Page 129 of Untouchable

“Um, so, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?”

Harp snorts. "Your guess is as good as mine. I didn't even know it was Thanksgiving this week until Mindy told me."

Parker laughs—he’s not surprised at all to hear that.

“Well, um… have fun,” he says. “And… give the dogs kisses for me, okay? Especially Bo. Don’t tell Gunny and Petunia that he’s my favorite, though. Like, make it discreet, you know? I don’t want them to feel bad.”

"You can trust that I'll dole out the kisses judiciously enough that no one suspects a thing," Harp says.

“Thank you for your service,” Parker says seriously. There’s a long beat of silence, and Parker’s suddenly self-conscious, worried that Harp’s waiting for him to stop talking but is too polite to interrupt. “Er—well—okay then. I’m, uh—sure you have stuff you’d rather be doing so—I’ll let you go. See you… next week. Bye.”

He hangs up before he can say anything that will further embarrass him.

* * *

And then Parkeris gone and the phone is back to being an inert piece of glass and plastic in his hand. Harp prepares to feel the weight of his mistakes settle down across his shoulders. Instead, he feels relieved.

The thought of Parker takes up residence in the back of his mind as he cleans up from dinner and finishes up his day of chores. For the first time since Parker left that morning when everything had gone wrong, it's pleasant to think of him—and although it's not untinged with anxiety, it's easier now to focus on the good things.

He wants to call Parker, to hear his voice, to get to know him better—because even if Parker thinks about it and changes his mind, they'll still be friends, Parker will still be in his life.

But he'd said they should take it slow. And that they should talk next week. Harp's rules—not Parker's. So he distracts himself as best he can.

At midnight, when Harp is three drinks in, it feels abruptly unfair that Parker is a city away in a cold apartment somewhere when he should be here, with Harp, where it's warm and there are leftovers and a big couch.

From his corner of the dog bed, Bo lets out a muffled whine and when Harp looks over, he sees that the smallest dog is lying on his back between his sisters, belly up. The whine turns into a huge yawn. Harp hauls himself up from his spot on the couch where he's been watching a Youtube video about how to properly sharpen chisels by hand. Harp slumps onto the floor next to the dog bed. All three dogs are snoring. Harp flips both of Bo's ears over to cover his eyes.

Parker would yell at me for being a bad dad. Or think it's cute. Or both.

An impulse seizes him and he grabs his phone.

Before he thinks about the fact that he's breaking the self-imposed separation, Harp has already texted him a picture of Bo, flat on his back.

I guess I never said we couldn't text.

* * *

Mindy pouncesalmost as soon as Parker’s hung up, and even after he’s told her about it, he plays and replays their conversation in his head again the rest of the night. He thinks he’s happy with where they’ve landed. It’s not what he wanted, of course, and he has to admit to himself that maybe that’s why he’s unhappy about it. He could manage this, though. He could have a little patience—for once in his life.

Going slowly isn’t for Parker’s benefit. It is for Harp’s. And when Parker reframes it like that in his mind, he finds he can take all the time in the world.

He’ll miss Harp, though. He’s gone from seeing him once a week to spending forty-eight hours beside him—and underneath or on top of him, at times—and now Parker won’t see him for ten days.

Parker wakes up the next morning to a text from Harp that came in around midnight, and his heart drops. He’s expecting to find a long message about why Harp can’t do it, and why he doesn’t want them to move forward. Instead, though, he just finds a picture of Bo, sandwiched between Petunia and Gunny, his long ears flopping over his eyes. There’s no caption, just the grainy, poorly lit photo.

Maybe it’s a peace offering, or a reassurance, or maybe Harp just thought Bo looked especially cute.

It hardly matters.

Parker grins and taps back a message, his heart full once more.

* * *

>>PARKER: theres my lil guy!!!

The bedroom is still pitch black when Parker's message comes in sometime before 6 a.m.

He's been tossing and turning for a few hours—not unusual after a night of drinking and being an idiot—and the noise of a text message coming in brings him to awareness immediately. He assumes it must be Gil with some sort of emergency. There's no one else, his sleepy mind thinks, that would be up and thinking of him.

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