Page 24 of Prayers for the Prickly

Chuckling at the images that immediately started popping into my head, I was left with one question for him.

“What the hell is a meet-cute?” I asked.

Giggling, he just shook his head at me. “Now that you’ve found your mate I really hope you’ll lighten up a little and start watching movies that don’t involve blood, gore and shit exploding in every which direction.”

“We’ll see, now what the hell is a meet-cute?”

“Those little moments when people meet one another for the first time in the middle of some weird, awkward, or even hilarious situation,” Olly explained. “The meeting blooms into a romance and the couple has that moment to look back on as being the one that showed them that spark that existed between them.”

“And that required a special terminology of its own?” I asked, skeptical of the whole damned concept.

“You and August would be considered a meet-cute,” he explained, immediately changing my opinion of the whole thing. “Customer comes into a shop to buy a present for a family member, only to find his fated mate in the workshop, growling his way through an almost, but not quite awkward conversation. Perfect meet-cute right there. Maybe we should see if anyone else in the family has a story like that. We could create a meet-cute collection of images, like a montage of the ways our family members have met and fallen in love.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, not you, too,” I grumbled, pinching the bridge of my hose.

I could hardly stand some of the syrupy sweet thoughts running through my head since I’d met August, so to hear my already overly cheerful brother wanting to celebrate love months after Valentine’s Day was in the rearview mirror made me want to bristle, only I couldn’t work up enough irritation to do it.

What could I say, finding my mate had taken some of the bite out of this crusty wolverine, but I would nip my brother a little if he didn’t get his ass back to the front and stop dreaming up more work for me.

Work.

Pff.

Who was I kidding? What he’d been describing, about collecting family meet-cute stories and creating a collection of carvings based off them was a pretty killer idea that even our grumpy ass relatives wouldn’t be able to resist getting behind. Learning that Pops waited up for Mom every night, even when she got so deep into her pottery sessions that half the night flew by before she even thought about going to bed, had changed the way I thought about the relationships within my family. I suppose growing up in a community where people tended to display their love and affection outwardly had left me feeling some type of way about my own family’s tendency to rarely show any emotion at all.

I planned to start paying better attention when I was in their presence, to see if I could pick up any of the hidden signs I figured I’d missed over the years.

The bell of the shop door jangled, and Olly whirled around and returned to the front, leaving me to work on my latest carving. As it always did, time melted, and the day slipped away without any more interruptions from Olly or anyone. With the smart speaker blaring and my phone tossed somewhere, I didn’t realize how late it had grown until my stomach gave a loud, frustrated grumble.

Raising my head, I was hit with a wave of dizziness at the same time that my back protested being in the same bent-over position for who knew how long. The sky had been reduced to fiery streaks of orange and red, while only a quarter of the sun remained on the horizon.

Holy shit.

Blinking, I rubbed my eyes and sat up a little straighter, trying to remember if August and I had discussed whether we planned to cook supper at home tonight or meet up somewhere once we’d both finished in our respective shops.

No, that’s right, August had mentioned something about a rush order he’d gotten just before closing last night. He hadn’t been able to start it then, so he’d planned to work late tonight so that it would be ready by tomorrow afternoon. Rubbing my lower back relieved the ache a little and made it easier to put my tools away.

There were no messages on my phone from August when I checked it, so I shut down the shop, locked up, and headed to find a meal I could take to him. This late, heavy was out, but I’d learned that my hedgehog loved salads, and I knew a shop that made amazing ones as well as the best damned submarine sandwiches this side of Bangor. Heavy wasn’t appealing to me tonight, either, so I got him the crab Rangoon salad, which just seemed fitting after learning that was his favorite type of pizza. I wound up getting myself a cold seafood salad with lettuce, tomatoes and bacon, the combination being my favorite to put on a sub whenever I got one, which I almost did, but at the last minute I decided that salad would be enough with how early I needed to get up in the morning to walk the beach. I remembered to grab us each a root beer, too, loving that we shared the same taste in pop.

That would make keeping the fridge stocked a whole lot easier, as did learning that we both preferred a couple crisp hard ciders at the end of a long day. As hard as it was, the first rule we’d made in these early days of meal deliveries and rarely leaving the bed as we rode out my rut together, was that we were going to leave work at the door, once we got back to our shops, anyway. We’d been forced to take four days off because I couldn’t keep my cock out of him. We’d fallen asleep locked together more than once, even on the last night, when we’d finally headed downstairs to spend some time in the den together, watching movies.

Somewhere in all of that, we’d decided that he was moving in, since he still lived in his parents’ house and neither of us was interested in going back to spending our nights in bed alone. Last night we’d spent our evening together moving throughourhome, rearranging my possessions to make room for his, which would be delivered at the end of the week. We’d decided it might be easier to rearrange the space first, before overwhelming ourselves by packing the rooms full of furniture and boxes we tripped over until we could decide what was going to go where.

That had been another time I’d expected to find myself bristling, only to discover that there had been few instances that had required much discussion, let alone any sort of compromise. We’d examine a space, he’d describe a piece of furniture or artwork, and within moments, we’d figured out the best way to just shift the things I already had there, to make room for him to slide his items in.

I couldn’t wait to see how it all came together because my thoughts had already painted a harmonious image of our old lives blending as we created a new one. Look at me, my thoughts had become damn near poetic since meeting August.

Since I knew the front of the house would be locked up by now, I approached his shop from the back and pounded on the door.

I play my music loud, so you need to knock on that thing like you’re the cops about to execute a raid, he’d told me, insisting, when I’d raised a skeptical eyebrow and reminded him that he hadn’t heard just how loud I could knock yet. He’d just saidgoodand cautioned me not to hold back, so I pounded away on that thing when I reached it and hoped it would be loud enough.

I probably should have shot him a text from the sandwich shop to let him know I was on my way, but I’d figured that if he was anything like me, his phone would be on vibrate ordo not disturband his music would be up too loud for him to even hear it if it did start vibrating.

Shockingly, he opened the door before I had to pound on it again, and grinned up at me, the rubber rim of his hair net digging into his forehead. No wonder it always seemed like he had a fading mark there by the time he got home. I’d assumed he’d been leaning over something and accidentally banged his head on the covering above his stove. That net couldn’t be comfortable. Maybe my hedgehog would welcome a little scalp massage before we fell asleep tonight.

“I’m not even close to done yet,” he declared, never moving out of the doorway.

“I didn’t expect you to be,” I explained before holding up the bag, “but I did hope you’d join me for a bite of supper when you’re at a good spot to take a break. I got us a couple of salads and some pop.”

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