Page 38 of The Spare
The next few weeks passed like seconds. Before I knew it, it was Christmas.
Christmas was one of the few holidays we didn’t spend with the Suttons until after their parents passed. After that, we’d visit on the day of. The visits turned into the four of us having our own sort of holiday. My parents grew accustomed to it and never expected to see us on the actual day.
With Marcus gone the last two years, Henry moped and worked through the holiday, and Xander and I did our own thing. This year I planned to do the same, but in an attempt to regain some semblance of normalcy, I thought Henry would join if I asked, and I was sure Marcus would too. He was being extra accommodating to help placate some of the wounds Xander sustained in his absence.
My place was minimally decorated, with a tree in the corner dressed in some lights and ornaments, a wreath on the door, and some stockings pinned onto the mantel. I wasn’t big on decorating.
Henry arrived an hour or so before Marcus and asked every few minutes how he could help, even though Xander and I were seated comfortably on the large couch day drinking and clearly doing nothing.
“Does he need a kidney?” Xander whispered when Henry went to the bathroom after spending ten minutes telling me how proud he was of me.
Before I could answer, we heard the door open and close and the lock click. Xander and I turned to see Marcus walking in with a familiar pastry box wrapped with kitchen twine.
I jumped up and ran to him, opening it to see my favorite treat. Jalebi, from a place close to his office. Before he left, he’d occasionally bring me some. It became mandatory around the holidays.
“I remembered,” he said, as if reading my mind. My heart skipped.
“Did you break Henry?” Xander looked back to his brother while I took the package from Marcus, rewarding him with a quick hug before going to the kitchen island to open it. “He’s been kissing Sloan’s ass all day.”
“I may have overcorrected.” Marcus’s wry smile made me look away. I needed to rein it in. He took my seat on the couch next to Xander. I handed him a glass of wine and nestled into a new corner spot facing the Sutton brothers, jalebi in hand. “I meant well, sorry.”
“It's better than all the moping around he did last year.” Xander laughed as Henry reentered the room.
“Not too mopey to kick your ass at FIFA.” Henry plopped down on the armchair across from us.
“It was a fluke. Xbox is upstairs if you want proof.” Xander reminded him, referring to one of the guest rooms he had claimed as his own.
“Since when do you play FIFA?” Marcus looked mildly perturbed that Henry and Xander had forged a friendship in his absence. It was odd, but nice. They would occasionally get drinks after work.
“Since you ditched me for two years, I realized your brother was more fun than you.”
Xander and Henry exchanged looks and raced upstairs.
That left Marcus and me on the couch.
“If it makes you feel better, your brotherismore fun than you are,” I teased, scooting closer to him. Something about how he looked at me in that moment drew me in and made me nervous at the same time. “But you brought jalebi, so I won’t ditch you.”
“How kind of you.” Marcus’s gaze softened, and a few moments passed. “How do boyfriends feel about Xander being here so often?”
I blinked a few times in surprise. We never really talked about our relationships. Everything I knew about his relationships was secondhand from Henry or Xander. Not that he ever had any. His dating history was a list of conquests, not relationships.
“Nobody would ask that question if Xander and I were both women.” I reminded.
“Fair enough,” he conceded. “So, they’re all fine with it?”
I pulled my legs off the floor, folded them in front of me, and faced him. “They don’t love it,” I admitted after a long pause, and shifted a bit. The fact was most of the guys I dated hated it. They were all threatened by Xander, and I guess I should have been more cognizant of that. I always felt it shouldn’t be my job to fix their self-esteem. “But Xander is a part of the deal. I’m not going to pretend he’s not a huge part of my life. If they can’t handle that, that’s not my problem.”
His mouth quirked. “Their loss.”
“Were you seeing anyone while hiding out from your real life?” I asked. If he was going to ask me about my personal life, then his was fair game. “I’m sorry, I meant working.”
“Are we playing twenty questions? Because I know better than to play any sort of game with you,” he teased.
“I answered yours.”
He paused. “I wasn’t seeing anyone seriously.”
“What does that mean?” I knew what it meant. I wasn’t a nun. A part of me wanted to hear him say it. Maybe then I’d be shaken out of the delusion my mind kept drifting to.
