Chapter Seventeen

JULIAN WASN’T SURE if he was imagining it or if there was actual chemistry between himself and Cole.

Cole put his hands on top of Julian’s, half the size of them really. “No, you have to put your whole body into it. Really focus and get it rolled out.”

Julian turned to look at him, considering. “My whole body, huh? Not just…not just my arms but the whole body?”

Cole laughed. “Go big or go home.”

Julian tried again, this time making a dramatic effort to move his whole body, getting over the top. He barely moved his arms though, so the pastry didn’t roll out much at all.

“You ass.” Cole playfully swatted his arm. “Move.”

Julian scooted aside, handing over the rolling pin.

“Listen, I’m not one of those people who allows men to be willfully incompetent, so you’re going to watch me do this, and then you’re going to do it right.” Cole gave him a pointed look, but a smile still played on his lips. Yeah, they were still teasing. Julian stared at Cole’s lips a second longer than he should have, and he wondered if Cole was blushing or if he was just imagining things. He snapped his attention back to Cole’s hands. “Teach me, oh wise one,” he said, without a hint of sarcasm. He really did want to learn.

Cole showed him the process, rolling out the pastry gently. “There, see? Easy does it. Forward, back. These sticks on the side show you how thick to get it.” They’d been working on the pastry for a while now, mixing, chopping, adding in diced apple and cranberry, pumpkin puree… If it weren’t for the lack of sugar, Julian would have been tempted to take a taste for himself. Every ingredient in the treats was human-safe and honestly incredibly tasty. Cole had said that was on purpose, since you never wanted to feed your dog food you weren’t willing to eat yourself. “All these places,” he’d said about an hour before, “they add in chicken feet and beaks and stuff, cow hooves as treats…all of those are choking hazards, or genuinely not that good for dogs. Dogs like whole meats and the kinds of foods you like. Will they eat it if it’s given to them? Yeah. They’ll eat the scrap meat, the crap. But is that what they should eat? Probably not.” He ended the conversation with another note that food—any food, except the toxic kind—was better than a starved dog, but that the better you fed a dog, the better the dog would grow, and the longer the life they’d live. Julian thought about that, and he realized Sprinkles deserved a long, happy life. A longer, happier life than what Chicken and Woofles could give her.

“Okay. Let me try,” Julian said. He wanted to get this right. No willful incompetence. Instead, actual effort. He put his hands on the rolling pin, doing what Cole had just demonstrated, and rolled it forward and back. Things went well the first few movements, but as he pulled it back toward him again, the pastry peeled up onto the rolling pin. “Oh, crap!”

“It’s okay,” Cole said. “Lay it back down.” He guided Julian, pushing the pin forward. “We just need a little more flour on the rolling pin.”

Cole showed him how to do it, and he actually started to understand a little better. By the time it was rolled out, he thought maybe he could do this for himself the next time.

Then it hit him. There wouldn’t be a next time. He only had a week left of caring for Sprinkles. This was the only time he’d get to make treats like this, because these treats would last until the end of his time with her. The thought made him feel strange. Sad. “I can’t believe I’ve only got a week left with her,” he blurted out before he could stop himself.

Cole pulled back, Julian’s words stopping him in his tracks. “Oh. Wow.”

Julian frowned. “Yeah. Wow.”

“You know, it’s funny. You’ve been here so long with her that I forgot you weren’t staying with her.” Cole looked at the treats and back up at Julian. “I’m used to Molly taking a week, two weeks. Never a month. So I’m used to seeing a sitter for a few days and then she’s back.” He took a small step back from Julian. “You excited for her to come home?”

“Yeah,” Julian said softly. “I mean, I’m sure Sprinkles will be happy to have her back.” A pit filled his stomach. “You know, that’s been the plan all along. For me to be a temporary solution.” Still, the realization that there was only a week left of this, a week left of Cole and Sprinkles and the world he’d stepped into, messed with him.

“That’ll be good for her.” Cole reached into a drawer and fished around. “Here. Let’s cut these out before they start to get stiff. We should get them in the oven.” He cleared his throat. Julian would have given anything to know what he was thinking in that moment, but any opportunity to ask was over.

*

AS COLE PULLED the dog treats out of the oven and moved them to a cooling rack, Julian realized their evening together was almost over. That was probably for the best. It was close to ten, and he and Sprinkles should be getting home. Still, he couldn’t help but feel a little melancholy about leaving. He liked spending time with Cole. “Okay, favorite, uh…favorite kind of music?” he threw out there.

“Is it ridiculous,” Cole asked, “if I say I bounce between cool jazz and ’90s rap most of the time?”

Julian snorted. He couldn’t get more disparate genres if he tried. “I guess it depends. Are we talking Naughty By Nature? The Beastie Boys? Eminem? Because my opinion of you depends on what exactly you mean by ’90s rap.” He leaned on the counter, taking in Cole’s face.

“I can get down with Naughty By Nature, sure. And the Beastie Boys is always a party. Eminem? Absolutely not. He had one or two songs that were maybe good, the ones everyone knows so when they come on, you can’t help but sing them? But anything on his albums is trash. Nas, though. Nas is a choice.”

Julian laughed again. “You definitely know more rap than I do, I’ll give you that.”

“What do you listen to, then?”

Julian stayed quiet for a moment, contemplating whether to share his music choices. Most of them were rather ubiquitous, the kind of music played on the radio stations in offices across the country, the ones that claimed they played the music from the “’80s, ’90s, and today” as if the today part didn’t cover a massive time span now, like the ’90s were still ten years ago instead of decades ago. But some people still held opinions about music. Opinions that could out him. He glanced at the magnet on the fridge for a second, then said, “Oh, you know. Classics. Queen…” he chewed his lip. Was he guiding Cole to a certain knowledge about himself? He was omitting a lot of bands he listened to, a lot of music he loved, and a lot of that was because in a way, he wanted to see if Cole caught on to who he really was, to see if Cole said anything. “And some newer stuff. Lady Gaga, you know. Things like that.”

Cole scraped at the pan, trying to get a stuck treat off it. “You know, she got her name from a Queen song,” he said quietly.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Julian added. “‘Radio Ga Ga.’” He offered a smile. So Cole knew something about the music he liked. He considered all the bands he’d left out, all the artists. He liked so many of them. Indie rock, acoustic pop, pre-9/11 country before it was all Guns and Beer and America. He had diverse taste.

But still. He wanted Cole to know.

“What’s your favorite Queen song?” Cole asked, looking up at him, the treats all off the baking sheet now. This was where the real truth came out. Because honestly, anyone who answered “Bohemian Rhapsody” was probably a surface-level Queen fan. Not that he’d gatekeep Queen, because truly, anyone could listen to Queen and “Bohemian Rhapsody” was a hit for a reason. But someone looking past that needed to look past it for a reason. They had songs with true depth, true heart to them.

Julian looked Cole in the eyes. “‘The Show Must Go On,’” he said, watching Cole’s face. “Brian May wrote that one, you know?” The song was heartbreaking, hard to listen to. He’d listened to it on repeat as a teenager, grappling with his sexuality and his feelings. “He wrote it for Freddie, who was struggling to perform when he was so sick.”

Cole cocked his head to one side. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. So Brian, he wrote the song, and he told Freddie he wasn’t sure if Freddie could sing it because his health was deteriorating so much from AIDS.” Julian choked up a little bit but tried to shove it down, taking a sip of water from the glass Cole had offered him earlier. “So Freddie looked at him and said, ‘I’ll fucking do it, darling,’ downed a shot of vodka, and recorded the song.”

For too long, there was silence in the kitchen. Julian felt strangely vulnerable. “You know, it would have been interesting if Freddie lived today. Now there’s so many treatments and so much prevention and stuff. We know more. He probably would have lived a really long life,” Cole said quietly. “At least, I’d like to think so.” He picked up a dog treat and broke it in half. “I think my favorite is ‘Don’t Stop Me Now,’ by the way. There’s this iconic fight scene in a zombie movie set to that song, and every time I hear it, I picture the scene.” He leaned down and handed half of the treat to Bruiser and half to Sprinkles, both eagerly waiting.

“Shaun of the Dead,” Julian commented. It was one of his favorites too.

“You want to watch it?” Cole asked.

Julian glanced at the clock on the stove behind Cole. It was nearly eleven at night. He should be getting home. Instead, he shrugged. “Why the heck not?”