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The weight of the kitchen knife rocked in his hand as he worked through the vegetables. The knife cuts were all over the place since he had to hold things down with the back of his free hand, but it was better than nothing.

Mam’s head turned a fraction towards him as she fussed with the sauce on the stove and they fell into the rhythm of nearly a decade’s worth of dinners. When the table had been set and the news report had faded into some obscure song from about thirty years ago, Bren finally looked at her.

“Hey, Mam?”

She set down the roast next to the salad he’d finished off and wiped her hands on her apron.

“Yeah?”

“Can you help me with some vocab later? I’ve got a test coming up.”

She adjusted the silverware he’d set down without looking at it.

“Tá mo mháthair an-eolach agus álainn.” My mother is very knowledgeable and beautiful.

“Ok, but how do you say you’re pushing it, old woman?”

He caught the hurled roll before it hit him and tore a piece from it with the kind of grin he knew Mam was working hard to suppress.

“You’re gonna miss me when I’m off at college with A.J.”

“Oh, yeah, peace and quiet for the first time in eighteen years. How ever will I cope?”

She wasn’t sitting long enough to get comfortable when she made to stand again.

“Sit down, beautiful wise one,” Bren said, and shuffled to the forgotten glasses on the counter.

When he sat, he sipped without conscious thought. Maybe this was the trick then. Not six months till he got to be with his lad, but six months left with Mam before she put him in the hands of the next idiot daft enough to love him with their whole heart.

Could he get any sappier?

Oh well, he could just blame Arlo when he got here.

42

“I miss you so much.”

A.J. twisted in bed so the heavy layers of blankets wrapped around him in stubborn defiance of the winter wind that rattled his bedroom window. January had howled into February five days ago and the only way to tell was by looking at a calendar. Outside, it was just a uniform sea of grey and white, lovingly underscored by -40 windchill four times a week.

“More than the last time you told me?” Bren asked, his voice tinny beside A.J.’s ear.

“Yes, five-minutes-ago me didn’t know what he was talking about.”

The phone was muffled by the rustling of paper on Bren’s end, but A.J. knew there was a smile in the huff his boyfriend gave him. Saturday made the most sense for their weekly phone call, and even though he was keeping up with his assignments every day, Bren was still working on something in the background most of the time.

“I should let you go. You’ve got that big test on Monday, right?” A.J. asked, realizing it was almost midnight in Ireland.

“You’d really leave your man alone with all these equations?” The sound of a thick book being closed and the creak of springs, then Bren’s voice again, more relaxed than before. “You’re not a distraction, Arlo.”

A.J. rolled on his side and tried to imagine Bren’s arms wrapped around him.

Like they had been a month ago.

“And putting your books away helps you study because . . . ?”

“Fine, you’re a distraction. But I really need one.”

There was more rustling on the other end, and the muffled strains of what A.J. thought was A Case of You by Joni Mitchell.