Oakley woke to a weather alert on his phone, informing him that they were soon going to get dumped with a whole lot of snow. That was way earlier than expected.
He rolled out of bed and went to the bathroom, then pulled on clean clothes and tried to put his hair in some sort of order. His phone said it was about a quarter to noon. Plenty of day left to run errands, which he should probably do before the weather made it impossible.
Rolling his neck to work out some kinks, Oakley headed back downstairs, where he found the place unusually busy for that time of day. Most of their work was for offices and such; they didn't get many walk-ins past the morning rush for muffins.
Though he wanted to step in and see how things were going, the afternoons were all Arden's, and Oakley was more than happy to trust him to it. Instead, he managed to hurry on by and slip out the front door.
He slid into the front seat of his car with a sigh and got it started, giving the heater a few minutes to warm up while he sorted out where he was going and what he needed to buy. Most of his shopping would be at the grocery store, then he just needed to get some things for the apartment to make it a bit more livable. After six years, it seemed silly to keep it so barren and sad.
Once his lists were made and his car toasty warm, Oakley headed out, driving slow and careful on the slippery roads. Already he could see cars mired and crunched, frazzled people and harried police.
Maybe running errands hadn't been his wisest recourse. Too late now.
The radio station his car was set to started to fritz in and out, and he was stuck behind three cars, all of them waiting for an intersection to clear from where a flashy Porsche SUV had slid into a Land Rover and were jamming everything up by bickering instead of moving their cars first.
Oakley sighed again and fiddled with the radio, until it finally cooperated on a news station. Well, couldn't hurt to hear the weather report whenever it popped up.
Unfortunately, the next item on the jockey's list, as he wrapped up a story about the local frost fair that'd happened a few days ago, was about something far less pleasant.
A couple years ago, a raccoon shifter had assaulted some duck shifters, whose mother was a central figure in the drive to improving adoption processes and options for shifters. Her goal, along with those of her sons, was to enable shifters to adopt outside their species. A snake shifter had recently adopted wolf cubs after a whole crazy thing with their mother leaving them to die and trying to frame the snake, and it had caused huge ripples in the shifter world. Shaken things up good.
Then Oakley's stupid-ass cousin had, with family backing—family funding—gone to attack the ducks in the hopes of getting the mother to back out of the whole thing, ensure her side of the argument failed and shifter life resumed status quo.
Now everyone hated raccoons more than ever, and Oakley couldn't entirely blame them, not when raccoons were such staunch fans of keeping to the old ways. He wasn't, and he wanted no part of his family's BS. He hadn't talked to them since the incident had happened and did his damnedest to stay as far away from them, literally and figuratively, as possible.
He hated them so much. He'd wanted kids, and had hoped to adopt someday, since it seemed increasingly unlikely he'd ever have a family the more traditional way. Now he wouldn't even be able to adopt raccoon babies, let alone outside his species, because his family was marked with approximately two hundred red flags.
On the radio, the jockey and some companion in the studio or something, discussed how the raccoon responsible for the attack was being sentenced, his trial having found him basically guilty as hell.
Oakley turned the radio off and tried to think about something else. If he kept thinking about his stupid family, he'd put himself in a bad mood, and he didn't want that, especially given errands were strenuous enough when he was in a good mood.
He pulled into the grocery store parking lot, unsurprised to see it packed. Sighing, he managed to find a spot all the way in the back, sandwiched between two towering pick-ups, and hiked across the lot to the store.
Securing a cart with a squeaky, wobbly wheel, he pulled out his list and set to work.
Unfortunately, the thing about a small town was that everybody knew everybody, and everybody had to chat when they saw him. They all started with the same questions:
How about this weather?
Was he going to be open during the storm?
How was he getting on?
After that the questions varied, from what sort of cupcakes he'd made lately, to was the business doing well, to not remotely subtle questions about Arden, who was counted a catch around town by all the young folk and several of the older.
A trip that should have taken him twenty minutes, maybe forty at most with the crazy lines, wound up taking nearly two hours. By the time he escaped, he was ready to go back to bed and stay there through the rest of winter.
He was loading groceries in his car when he heard his name called yet again. Oakley nearly groaned aloud and was on the verge of pretending not to hear it when he registered the voice. He turned, and sure enough, Yamada was walking toward him, dressed in regular clothes and prettier than ever. God, Oakley could eat him like ice cream.
"Braving the store, huh? How long did it take you to escape?"
"Hours," Oakley said with a groan. "You?"
"Oh, haven't started yet," Yamada said with a grin. "I'm using you as a delay tactic, though I would have said hey anyway. Drove by your shop earlier on my way back to the station, saw it was crazy busy. Did you put something in your cupcakes today that I need to be concerned about?" He winked.
"If there's a secret ingredient, my staff had the sense not to tell me about it," Oakley said with a laugh. "I have no idea what it's about. I didn't linger to ask questions. Figured if I needed to know, Arden would tell me."
Yamada brightened ever so slightly at the mention of Arden. "Good guy. He always does my yard when he does his, won't let me pay him. I usually do anyway, just all stealth."
Oakley blinked at this newfound knowledge. "How did I never know you guys are neighbors?"
"Neighbors-ish. He lives a few houses down, but we're always saying hey and stuff when our paths cross. Well, since we met in your shop. Is he staying with you during the storm? He mentioned something about it, but didn't sound sure."
"He must be planning to talk to me tomorrow, or when I go to help with the money at close," Oakley replied. Just how much had he missed while he was napping? Good grief.
Yamada laughed. "Whoops, guess I spilled that. Don't tell him. He's been worried about you. Good guy." He clapped Oakley on the shoulder. "I should probably get to shopping before it gets any crazier."
"I think the entire town is in there, so hopefully it can't get much worse."
"Oh, I imagine there'll be plenty of fights for me to break up," Yamada said with a sigh. "I'll see you later, Oakley. Take care of yourself!"
"You do the same."
Then he was gone, leaving Oakley slightly bereft as always. But now with an unhappy squirm in his gut. Yamada liked Arden? Was it mutual? Why hadn't they done anything?
Figured the two guys he was crushing on wanted each other.
Sighing loud and long, Oakley slid into his car and headed out, bound for the Target at the far end of town to pick up some things for his apartment. Did Arden really want to stay with him? Why? He'd never bothered to stay over during blizzards before. Heck, last year he'd walked through the miserable snow to help Oakley out and declined when Oakley suggested he sleep upstairs instead of trudging back home.
What had changed?
Parking in the very back of the lot again, Oakley slammed the door shut, huddled deeper into his jacket—was it just him or had it suddenly gotten colder?—and made his careful way through ice and slush to the store.
He'd only just gotten a cart and started heading for home goods when someone called his name. Oakley stifled a groan and stopped, turned and watched as Tadeo walked toward him. He could see Tadeo's sister and one of his cousins back by the coffee shop at the front of the store, so they must have spied him when he walked in. Since when did they care?
"I already told you no," Oakley hissed as Tadeo reached him, looking around to make certain there was nobody in ear shot who would start listening in for the juicy gossip.
Instead of a smarmy smile or being pushy, Tadeo's face filled with a sad sort of urgency. "Look, I understand why you're mad at me. I deserve it. But I promise there's more to what I did than it seems."
"Oh?" Oakley asked with a glare. "Why should I care?" He dropped his voice and pasted on a smile as he saw Mr. Whittleby slowly walk by. "I'm busy, Tadeo."
"Please, just have dinner with me. I promise it'll be worth it, one way or another."
Oakley rubbed the bridge of his nose, wishing that he'd just decided to take the night off or something. "Look, I'll think about it, all right? But right now I have stuff to do, and I'm already hours behind because people keep stopping me to talk."
"You still have my card?"
Oakley still had his number in his phone, but he'd rather go lay down in traffic during rush hour than ever admit that. "Yes. Now please, I'd like to get on with my day, and your family is scowling at us something fierce."
For a single moment, there and gone before Oakley could fully grasp it, something very much like hatred flickered across Tadeo's face. Well, his sister and cousin were massively annoying. He hadn't realized Tadeo agreed, though. "Yeah," Tadeo said with a sigh. "I'll talk to you later. Take care, Oaks."
Then he was gone, leaving Oakley sad all over again at the way their friendship had vanished—had apparently never been. He turned back to his cart, pulled out his list, and set to work.
Two hours and three hundred dollars later, he was hauling everything back to the shop, going around back and using the outside door to the apartment to carry all his things inside. It took him four trips, and by the time he was done he was ready for another nap.
Instead, he slipped into the kitchen to steal coffee and a couple of muffins, saying a brief hello to busy employees before heading back upstairs.
Wolfing down the food and coffee, he then set to work turning the barren apartment into a more respectable living space, throwing out most of the work crap and shuttling the rest of it downstairs—boy was he getting his stair counts in today—to store somewhere else.
By the time he was satisfied with his progress, dark had fallen, and he was starving. Yawning, he headed downstairs yet again to move his car—and drew up short as he saw that guy in the hoodie from before.
This time, though, he was wearing an actual coat and a toboggan that looked homemade, rather than mass-produced. It was in all shades of green, and brought out the sharp green of the man's eyes. He had a face that was all sharp angles, stark and beautiful, with brown skin that spoke of Polynesian roots, or something along those lines.
Who was he? Oakley wouldn't go so far as to say he knew everybody in town, but everyone was usually familiar, or easily placed just by the company they were with or something they said. This man, though, he didn't recognize. He wasn't a customer, not somebody he occasionally saw while about town. They weren't a tourist town, and if he was someone's out-of-town friend, he was unlikely to be strolling up and down alleyways in the business district. Was he human? Shifter? Despite the arrogant assertion of some shifters, it was actually impossible to tell most of the time.
The man caught him looking and gave a stiff, but still pretty smile, and pulled up the hood of his coat as he passed by.
Oakley shrugged and got into his car, and drove it around to the front of the shop, parking in one of the out of the way spots that nobody else ever used. Then he headed inside and back up to the apartment, giving a quick wave to Arden, who was dealing with Mrs. Bartley and her obnoxious children.
Upstairs, he beamed at his efforts. The living room wasn't magazine ready, but it was relatively cozy now, with blankets and pillows to liven up the old furniture that had come with the place, a little bookcase for his poor, neglected books, even some knick-knacks for the bedraggled coffee table.
It wasn't as nice as his actual house, but it would do for a temporary one.
Bustling off into the bedroom, he hopped into the shower and cleaned all the muck and grime of the day. When he was squeaky clean, he pulled on jeans, a t-shirt, and a fluffy cardigan in mottled gray and black that he'd loved the moment he saw it, and the fact it had come from the women's department hadn't stopped him. The price tag almost had, but thankfully it had wound up being on sale.
All refreshed and momentarily awake again thanks to the shower, he headed downstairs to see how the day had gone. Normally they closed at three, so it was odd they'd still been open at five. But he trusted Arden with his store the way he trusted absolutely no one else, so if he'd kept the store open two extra hours there must have been good reason.
He found Arden in the front of the shop, sitting where he'd pushed two of the little tables together, going over the day's paperwork: preparing orders for Oakley to tackle in the morning, going over that day's orders to verify everything was taken care of, see what still needed to be paid, all myriad other little details that came with running a store. Oakley had always been rather overwhelmed by it all, but Arden did it with the ease of someone enjoying themselves.
"Seems like we had an unusually busy day," Oakley said as he poured himself a cup of coffee and joined Arden at the table, see what he was in for in the morning before he went to the back to deal with the money. "Did you even get to go home today?" Usually Arden worked until three or so, then came back in the evening to help with the money and organizing the next day's orders.
"I took a nap in your office," Arden said with a shrug. "Apparently there's rumors that you're being bought out—some thought you had been bought out—so everyone came clamoring for the gossip and most of them got conned into buying cupcakes. Wound up with five extra orders for you in the morning, you're welcome and my apologies."
Oakley laughed and shuffled through the stack of orders as Arden held them out. "Do they really think all these parties are going to happen with the weather as bad as it is?"
"Nothing and nobody stops the Meijer Pond Birthday Party Competition," Arden said with a snort. "Not even God, let alone weather. What would all the parents around here have to do if they weren't trying to one up each other? Mrs. Bartley was telling me all about how the Combers are throwing a mermaid-themed party for their children, complete with real mermaids. Why you'd want a bazillion children at a pond, with women dressed up as mermaids and all that sugar is beyond me, but I'm not a parent, so what do I know."
"Do you want to be?"
Arden looked up from the numbers he was calculating and jotting down. "Huh? Oh, a parent? Sure, once I'm more than a hermetic bachelor who lives on cupcakes and torrid gossip. Did you hear what the Torvalds did to their house? They painted it blue. Like robin's egg blue. The city is apparently having a hernia over it. There's going to be strongly worded letters, town meetings, the whole shebang."
"Finish the numbers; we can gossip later, you dork."
Grinning, looking briefly at him over the rims of his glasses, Arden then ducked back to his work.
Oakley went back to count the money, which never took him long after years of practice. After doing it for so long, he knew how many of a given denomination was needed for each clip or band; that was loads faster than counting by fives and tens and so forth. It also helped that Arden kept a strict watch on the cash throughout the day and was nigh religious about dropping it periodically. Then he went back to the front and looked over his cupcake orders. Birthday cake, German chocolate, Piña Colada, chocolate with hazelnut, pecan with bourbon cream, and strawberry cheesecake with chocolate frosting. "Why in the world do they want milk chocolate frosting on a strawberry cheesecake cupcake? Seems a little much, even given how ridiculous my cupcakes can get."
"I just fill out the forms; I don't ask questions. I like gossip, not the deep and meaningful reasons people want their precious cupcakes."
Oakley laughed and jotted a few notes to his morning self, then set the orders aside and looked at the numbers Arden was crunching. It was hard to focus with hunger gnawing so badly. He really didn't feel like cheap take out or attempting to cook. That left going out.
The invitation from Tadeo, and the apparent rumors about him selling the shop, spun through his mind.
Or, another part of his mind whispered, he could ask Arden to dinner. They'd had dinner together before, but always quick jaunts to the bar down the road, or the diner a block over, where they spent more time falling asleep in their food than anything else. He'd never done anything as explicit as would you like to join me for dinner?
His heart pounded at the idea, even as his brain tried to tell him not to be stupid.