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Worked for me.

So did the view of the food Reese had prepared. Maybe a little heavy on the vegetables—from slices of zucchini and corn to mushrooms and tomatoes. Onions too, I noticed. And I bet that was chorizo.

“Is that enough for all of us?” I jerked my chin at the platter.

He gave me a strange look. “It’s for the appetizer.”

Oh. “We’re not eating when they get here?”

“Yeah. The appetizer. The brisket’s gonna spend another—” he checked his watch “—hour and forty-five minutes restin’ in the oven.”

What the⁠—

“I promise it’ll be worth it.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “And don’t worry. You get to eat as soon as they get here, almost.”

The almost left shit up in the air. Uncool.

When Reese and I dared to venture back inside, Shay had filled the dining room table with more gifts than I could count. Everything was wrapped. I wasn’t exaggerating when I estimated it was around thirty gifts.

“Boy, you’ve fuckin’ lost it,” Reese said in shock. “Tell us you’re organizin’ a gift-givin’ thing for children in Africa or somethin’.”

Shay merely grinned and shook his head, placing one last gift on top of another before wrestling a bunch of shopping bags into a garbage bag. “Forty-two gifts—but you have to share them.”

Sweet fucking Jesus.

“Most of them are just extras, though,” he went on. “I’ve had your main presents prepared for weeks.”

Was that another rule? Main gifts and extra gifts?

I supposed it was kinda like Christmas, then. But forty-two was fucking insane.

“I wanted this year to be special.” The boy smiled sheepishly, sort of melting my heart in the process. How the fuck did we deserve him? “Come on, start opening the gifts now. Some of the blue ones need to be refrigerated.”

Oh?

We walked closer as if a magnet were drawing us in, and then we were right there at the big table, just staring at the boxes. About half of them looked like they’d been wrapped by salespeople, and those blue ones. Metallic blue wrapping paper. So, that was food?

“I bought cake too, by the way,” Shay added. “I noticed you didn’t make plans for dessert, so yeah.”

I shook my head, dazed.

“Hold on. Lemme just…” Reese pulled out his phone and took a picture of the table. “No one will believe us without evidence.”

Smart thinking.

Shay chuckled and picked up a heavy-looking box and one tiny envelope.

“Consider these one part of the main gifts,” he grunted.

Reese hurriedly grabbed the heavy box from him and set it down on the edge of the table where we stood.

“Go on,” Shay coaxed. “I wanted you to open everything before Danny and Emerson arrive.”

We better step on it, in other words. They would be here in about twenty minutes.

Reese got started on the big box, and I accepted the envelope.

“These two set the theme,” Shay said.