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“Well, I can’t wrap this in front of you. It would’ve been embarrassing enough to show up with it all mangled.” He grabbed the scissors and cut all the way across the paper. “Tape there, please.”
She did what he asked, and he folded in the corner. It didn’t cover all of the box, and Tag had no idea how to fix it. Opal relieved him of the roll of paper and the scissors and said, “Let me.”
A sigh of relief left his mouth. “I’ll turn it when you need me to,” he said. “I’m pretty sure it weighs more than a loaf of bread.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nice try.” He gave her a smile, glad when the corners of her mouth twitched too. So maybe they could somehow find their way back to being friends again. “Coffee? Tea?”
“Coffee would be great,” she said. She worked on covering the present with the neon paper while he measured grounds and set the coffee to brew. “I need help turning.”
Tag faced her and walked her way. He could’ve stayed over on the side of the table he’d stood on earlier, but instead, he crowded in next to her. Opal held her ground, her eyes locked on his and refusing to leave.
He could turn the box without looking at it, but he tore his gaze from hers to roll it onto its other side.
“Hmm, I didn’t hear anything clink or clank,” Opal said.
“Why did you come here?” he asked.
She put the roll of pink paper against his chest and edged him back. “I don’t know. I…just showed up.”
“Sounds mysterious.”
“Let me finish the present.”
He grinned at her, his heartbeat fluttering up into his throat, tickling it. “Cream? Sugar?”
“Both,” Opal said, and Tag finally fell away from her.
He got out the cream and sugar and set them on the counter in his cabin, sudden panic pulling through him at the cleanliness of the place. Oh, and that fact that he’d thought the person knocking on his door would’ve been none other than Opal’s older brother, Mike.
His boss and his best friend.
He swallowed and got down three coffee mugs, because Mike was coming over whether Tag wanted him to or not. Tag would have to go back out and do the evening feeding before the party, but Mike had wanted all of Opal’s gifts in the house beforehand. Since he knew how big Opal’s gift was, and how many people were coming, they’d devised a plan to have it there first.
“I need another turn,” she said, and Tag wondered how long he’d lost himself inside his own mind.
He turned the box one last time for Opal, the house starting to fill with the scent of coffee. He picked up the tape this time and helped her finish the package, and then he took the nearly empty roll and the scissors from her. “Thank you.”
He’d just turned around when Opal asked, “Tag, would you maybe want to go to dinner with me?”
Tag’s ears had malfunctioned. Just one hundred percent gone into defect mode, rearranging the words she’d said into what he wanted to hear. Because his ears no longer worked, he lost his equilibrium, and he flung out a hand to catch himself against the counter.
Unfortunately, that hand held the scissors, and they went skidding across the surface—right into the jug of cream. He watched in horror as it wobbled, tipped, and fell.
At the same time, his other palm jammed into the counter, smashing the roll of wrapping paper. To top it off, he’d just spun back to Opal when someone knocked on the door.
Mike entered a moment later, calling, “It’s just me, Tag.”
Tag’s pulse pinballed through his body, first shooting to his scalp, and then getting pinged down to his gut, then shooting through all twenty-four of his ribs. He tore his gaze from Opal to focus on her brother, noting that Mike had frozen too.
“Are you trying to get a sneak peek at your birthday present?” Mike strode forward and picked up the enormous pink box that took up almost the whole dining room table. “Opal, it’s a surprise.” He frowned at his sister, who gave him his attitude right back.
“I wasn’t trying to get a sneak peek at anything.” She swallowed, the only sign of nerves Tag could see in her, and he had no idea if that belonged to him or to her brother. Or to having both of them in the same space at the same time.
“I made coffee,” he said, regaining his composure.
“Great,” Mike said. “West has been a beast today.”
