Page 82 of Wedge

“Just waiting,” he replies.

My heart does a slow, quiet turn, watching Adrian with the children.

“You good?” Geoff asks, catching whatever’s on my face.

“Yeah.” I clear my throat, embarrassed at how thick my voice comes out. “Just. This. All of it. I didn’t grow up with anything like this.”

“I did. My parents were great. Then I lost them. Had to rebuild it.” Geoff wipes his hands on a towel, leaning against the counter beside me. “Took a while, but you can build it if you want it badly enough.”

I watch Adrian laugh at something Benjamin says, easy and unguarded, more himself in this loud, chaotic house than I think I’ve ever seen him anywhere else, and something settles into place inside me, quiet and certain, not urgent, not ready to be said out loud yet, but real all the same.

I want this. Not just Christmas, not just one good day borrowed from Ben’s family. This, permanently, mine to build with Adrian instead of just witnessing secondhand in somebody else’s living room.

“Dinner’s ready!” Geoff calls out, and the whole house surges toward the table at once, Jasmine shrieking about something, TJ and Caleb still arguing, Carolyn corralling both twins and Jasmine toward the bathroom to wash up before anyone’s allowed near the Wellington.

Adrian catches my eye across the chaos, grins, mouths you okay? like he can read exactly what’s sitting in my chest right now.

I nod, and mean it, more than I’ve meant almost anything.

Later, I’ll figure out how to say it. Tonight, I just sit beside him at a table crowded with people who’ve become something like family, and let myself want what I’m looking at.

Dinner’s mostly wound down by the time TJ brings it up, plates cleared, coffee going around, the kids finally settling into a sugar-crash sprawl in front of some cartoon in Geoff’s game room.

“You playing Hawaii?” TJ asks Adrian, leaning back in his chair. “First full-field event of the year.”

“Haven’t really thought about it yet,” Adrian says. “Everything’s still so new.”

“You should. It’s one of my favorites.” TJ grins, something genuinely fond in it. “Good way to start a rookie season. Warm weather, easy crowd, nobody’s grinding through mud in January.”

“We’re going either way,” Gavin adds. “Might as well overlap. Hitch a ride on the jet.”

Adrian looks at me, something hopeful creeping into his face. “Hawaii?”

“Your call,” I say. “But if you’re asking, hell yeah for Hawaii.” I’m already doing the math on notebooks and flight logistics in my head. “Beats whatever frozen muni we’d be scouting otherwise.”

“This is going to be so weird,” Gavin says, grinning at me over his coffee. “The two of us, caddying. Us. Remember when we were the ones everybody worried about screwing up our own lives? Now we’re out there carrying bags for a couple of twenty-somethings.”

“Speak for yourself,” I say. “You got four years on me. Enjoy being the old man of the group.”

Gavin puts a hand to his chest, wounded. “I’m not that much older than you. And Ben’s older.”

“I heard that,” Ben calls from somewhere in the house.

“You’re forty-two.”

“Thirty-eight isn’t exactly a spring chicken either, Stephen.”

TJ snorts into his coffee. “Old guys caddying for the young guys. It’s poetic, honestly. Very full circle.”

“I prefer ’seasoned,’” Gavin says.

“You prefer delusional,” TJ shoots back, and the table laughs, Adrian included, some easy warmth settling over the whole thing, the promise of Hawaii and a new season sitting bright and real between us.

The flight to Oahu feels like a reward just by itself, and stepping off Gavin’s plane is better. The air is soft and wet and warm, smelling of plumeria and jet fuel. The trade wind is tugging at our jackets. Frozen Denver sidewalks feel a lifetime away. By the time we check into the hotel, Adrian’s shoulders have already dropped an inch, some of the constant low hum of tension finally easing off him.

“This is insane,” he says, standing on the balcony that first evening, the city lights coming on below us, the light on the ocean going silver and then black. “I get to do this for a job now.”

“You get to do this for a job now,” I agree, coming up behind him, chin hooked over his shoulder. “Try not to let the view distract you on Thursday.”