Back home, Kade mixes up the first batch of lemonade—heating water in the microwave, dissolving sugar. Felix paints thick black gouache onto the placards: Lemonade: $1. Get yours now!
He wants to say, This would work better if I have a huge baby bump. People would stop by to chat and buy drinks, but he swallows that, too. Instead, Felix cuts the larger placards into two, drawing arrows under the words “Lemonade for sale”.
At the kitchen counter, Kade squeezes the lemon halves onto a glass juicer. Light glints off the trickling juice, and Kade’s biceps bulge, stretching the sleeves of his shirt. Felix stares. He can’t help it, when his alpha is more handsome than anyone else. Kade glances up, meeting his eyes.
Felix gulps. “I finished the signs,” he says. “Give me a couple minutes, and I’ll get the things for the stand.”
Kade’s still watching him as he leaves the kitchen. Felix hurries through the house, his pulse thudding in his ears. He finds two rickety folding chairs and a slim rectangular table, hefting them to the front door. Then, he gathers up an easel, some brushes, and his watercolors.
It’s almost noon by the time they’re ready to head out. Kade emerges from the kitchen with a jug of lemonade and a box of ice cubes. “Ready to go?”
“I am.”
Kade stacks the chairs, placards, and easel onto the table. Felix holds the lemonade and ice cubes, cups and straws tucked into the painting supplies bag. Together, they make their way to a sidewalk corner one block down from a busy street. While Felix sets up the lemonade stand with the biggest, most colorful poster, Kade fastens the smaller signboards a block away, so passers-by would notice them and wander over.
The first few sales happen slowly: people who happen to drive by, and neighbors strolling along with their dogs. While they wait, Felix prepares his easel.
“Didn’t think you were going to paint,” Kade says, leaning back in his chair.
Felix scuffs the grassy boulevard under his shoe. “Figured I’d do something while we wait. Or, you know, draw some attention to my paintings. I work better this way.”
Kade falls silent. Felix feels the light touch of his gaze as he sketches the street with a pencil, light lines that he’ll erase later. He daubs water onto cyan paint, then fills the sky in with broad strokes of his brush. The sidewalk gets an ivory coat, the asphalt a gunmetal gray.
Through it all, Kade watches him. This feels familiar, too, Kade’s unassuming attention on him as he works in silence. Felix almost wonders if he should speak, but Kade doesn’t. So he keeps his mouth shut, and paints.
After a while, Kade says, “You got better with painting.”
A lump rises in Felix’s throat. He swallows and touches his brush tip to paper, watching as grass-green pigments bloom through white fiber. “Really?”
“Yeah. More detail. Or maybe you changed your style.” Kade shrugs, straightening the stacks of cups on the table. His cheeks darken, though, and Felix can’t look away.
Their next customer is a short girl with ponytails, six years old, reaching out with a handful of coins. Kade nods, pulling a blue plastic cup from a stack, before filling it with lemonade. While she waits, her mother wanders over to Felix, a smile on her face. “That’s beautiful,” she says. “You replicate the scenery so well.”
Felix beams, handing her a postcard with his name and number on it. “Thanks! I do landscapes and custom portraits, if you find that you ever need a gift.”
Mother and daughter thank them as they leave, both smelling like lilies, and the girl turns back to look at Felix’s painting.
“You should be a little more friendly with children,” Felix says to Kade. “They like nice people.”
Kade raises his eyebrows. “I’m not nice enough?”
“I guess you are. But you need to smile at them, you know? Show them you’re harmless.” And at that, Felix begins to laugh, because Kade is the opposite of harmless. Kade has broken arms and snapped fingers, and that had been when they were ten, surrounded by bullies at the school playground.
I’ll protect you, Kade had whispered. Felix swallows, swirling his paintbrush in its water glass.
“Sure,” Kade says, but he narrows his eyes. “I’m not the one kids like.”
Felix can’t help touching his abdomen. You’ll have to smile, or you’ll make our child cry. He fans the painting to help the background colors dry. “We’re running a business today, Kade. We have to be nice.”
Kade snorts. “Why don’t you sell the lemonade, then? Looks like I’m the one doing all the work here.”
“I’m supervising.” Felix laughs.
And Kade just stares, his eyes dark. If their separation didn’t stand between them, Felix would have thought Kade was hungry. He turns back to the painting, and yelps when Kade smacks him lightly on the back of his thigh. “I should be supervising,” Kade says. “This was your idea.”
“You hit me,” Felix says, but he smiling, glad that this part of their past has returned. That Kade can relax enough to touch him in public, that Kade even wants to touch him at all, without any expectations of sex.
“You were asking for it,” Kade says, smirking. Felix wriggles, taunting him. Kade’s gaze flashes then, his fingers twitching, a second away from grabbing Felix, or slapping him on the ass. Felix gulps. He wants Kade to grab him and stroke him.
He turns to his painting instead, touching a finger to drying paper. “No, I wasn’t,” he says. “You volunteered to sit at the stand.”
He almost hears Kade rolling his eyes. Felix grins. He daubs a darker brown along the arcing lines of trees, filling in wooden lampposts and door lintels, before rinsing his brush.
An alpha-omega couple jogs by next—two women with neon headbands and sports bras—and smile as they buy a cup of lemonade to share. They spend a minute admiring Felix’s painting, smelling like sandalwood and rose, before heading down the quieter end of the
