said while I brushed past his dark eyelashes with my finger.

“It doesn’t have to be like that Michael,” he said.

“No it doesn’t,” I admitted. Then tears started to well up from his eyes too. They were trickling down

his face, although he didn’t make a sound. “I hate this haircut too,” he tried with a bitter laugh. “I must

have been out of my mind cutting it like this.”

“At least you’ve got a nicely shaped head,” I tried to say comfortingly. He buried himself in my arm. I

held him so tight that it must have been hard for him to breathe. I kissed the top of his head and said: “I

hope it grows back soon.”

27. Keeping up appearances

In hindsight, that day with the haircut drama was the first time that Brad started to suspect that

something was going on between us. He’d walked outside too to see if we weren’t killing each other and

found us hugging intensely in stead. I saw him throw me a weird glance when we went inside again.

“So did you kiss and make up again?” one of the twins snickered. I laughed.

“Yeah we’re good again.” I punched David on the shoulder playfully. He smiled at me.

“Good,” said Jack and Justin at the same time. “Now that you’re friends again, can you help us with

some math homework, it really sucks.”

“You mean you suck at math,” I laughed and sat down with them to look at their assignment.

The atmosphere in the house had cleared up again and both David and me stayed at our parents’ house

later than usual.

At work we tried to keep a friendly distance from each other, it was still too easy to get in to a fight.

But at least David was bringing me coffee again and that was a definite sign that he’d forgiven me.

Brad and I were working on a case together quite intensely. We knew each other pretty well by now

and I felt like he was not just a colleague or even my brother-in-law but also a friend.

“Christine is kind of worried sometimes about you and David,” he told me one evening when we were

buried neck-deep in papers.

“What do you mean?” I asked as casually as possible.

“There’s so much fighting between you, she just doesn’t get it.” He looked at me and scraped his throat.

“Honestly, I don’t get it either. I mean David was so excited for you to come home and now that you are

back, you’re constantly at each other’s throats.”

“It’s complicated,” I said in a tone suggesting the subject had to be abandoned and we left it at that for

the time being.

Juliette’s birthday was coming up in November and all of us wanted to surprise her by cooking a really

great birthday dinner ourselves. She spent so much time cooking all those Sunday dinners for us that we

wanted to do something in return. On her birthday, she wouldn’t have to lift a finger. The twins agreed to

arrange the starter, Christine and Brad would do the main course and David and me would make a desert.

My dad promised to take care of the wine.

Brad was the best cook of all of us and he and Christine started preparing early that Sunday. They made

a fantastic roast and pumpkin-puree and sweet potatoes to go with it. The twins made a shrimp cocktail

that was better than I would have expected. David wanted to make a birthday cake for his mom and I

helped him. We were both no stars at cooking, I’m even worse than him, so I hoped that we would make

something edible. I’d put a frozen cake in the fridge as a back-up plan. When we started with the cake, it

felt like we were in high school again, fooling around in the kitchen, trying to get flour on each other.

“Help me mix this,” David laughed.

“It doesn’t look that appetizing yet,” I said worried when I looked at all the ingredients that we’d

chunked in to a bowl together. “Do you know for sure that this is going to work?” I asked.

“I’m sure,” he smiled, “Just mix it all together while I put in the eggs.” Within a minute the mixture

started to look a bit more like dough.

“I haven’t really cooked anything since I came back from France, I just heat things up,” I chuckled.

David looked at the mixture and put his finger in it, he tasted the dough.

“It tastes pretty good actually,” he grinned. “Do you want to try?” He dipped his finger in the bowl

again and without thinking I put it in my mouth and sucked it.

“It tastes good, right?” he laughed and looked at me with a wicked glance. Within a fraction of a

second, sucking his finger was the most erotic thing in the world and I was so turned on that I could have

fucked him right there on the kitchen table.

Right at that moment, Brad came in to the kitchen. I felt the blood rushing to my face giving me a guilty

blush. He looked at us questioningly but didn’t say anything. Not to us anyway. Later I overheard him tell

Christine in the living room: “You know I just saw Michael lick dough of David’s finger.” She laughed

and stroked his hair. “Come on Christine, that’s weird, even for them.”

“I’ve seen them do worse,” Christine said. “At least they seem to get along better again. I’m really

happy that they’re not fighting today.”

“They are not so verbally abusive today, you’re right,” Brad sighed. Christine lightly pushed him on the

shoulder.

“They can be really nice, believe me. They really do like each other Brad, only Michael has a hard time

showing it.”

David and me finished backing our cake and we decorated it with some ready-made frosting and some

sugary flowers. The end result looked decent enough. Juliette was ecstatic over the dinner we made.

We’d bought her presents too, of course. All ‘the kids’ had chipped in to buy her a really nice pair of

pearl and diamond earrings and dad had bought her the matching necklace too.

Everybody was so happy that day. I think the entire family was relieved that David and I weren’t

fighting for once. It was always ‘all or nothing’ for me and David and today it was ‘all’ again. We goofed

around the whole day, I fed him cake and licked some of the sugar-frosting of his cheek when I thought

nobody was watching. In the afternoon, we played a little basketball outside with Brad and both of us beat

him easily. Then David and me played some more while Brad was watching us. We were getting sweaty

and tired and David had taken of his shirt. I’d gotten used to his hair being so short and I still thought he

looked incredibly hot. Brad saw me looking at David as he dunked the ball in the basket. “I think his hair

has actually grown a little since he cut it. It looks nice,” he said. “Yeah he looks great,” I said rather too

enthusiastic, giving myself away even more. Brad smiled and in a flash I saw something in his eyes that

told me that he knew. But then that expression was gone again and he just gave us a goofy smile before he

went inside to eat so more cake.

It was a little over a month until Christmas. David and I didn’t fight once in that period. I don’t think

we’d been this nice to each other for years… The flip side was that it was getting harder and harder for

me to control my feelings. Now that we hadn’t been fighting for a couple of weeks, things were quickly

getting out of hand. I felt like my feelings were on a landslide and I could do nothing to stop them. I knew

that the only sane thing to do was make David hate me again, to drive him in to the arms of yet another

stupid guy but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to fight my desire anymore because that would mean that I would

have to shut David out of my life again, to be a jerk and a disappointment like always. I couldn’t do it

anymore.

I went to work whistling because I knew that he would bring me coffee in the morning and I couldn’t