Page 42 of The One Month Boyfriend (Wildwood Society)

And then I’d ask her if she ever got lonely sometimes, and she’d say she’s never that lonely, and I’d tell her that sometimes you don’t know what you need until you’re already getting cozy with a stuffed animal, and she’d press her lips together the way she does when she’s smiling but fighting it and I’d get closer, put a hand on her hip, ask her—

I hit the brakes on that train of thought because I’ve already spent way too much time thinking about a purely transactional kiss. Maybe I’m the one who needs a giant stuffed animal.

“It’s not in the freezer,” Javier is saying in the kitchen. “Stop looking in the freezer.”

“Your egg timer was in here two months ago,” Wyatt responds. “I’m perfectly justified.”

“Are you sure the spatula is in the kitchen?” I call out.

“Yes,” answers Javier.

“No,” answers Wyatt.

“Want us to check the paintbrushes?” I ask.

My only answer is a dramatic sigh from Javier, so Gideon and I both stand and head to the far wall of Javier’s loft.

As starving artist spaces go, it’s very nice, probably because Javier’s less starving artist and more extremely competent graphic designer who sculpts and paints in his spare time. When it was built, this place was a warehouse or a mill or an electrical waystation or something—I’ve forgotten the details—but it’s big and boxy and brick and has tons of windows. Javier’s apartment is one big, open space with a kitchen in one corner, the sofas in the middle, his bed in a loft above the kitchen, a neat desk with a laptop by a window, and the rest of the space filled with what I can only call Art Stuff.

Appalachian Olympusis here, huddled against a wall. Next to those the floor is covered in something that looks like very complicated papier-mâché, the walls behind both filled with sketches and half-finished paintings. There’s an easel, though it’s empty. There’s a loom that can’t possibly have been functional in the last fifty years. There are crates of what look like car parts and bike parts, several tool boxes, various hunks and sticks of wood, and a stop sign from God knows where.

Gideon and I both head for a table, loaded down with paints, paintbrushes, pencils, erasers, colored sticks, charcoal, and about a thousand other art-type things I don’t know the word for, and we start scanning for kitchen implements.

It wouldn’t be the first time that Javier decided something he uses to eat would also be the perfect thing for mixing… whatever artists mix. Paint? Plaster?

“La Dolce Vita,” Gideon suddenly says, picking up a cup of paintbrushes and looking under it. “Classy, quality, and downtown where you’re likely to be spotted by at least one gossipmonger. That good enough for you?”

“It’ll do,” I say, and Gideon grunts in response, just as Wyatt shouts from the kitchen, brandishing a spatula high above his head.

“What the fuck?” asks Javier.

“It’s the fuck a spatula,” grins Wyatt. “And it was the fuck in your pantry behind all your boxes of pasta.”

Ceremonially, he holds it out to Javier, who looks resigned as he accepts it.

“Thank you,” he says, and Wyatt bows before picking up his root beer.

“At your service.”

“Shut up.”

“Is that any way to treat the man who found your spatula?”

There’s a burble in the loft, and Wyatt and Javier keep good-naturedly bickering as an enormous, fluffy black cat unfurls itself, stretches, and lightly pads down the stairs before going straight to Gideon and rubbing against his legs.

Gideon sighs, then reaches down to scratch the cat’s ears.

“Don’t you ever bother anyone else?” he mutters, and Zorro meow-chirps in response.

“He knows a sucker when he sees one,” I offer.

That gets another grunt, though it’s pretty unconvincing since the cat’s already in Gideon’s arms, well on his way to blissfully rubbing his face against the man’s beard. Gideon rolls his eyes and looks annoyed, but he’s actively facilitating this. It’s his own fault.

“Where else?” I say as we head toward the kitchen.

He frowns. Zorro headbutts his chin, ecstatic.

“Does it have to be a restaurant?”