“We are?” Eric asked, sounding dumbfounded.

Drew turned to him and lowered his voice so he wouldn’t be overheard. “Yes, we are. I was going to tell you guys, but you distracted me.”

“That’s not hard to do,” I scoffed. “I’m assuming you’ll go into details later?”

“Of course,” Drew agreed as he reached for his coat. “So, who’s ready to go shopping?”

By the groans filling the room, it seemed Drew was the only one looking forward to today’s excursion. I considered telling him to take the rest of us home and he could go on his own, but he’d been adamant that this needed to be a group trip. Each Maverick who’d agreed to sponsor the center’s Christmas extravaganza had been given the lists for three young men. Being the organizer, Drew had taken it upon himself to place Cody on his own list. I had the feeling our biggest problem was going to be convincing Drew that he shouldn’t go overboard buying gifts.

Drew and Cody sat in the back of Eric’s car for the drive to the outskirts of Chicago. They talked about Cody’s upcoming exams and the basketball tournament scheduled for the following weekend. I tried to listen without making it obvious, because Cody had said more to Drew during the first thirty minutes of the drive than he did to anyone else, myself included.

When we got to the outlet mall, Drew handed Eric one of the lists and told Cody to go with him while I helped Drew. He claimed we were going to divide and conquer so we could get home sooner, but I had a feeling it had more to do with giving us a bit of time alone.

Once Eric and Cody took off down the corridor, Drew pulled me toward a small coffee shop. We each got ourselves a drink and something small to eat and found a table near the entrance.

“I’m assuming you got him to open up?” I asked once we were both settled.

“Yeah. It wasn’t easy, but with the right motivation, he couldn’t resist my charming personality.” I nearly choked on my coffee at Drew’s statement. As much as I was growing closer to falling in love with him, charming wasn’t a word I’d use to describe him. I motioned for Drew to continue as I tried to catch my breath. “He’s going stir crazy in there. I’d be willing to bet he spent most of his time holed up in his bedroom before he got the boot from his asshole parents, and then he was on his own for the months before he came to you guys.”

“Makes sense, I suppose.” But it didn’t explain why someone as cool and collected as Cody would lose his mind. Jacob ran in as soon as he heard them shouting and swore he thought Cody was about ready to pound Maxwell into the ground by the time he got into the lounge. Luckily, it happened early in the day, when most of the guys were in school or out looking for work, otherwise the situation could have easily gotten out of hand. Boys were boys, whether gay or straight, and a lot of the ones who lived at Pot of Gold carried around huge chips on their shoulders. “But why did he lose his temper?”

“I think it was a combination of being exhausted, frustration over not having any privacy, and what the other guy said that he didn’t like,” Drew told me. I knew there was more to the story than he was sharing, but figured he was trying to walk a fine line between being open with me and not breaching Cody’s confidence. If he wasn’t going to be leaving in a few months for spring training, it’d be worth talking to Drew about going through the mandatory training to become one of the on-site counselors.

“So you wanted to remove him from the situation and give him some time to calm down.” It wasn’t a question. And as long as Drew didn’t make this a habit with whichever resident was having trouble, I thought it was a good idea. Cody trusted Drew and had obviously turned to him when he wasn’t willing to talk to anyone else. “How long did you tell him he’s staying at the house?”

Drew snorted. “I’m not that stupid. I wasn’t about to invite him to spend the night without talking to you and Eric. But I was thinking since it’s Thursday and his school is out until Monday because of in-service or whatever, maybe he could stay with us for the weekend.”

That didn’t sound like my idea of a good time, only because I had other plans for the weekend. Plans which involved no clothes and only leaving the bedroom when we needed to get something to eat or pass out from lack of energy. Then again, it’d be selfish of me to put my own needs before Cody’s when Drew was trying to do the right thing here. “I’d be fine with it, as long as Eric doesn’t disagree.”

“I knew you’d see it my way.” Without thinking about the fact that we were in public, Drew leaned over the table and kissed me. It was the first time any of us had shown any affection in public. I worried that someone would snap a picture and it’d be online by the time we got home, but I tried to ignore my concerns since Drew didn’t seem terribly concerned. “Now that that’s out of the way, let’s go buy some shit.”

I pushed away from the table and grabbed our garbage as Drew headed for the counter to grab another cup of coffee to get him through the shopping trip. Personally, I wanted something stronger because spending the afternoon in an outlet mall in December ranked high on the list of activities I tried to avoid at all costs.

Luckily, Drew was a man on a mission. He wanted to do some shopping for Cody and get everything back to the car before we met up with the guys. More than once I tried reminding him that Cody wasn’t a child who needed to be spoiled on Christmas morning, but Drew wouldn’t listen to me. He seemed intent on making up for Cody not having a family of his own.

By the time Drew was satisfied with his haul, my feet hurt, my arms were aching from holding all the bags while Drew continuously looked for “just one more thing”, and I was beyond over dealing with rude shoppers. All of my petty issues seemed to evaporate when we caught sight of Eric and Cody walking into the restaurant where we’d agreed to meet. Drew squeezed my hand and stood to give Eric a hug and a peck on the cheek before sitting down and grilling them about what they’d bought. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized just how much I wanted to have men like Drew and Eric in my life. It felt good sitting there, absorbing Drew’s excitement over the upcoming Christmas celebration and Eric seemed more relaxed than he had since Thanksgiving. Somehow, these two men had become an integral part of my life when I’d been too busy to pay attention to what was happening.

Chapter 22

“You guys don’t have a Christmas tree?” Cody asked when we got done dragging all the bags into the living room.

“No,” Eric responded as he started rummaging through the fridge for something to make for dinner. He wound up pulling out some storage containers of leftovers Cam had been nice enough to leave every time he cooked. If not for him, we’d all be living on takeout. “Is that an issue?”

Now that Cody mentioned it, I wished the house smelled like pine the way my parents’ old farmhouse did from Thanksgiving night until New Year’s Eve. Other than the snow piling up outside the windows and Christmas specials playing on TV when we were channel surfing, there was no sign that the holidays were upon us.

“We should have one,” I told Eric as I started heating the first few containers of food.

“Why? We’re going to be at the center for Christmas, so it’s not like anyone’s going to see it,” Eric objected. I knew he wasn’t thrilled about my obsession with making the holidays a bit more bearable for the guys at the center. It wasn’t that he thought they should have to get by with whatever they were offered, but he was still having a hard time with admitting his grandfather was gone. It’d been over a year since he’d died, but it seemed as though the holidays were particularly hard on him.