Page 56 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

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RAFE

I've never bought a kid a Christmas present in my adult life, and the toy aisle in Hartwell knows it the second I walk in. One aisle, floor to ceiling, an entire county's worth of childhood crammed into forty feet of shelving, and I stand at the end of it with a cart and no plan, more lost than I've felt in a long while.

"You look like you're about to breach a room," Gunny says, ambling up beside me with his own cart already half full of things I didn't see him pick up.

"I've got zero actionable intel on what an eight-year-old wants."

"Nobody does. That's the secret nobody tells you. You just buy things and hope." He nods at the shelf in front of me, packed with everything from board games to a suspicious number of slime kits. "What's the mission brief?"

"Eli likes taking things apart to see how they work. Josie likes making things. That's the entire intelligence file I've got."

"That's more than most people start with." Gunny grabs a box off the shelf without even reading it and drops it in my cart. "There. Metal detector. Kid who likes taking things apart is going to lose his mind over a machine that finds hidden objects for a living."

I pick it up, read the box twice, and put it in the cart properly instead of loose. "Huh. That's actually good."

"I have my moments." He's already three steps down the aisle, scanning shelves with the focused efficiency of a man who's apparently done this before. "Art stuff's two aisles over. Come on."

On the way over we pass a shelf of plastic soldiers and miniature Humvees, and I stop half a second longer than I mean to, staring down at a peg of tiny green figures frozen mid-charge, rifles raised, nothing about them close enough to real to mean anything, and yet enough to catch me sideways for a second anyway. Gunny doesn't say anything, just waits until I move on, the kind of quiet that isn't awkward so much as familiar, a man who's learned exactly which of my pauses don't need filling.

The art aisle turns out to be smaller than I expected and somehow still capable of destroying my confidence completely, colored pencils and paint sets and sketchbooks in six different sizes lined up like a dare. I stand there running the numbers the way I'd run supply requisitions, trying to figure out the minimum viable purchase that won't leave her disappointed on the one morning a year disappointment isn't allowed.

"Get all of it," Gunny says, watching me deliberate.

"All of it?"

"You're doing the thing where you're trying to guess exactly right. You can't. Nobody can. Buy the pencils, the paints, the good sketchbook, the bad sketchbook, the case to put it all in. More is safer than wrong." He starts loading my cart himself, not waiting for permission, stacking boxes with the same brisk efficiency he brings to inventory day. "Kid's not going to be upset you got her too much art stuff, Rafe. That's not a failure mode that exists."

"This feels like overcorrecting."

"Overcorrecting for what? You've got exactly one shot at this and you're worried about excess. Buy the excess." He drops a case of watercolors on top of the pile, and the cart's getting genuinely heavy now, wheels squeaking under the weight of an entire art supply store's inventory. "You want to know the actual mistake people make with kids at Christmas? Thinking small because they're scared of getting it wrong. Nobody remembers getting too much. Everybody remembers the year it felt like nobody tried."

I don't have a comeback for that, mostly because he's right, and we finish the aisle with a cart that looks less like a Christmas run and more like we're restocking an actual store, and by the time we hit the register the woman ringing us up gives Gunny a look somewhere between amused and concerned.

"Grandkids?" she asks.

"Not exactly," Gunny says, and doesn't elaborate, and I don't either, because explaining the actual shape of what Jenna's kids are to me would take longer than either of us has standing at a register in Hartwell three days before Christmas.

We load the truck in comfortable quiet, breath fogging in the cold, and Gunny leans against the tailgate once the last bag's in, studying me with the particular patience he saves for conversations he's decided need to happen.

"You didn't embarrass yourself in there," he says. "Not bad, for a man who's never done this."

"I had help."

"You had a foreman. There's a difference."

"Foreman doesn't usually pick out an entire store's worth of watercolors without being asked."

"Foreman also isn't the one who has to carry it all inside without waking anybody up. That part's still you." He zips his jacket up against the wind. "How's the other thing coming?"

He doesn't say which other thing, and he doesn't need to. There's only ever one other thing between us this time of year.

"Finalizing it tonight," I say. "Bigger than usual this time."

"How much bigger?"

"Enough that Denise is going to ask me twice if I'm sure before she processes it." I climb into the driver's seat, and Gunny gets in beside me without pushing further, which is its own kind of mercy. "It felt right this year. Don't ask me why."