would have to front, probably through loans against actually valuable assets they owned.

He looked up, and Cat was worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. “Spence, we don’t flip houses. I don’t want to be the sort of person who does that to this city.”

“I don’t, either. But if we sell it for enough to pay ourselves back and, like, eat while we’re renovating it, we could still sell it for well under market value. And we could finally have a house where we do anything we want. It would be the ultimate portfolio piece. I think it would be worth it for the marketing photos alone. We don’t have anything on the books once we’re done with Brown Street. So we’ve got the time.”

Spencer really wanted Cat to share his enthusiasm for this project. After the Tyler Street debacle, they both deserved to have a little fun.

“We won’t be done with Brown Street for months.”

“Right, but I have no idea how long something like this would take to get started. There’s probably a ton of red tape buying from the city. Plus, we’d have to get the financing set up and everything.”

Cat shifted to sit on a rung of the ladder. “Have you even seen what it looks like on the inside? Based on the facade, it could be a pile of termite dust in there.”

Spencer looked at the canvas under his socked feet. “There are a few pictures online. It’s . . . not in great shape. But it’s nothing we can’t handle.”

When he looked back up, Cat was staring at him silently. He could tell she was thinking, weighing their friendship against her business sense, the love of a challenge they both shared with a decade of experience telling her that these sorts of projects were always harder than they looked.

“At least come look at it with me. We can’t get inside, but we can peek through the windows and see what we can see. We’ll do the budget assuming the worst, and you can decide when you have all the information.”

Cat leveled her paintbrush at him. “I will look.”

A smile spread across his face.

“Only look. And once we do all the numbers, I’ll decide.”

“That is fair and reasonable.”

Cat looked like she was fighting the urge to flick paint at him, but he knew how long she’d spent stripping and refinishing all the wainscoting in this room, so he felt fairly safe as he turned back to his roller.

———

By the time Spencer made it home from Cat’s, with only a little bit of paint in his hair, Ian was standing outside his door waiting for him. He should probably just get him his own key at this point. And then Spencer found himself sitting up on the kitchen counter with Ian slotted between his knees, somewhere in the process of making tea with Ian’s hands under his shirt and lips on his neck when the steeping timer went off. Before Spencer could pull back to deal with it, Ian deftly hit the button and tossed the infusers into the sink, all without looking. Spencer smiled against Ian’s lips and went back to focusing on his tongue in his mouth, his hands on his hips, his little hum of pleasure when Spencer sucked on his bottom lip the way he liked.

Spencer liked being with Ian like this—unhurried, unserious. Like nothing existed in these moments except their bodies in space. He had fun with Ian, whether they were attached at the face or not, and he was trying hard not to worry too much beyond that.

Norman had been nosing at their legs the whole time Spencer had been on the counter, and they’d been successfully ignoring him, but then Spencer let out a particularly loud moan when Ian sucked on his tongue, and Norman started whimpering. Spencer leaned back slowly, savoring the scrape of Ian’s teeth over his bottom lip, before reaching over to the cookie jar and tossing Norman a treat. Norman trotted off to his bed happily.

“Does he think I’m hurting you?”

Ian’s brow furrowed, and Spencer laughed at how adorable he was when he took all Norman’s moods so seriously.

“I have no idea what he thinks.”

He brushed Ian’s hair back from his forehead. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s just annoyed he’s not the center of attention right now. He’s used to being the cutest one here.”

“It’s a close thing.”

Spencer cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, is it?”

Ian was smiling his prettiest smile, and his eyes sparkled with mischief. He ran his hands up Spencer’s sides under his shirt, and Spencer thought they were about to get back to the matter at hand when he suddenly asked, “Do you have plans for Saturday?”

“Uh, no. I don’t think so. Why?”

Ian started tracing little circles on Spencer’s back with his fingertips, which was making it very hard to focus on what he was saying. “I have lawn tickets for Tanglewood, and I thought you might want to go, seeing as how you seem to like sitting on blankets in the grass.”

Of course Ian was the sort of person who had lawn tickets for the summer venue of one of the world’s most renowned orchestras. “I don’t know anything about the Boston Symphony,”

Spencer said, threading his fingers through Ian’s hair.

Ian chuckled. “Neither do I. This is like my movies in the park.”

“Except it’s Tanglewood,”

Spencer pointed out.

“Well.”

There was a hint of humor in Ian’s voice that made Spencer’s heart skip.

“You know, you’re the most quintessentially Massachusetts person I’ve ever met.”

Ian barked out a laugh. “How so?”

Spencer looked down at Ian’s feet, which were currently bare because he’d left his Sperrys on the shoe rack. “You own boat shoes.”

Ian looked like he was trying very hard to hide his smile. “A lot of people own boat shoes.”

“No one else I know owns boat shoes.”

Or chinos, he was pretty sure.

“Then I don’t think your friends are a representative sample of the population. I can’t help that you’re a California hipster.”

Ian tilted his face up and stole a kiss.

“I think you like it.”

Spencer looked down pointedly to where Ian was snuggling into his flannel.

“I do like it,”

Ian said a little too earnestly.

Spencer kissed his hair. “Should I bring anything?”

Ian shook his head. “Just yourself.”

Norman chose that moment to jump up against Ian’s hip, jolting them both.

“Sorry, I don’t think Tanglewood allows dogs.”

Ian looked genuinely contrite as he tried to get Norman back down on the floor.

Spencer didn’t really leave Norman alone for long stretches of time, but he wasn’t particularly worried about one evening. “It’s okay. Norman isn’t a fan of classical music, anyway.”

Ian chuckled. “Of course not.”