Page 27 of Decorated

“And what are you drawing?” Alfie asked a teenage girl as he edged his way around the table. If he could get within touching distance of Blaine, he could grab hold of him and take him aside so they could sort things once and for all.

“I’m making an abstract, mixed media, holiday-inspired installation for the lobby of our home,” she said, full of confidence.

“Wow,” Blaine said, blinking at the amazing piece of art the girl had already accomplished. “You’ve got natural talent, and believe me, I would know.”

His interest in the girl’s project was just want Alfie needed to slip around the end of the table so that he could make his way closer to Blaine.

His effort to catch up was stalled as a tiny boy who couldn’t have been more than six stopped him with, “Can you do the paste for me?”

The pleading in his big, brown eyes melted Alfie’s heart, and he stopped his pursuit of Blaine to help the boy.

“Of course I can,” he said, taking the bottle of glue, which the boy had already managed to squeeze too hard and make a mess of, and dabbing it where the boy wanted it for the cardboard shapes he was pasting.

He took a moment to clean up the boy’s hands with a paper towel and some of the water on the table that was probably meant for cleaning brushes, then wiped the drips off the glue bottle. The boy beamed up at him as if he’d done an enormous service. Alfie smiled back at him and ruffled the boy’s hair once everything was cleaned. The adult volunteer from the children’s home sent him a grateful look as well.

The boy and volunteer weren’t the only ones looking at him with an awed, slightly dreamy smiles. Blaine had watched the whole thing, and he looked positively transported.

Which was exactly the moment of hesitation Alfie needed to step around the teenager with her fancy art installation so that he could subtly grab Blaine’s wrist.

“You and I need to talk,” he said in a low voice.

Blaine lost his dreamy look and shot straight back into his earlier panic when he realized Alfie had him. “I…I didn’t do it. I didn’t mean to do it. I can fix things. I’ll do better,” he said,blurting what felt like a lifetime of bottled-up baggage at Alfie before he realized it.

“We just need to talk,” Alfie said, leading him away from the table. He nodded to the volunteer at the table before steering Blaine toward one of the rainbow-colored Christmas trees off to the side. It was time they got to the bottom of everything Blaine was trying to avoid, and maybe spelled out exactly what they were to each other in the meantime.

EIGHT

It was supposedto be a beautiful day. Everything had been going so well. Blaine was happy with the decorations he’d devised and put up, with Alfie’s help, for the RAF toy drive party. Things between him and Alfie had been lovely and so filled with promise for the past few days. His shirt was absolutely on point for Christmas festivity, and sparkly to boot. And that afternoon they’d spent together horizontally? It had been bliss. Blaine was hoping for a repeat as soon as possible, maybe after the party.

To be honest, he was hoping for even more than that. Unlike so many others, Alfie hadn’t bolted the moment he’d gotten what he wanted. He hadn’t laughed in Blaine’s face for all his foibles and idiosyncrasies. For some bizarre reason, Alfie actually seemed charmed by them.

And then came the text from Dave around lunchtime that day.

“I’m looking forward to seeing you at the party tonight. We have things we need to talk about.”

With that one text, Blaine felt like everything that had seemed so promising and stable was about to come crashingdown. Dave would be at the party. He wouldn’t be able to run and hide from his problems anymore.

That didn’t mean he wouldn’t try, though. Or, at least, he would have tried if Alfie hadn’t cornered him, grabbed his wrist, then taken his hand and led him to a relatively quiet spot behind the rainbow Christmas trees.

“You don’t need to do this,” Blaine blurted, as jumpy as a kid who’d had too much sugar on Christmas morning. “I know what you’re going to say. I’ll say it for you. It was fun while it lasted, but you’re looking for something, someone more serious than me. I’m a great guy, but the two of us just aren’t suited for each other. And that shirt of yours is an offense against nature.” He avoided Alfie’s eyes as everything came spilling out.

“Blaine,” Alfie said in a firm, calm voice.

Blaine shifted his glance around the front of Archie’s broad chest, trying but failing to summon the courage to look up at him and see what he knew would be there.

“I get it all the time,” he went on, reaching out and playing with the lapel of Archie’s dress uniform. God, he looked good in a uniform! “I know how it goes. Yes, I’m too much. I have so many things going on in my life and my world right now. I’m sorry if I dragged you into it all in any small way.”

“Blaine,” Archie said again.

“And yes, I’m probably overreacting and flailing a bit,” he ignored him and zoomed on. “I should probably have more confidence in myself and actually believe that someone like you could want someone like me. I need to believe I can pull off this look. It’s just hard with my past experience is all.”

“Blaine.”

“You’re such a great guy, and I’m the very definition of a hot mess. And now with Dave coming to the party tonight, most likely with some sort of legal paper that he’ll serve me with and destroy what little I have left of my dignity, I just can’t?—”

His verbal and physical flailing stopped when Alfie grasped his face in both hands and planted a firm kiss on his mouth that short-circuited Blaine’s brain.

Blaine made a sound deep in his throat that was either the end of what he’d been about to say or a sign of complete surrender. If Alfie had kissed him to shut him up, it definitely worked. All Blaine wanted was to be putty in Alfie’s hands, doing whatever Alfie wanted and being whatever he needed. The entire world slowed down, then stopped, coalescing in that moment.

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