Juniper Blue (NaNoWriMo2023; manxman)

Chapter 16

Gabriel

Before meeting Juniper, I'd never roasted chestnuts before. In fact, I never even thought it was a thing. I thought Nat King Cole made it up when he sang chestnuts roasting on an open fire or it was a thing people did decades ago. After schlepping out in the snow and freezing rain, I enjoyed a hot shower with Juniper, followed by a romantic evening in front of a roaring fire. The electricity went out just as we finished in the shower.

Juniper could make the best out of any situation. If I was back home in Brooklyn, I would have been annoyed because I'd have no access to my TV and my phone would eventually die, and then I'd be forced to spend time with my parents. My father wasn't much of a complainer, but my mother would never stop complaining until the electricity came back on.

But I wasn't at home. I was at Juniper's cabin, watching him roast chestnuts on the fire, listening to him talk about past Christmases and birthdays. He liked to remind me that he was born on New Year's Eve at 11:59.pm in this cabin. When he was ten, he asked for a cow for his birthday and was disappointed that he got a puppy instead. He wanted the cow for a pet. I would have been happy with a puppy. I always wanted a pet, but my father was allergic to dogs and cats. When I was eight, I got a goldfish that died after five days. l was devastated.

"Don't get me wrong; I loved Buckley," I said. I assumed Buckley was the name of his puppy. "But I really wanted a cow. I guess Halina is right and I'm a spoiled brat."

"You're not a spoiled brat," I said, kneeling behind him, massaging his shoulders. He always had a lot of tension in his shoulders.  He placed the pan of chestnuts on the hearth and turned to kiss me. He kissed me once.

"They're ready," he said, referring to the chestnuts. He also boiled milk over the fire and poured it into two mugs over packets of cocoa powder. Why would I want to be anywhere else than with this gorgeous man in his romantic cabin? It was like a dream.

I had a beautifully spacious apartment, a 'luxury apartment' according to the marketing ads, but there was something about Juniper's cabin. It wasn't just the fireplace or picturesque landscape. The cabin emanated warmth, with or without a roaring fire, and brought a sense of peace every time I entered, even when Juniper kept the temperature at sixty-two degrees.

I only slept in my own apartment two or three times a week. Most of the time I only had time to sleep before going to work, but it was better than sleeping alone.

But damn, we made up for it on my days off.

In Juniper's cabin, I slept soundly, more soundly than I'd slept for the past two years. With Juniper, I didn't have to worry about him stealing anything from me or nodding off while sitting on the toilet. He'd given me no reason to suspect he was anything but a genuinely kind, sane man with the biggest heart I'd ever seen.

Juniper's cabin looked like someone lived with him with the extra pair of boots in the entrance, another winter coat hanging on a hook by the door, and a second toothbrush, comb, and shaver in the bathroom. I was tidier than Juniper, so at least I stashed my clothes in neat piles in the corner of his room. There was no question about it that Juniper and I were in a relationship with no drama. He was someone I could see spending the rest of my life with. While historically I fell in love (or lust) easily, I never considered spending my life with any of them. Usually I couldn't see past next month.

Juniper was only twenty-five, about to turn twenty-six, so his priorities were slightly different than mine, but those were all assumptions I'd made. Come to think of it; at only three and a half months into this relationship, we hadn't reached a point where I was comfortable even talking about our future. That was one one way to scare him off. I needed to just learn how to enjoy the special moments Juniper and I shared together, and there were many of them. I assumed these moments would soon be far and few between, but I was also hopeful that we'd experience them indefinitely.