“Dad, did you see my pink sweater?”
I glanced up from the batch of French toast I was whipping up to find my daughter standing in the doorway of our kitchen, sleep-tousled hair and pillow marks on her cheeks, still in her pajamas.
“Gilda, why aren’t you dressed for school yet?” I asked, which was a daily query for the twelve-year-old, who was so very much like her mother in so very many ways. For example, being notoriously hard to wake up, while I, on the other hand, snapped awake at six a.m. sharp no matter what day it was.
I got the preteen eye roll. Oh yes, it had begun at ten and was well practiced by twelve. Sorry, thirteen in a few weeks. That distinction was vastly important, it seemed. Being a teenager was big with a capital B. I didn’t remember being so hung up on age when I was a twelve-year-old. Of course, I was a boy, so my greatest concerns were playing baseball and tinkering on the engine of my go-kart. Girls, and later boys I would discover, were not even on my radar unless they could pitch for the pickup baseball games in the park or they raced karts. Funny how kids now seemed to be so much more mature than we were back in the good old days. Of course, when thirteen hit so did the hormones, which changed my perspective a lot. Lord, I felt so much older than my thirty-six years.
“Because I stayed up last night working on my essay for American history.” She padded over the worn linoleum floor in powder blue slippers matching her BSX2 blue fish pajamas. The girl loved her K-pop, art classes, and school plays. “Ooh yum, I love your French toast.”
She sank into my side, her thin arms sliding around my waist. So grown up in so many ways and yet still seeking her dad’s morning hugs. I hoped she’d never stop needing my arms around her as the day began. Katie had been a big hugger as well. I’d not grown up in an overtly demonstrative household so hugs at the drop of a hat had been new for me at first, but now I lived for them.
“I know you do. Your pink sweater is hanging in the bathroom drying, so you’ll have to wear something else. Did you get your essay done?”
I bent my head to drop a kiss to her knotted, sandy brown hair, which matched mine, as did her blue eyes, so yay for dad genes. She smelled like bubble gum and raindrops.
“Mostly,” she said as I tried to stir eggs with one hand.
“Really?”
She sighed then shook her head. “I don’t get why I can’t use the Hamilton version of George Washington instead of the real one. The real one is so boring and crummy.”
“Well, I wager Mr. Maloney wants you to learn about the real Washington, and that’s why he said you couldn’t use the stage production version.”
“But Christopher Jackson is so much cooler! And he can sing. And he’s better looking. Even you said you thought he was handsome. Have you seen the real one?” She gagged dramatically. Gilda did most things dramatically. She loved to sing, dance, and act, and was known to break into song in the middle of the frozen food aisle at Aldi. “He’s so old and had teeth made from horses and slaves. Slaves, Dad!”
What could I say to that? “I know it’s hard for us to grasp that, but sadly, that’s how things were back then. It’s terrible, but we can’t erase the bad parts of our past if we want to learn from them.”
“Well, I think it’s horrible, and I told Mr. Maloney that, and he said that disliking the man’s dentures did not take away from the other things that he did to forge our country. I’m going to point out his horse and human teeth in my essay and say that they’re way below mid.”
What was mid again? I think it meant bad. Maybe?
“Okay, honey, you point out the teeth.” That was my girl. She was not one to back down—again, much like her mother—when she felt a wrong, even if close to three hundred years ago, was being committed. “But don’t forget to include the good things he did.”
She made a noise of dislike before pulling away to go find the milk in the fridge. “Still would have rather have Christopher Jackson on the cover page than old horse teeth…” she was muttering as she poured herself a glass of milk, then ambled off, at low speed, to shower.
“Shower fast!” I yelled over my shoulder, but I doubted she heard me over her rousing rendition of “Right Hand Man” as she entered the bathroom.
Now that I could return to stirring eggs and cinnamon, breakfast went much faster. Gilda was late, as usual, but managed to catch her bus. Just. It was always a dash to the corner. Katie had been perpetually late as well. I joked that the only times the woman had been on time were for our wedding and the day Gilda was born. Back then, her tardiness drove me bonkers. After she had passed unexpectedly eight years ago from a brain hemorrhage, I found myself longing for those mad races she made every morning to get to work at the Grouse Falls Library.
Once the child was off, I returned to our little house on Blue Bonnet Drive to tidy up before I moseyed to the shop. The house was one of many cookie-cutter homes built by the now-defunct foundry that had, at one time, employed a few thousand people. The town had never really recovered from that economic loss fifteen years ago. We had no large industry here in Grouse Falls, and little by little, the younger people were leaving to find work in larger towns like Philadelphia or Pittsburgh. Not that anyone blamed them. I was lucky I had inherited my father’s small engine repair shop as well as his love for fixing motors. I’d never get rich working on riding tractors, chainsaws, and snowblowers, but it was good work for a guy who never went to college. Blue-collar for sure, but there was not a damn thing to be embarrassed about in being a man who worked with his hands. I’d done okay. Bought a house, cramped as it had been, got married, and had a child. We’d been happy if not rolling in cash. Then Katie passed, and things got much harder. The hospital bills began rolling in, funeral bills, and burial plots. Things you never really thought about much in your early to mid-thirties. With no family to rely on—her folks and mine were all dead—it was just me and my daughter trying to move on with no wife or mother.
It had been rough. Really rough. But Gilda and I had made it. Somehow. We were happy for the most part. Sure, there were lonely nights, lots of them. Yes, I wanted to find someone to fill the void that losing Katie had left, but the pool of dateable men and women was low in Grouse Falls. Low as in nonexistent. No woman here could match Katie, and there were zero queer men that I knew of in our charming village of roughly fifteen hundred people. That meant I was flying my bi pride flag outside the shop and from my porch during June all by my lonesome.
As I washed dishes and made myself a ham sandwich for lunch, I ruminated on what the hell I would do when Gilda left for college. I’d known that centering my life on my child was probably not healthy. She would leave. Obviously. We raised our chicks to fledge. But when that happened, my nest was going to be incredibly barren with no mate to share it with.
“Okay, enough. Don’t borrow worry, as Katie used to say.” I slapped some mustard on my rye bread with determination.
It was not going to do me any good to mull over the unknown. Live for the moment. Right. And that moment was now.
Locking the front and back doors of my two-bedroom, one-bath prefabricated steel home, I stepped out into a cold November morning with my lunch bag and my tote of yarn. Our house sat on a street lined with others just like it. The homes were built in the late-’40s to accommodate the influx of workers at the GF Foundry, which had grown massively during World War II, making parts for planes, tanks, and a wide range of other military goods. The boom continued through the ’80s but then began to wane as global competition and technological advancements took over the market. Even a foundry as large as GF had fallen under the rising costs combined with the higher wages that the steelworkers’ unions rightfully earned. Overseas workers were much cheaper. It took another ten years, but the doors were locked when I was just a teenager. Many of my school friends had moved off with their folks, and businesses had buckled one by one as the mom-and-pop shops fell under the heel of the megacorporations and supermarts.
Ugh. My mood was as gray as the wintry sky today. I fell into these funks when the days grew shorter. Seasonal affective disorder, I suspected. But I’d never been diagnosed because there were zero mental health clinics here. Also, I had no insurance so driving to a bigger city to see someone was not happening. Maybe I could buy one of those light boxes in the spring when sales spiked up a bit. For now, I’d just deal with the blues. My income had to go to bills and food, and also to save up for my daughter’s thirteenth birthday on December 25. My best Christmas present, I called her, much to her embarrassment.
I made my way to my two-car garage, rolled Gilda’s bike to the side, and slid behind the wheel of my beloved old Subaru. Four-wheel drive was the only way to navigate here in the Allegheny Plateau, a subrange of the Adirondacks. Winter did not mess around up here near the New York border. It came in hard, cold, and stayed far longer than anyone wanted.
As the car warmed, I stared out at the bike resting against the totes filled with holiday decorations. Gilda had insisted we haul them to the front. She adored Christmas. Most kids who were born on December 25 complained about getting shortchanged, but Gilda never did. She was incredibly happy to have the whole world decorated in tinsel and stars just for her special day. A practical child, she knew that funds were low most of the time and never really pushed for much in terms of gifts. Aside from the boy group pajamas last year, which were already an inch too short. The girl was growing like a weed. Blossoming into a rare and precious flower that blessedly had her mother’s empathy, fire, and thick hair. My hair…well, it was thinner than I would like and creeping back like a glacier. Male pattern baldness. The genetic gift that keeps on giving. Even though we’d not been touchy feely, I missed my parents. As I gazed at a tote packed full of tiny tin soldiers that lined the windowsills every year, I wondered if my malaise wasn’t part SAD and part just being lonesome…
“If there is such a thing as a wishing star in the winter sky, I think I’d like to wish for someone to share my life with. Someone to help raise Gilda, to cuddle with at night, to share the ups and downs, and to grow old with,” I whispered before realizing it was broad daylight and no stars were visible so the wish was null and void. “Okay, Morose Melvin, time to get to the shop. Enough whining about what you don’t have. Focus on what you do have.”
I plugged my phone in and brought up a little cheerful podcast I’d found a few weeks ago while working on a chainsaw for a customer. It was a happiness-positive mindset sort of thing that inspires the listeners to complete projects, hit a goal, or just feel better about themselves and their lives. Today, they were talking about being comfortable with your own company as a means to open yourself up to finding love and connection with someone else. Rather like what RuPaul closes her show with every week. And I did love myself. Sort of.
Okay, I had some work to do on that.
Traffic was light on the back roads that led to our picturesque town. And yes, I did have to stop along the way to let a grouse cross the road. The ruffed grouse was Pennsylvania’s state bird. He was a handsome fellow with a lovely neck ruff of black feathers, a rounded tail, and perfectly camouflaged feathers. When I was younger, we used to hear the males drumming in the spring to attract females. They would find a fallen log to stand on and start with slow beats, producing a thumping sound, then increase the speed to a steady rhythm. Sadly, the drumming isn’t as prevalent now as it used to be. Habitat loss, predation, and diseases are lessening their numbers, so seeing one in the road was a nice sight. He stood there for the longest time, frozen, until he eventually returned to crossing. I was in no hurry. I always stopped for the wildlife that meandered onto our small country lanes. Black bears, deer, eastern turkeys, and many other critters always got the right of way as far as I was concerned. We had moved into their woods, not the other way around, and my boss was pretty lenient when I was late. One of the few perks of being the owner.
Once Mr. Grouse made his way into the woods, I continued the ten-minute ride to the bustling metropolis of Grouse Falls. Main Street was quiet as I slowed to twenty-five, then pulled up to the lone traffic light. I hit the blinker to turn left as my podcast reminded me that today was a day filled with endless possibilities and new joys waiting to be discovered. I wasn’t all that sure about that, but I whispered to myself a few times that I was radiant with joy before I pulled off into the tiny parking lot of Grouse Falls Small Engine Repairs, which sat across the street from Franny’s Craft Emporium. Up the road were the grocery store, the library, and a closed car wash. And that was pretty much it for this stretch of highway. Highway being used incredibly liberally as it was a two-lane road with some pretty significant potholes that had never been fixed due to lack of county funds. By next spring, the gaps would be large enough to swallow a pickup truck.
Franny was outside watering her mums when I parked. I gave her a wave and exited my car just as she was coming to the end of her parking lot—a dirt area that held two cars, three if they were compact—to shout over to me. Franny was a little deaf, bless her heart, so yelling was her standard mode of communication. She was clad in culottes, rubber boots, and a bright yellow knitted sweater that hung to her knees.
“Mitchell!” she bellowed, sending the male cardinal sitting in the pine beside my shop to wing. I’d fill the feeder as soon as I got inside. “Are you coming to the knitting circle Thursday?”
“I was planning on it,” I said back. Said, not yelled, as we were standing facing each other across a twenty-foot road. With no traffic. Maybe today was the day she had put her hearing aid in. “I’d like to get started on the light blue fish sweater for Gilda soon.”
“Excellent! The other knitters are coming as well. Pearl wasn’t sure she could make it, but her son went home yesterday, so she’s clear for our weekly meeting. Oh, and the pastor sent me a reminder about the mitten and scarf drive starting this week.”
“Okay, I’ll hang the line in the window and start working on mittens alongside Gilda’s sweater.”
For the past ten years, as things got worse and worse for rural folks, the local nondenominational church ran a charity outerwear drive. All the local businesses hung thin clotheslines inside their shop windows with coats, scarves, mittens, gloves—anything a struggling person or family might need to stay warm. Under the line was a small donation jar that went to the church’s food bank, but it was usually empty. If you couldn’t afford mittens then your ability to donate to the food bank wasn’t high. No questions were asked if someone claimed anything from the line. They were free for all. Some folks took the little cards that Pastor Pete handed out to hang on the lines with the phone number of the church as well as the nearest emergency shelter, county assistance offices, and medical offices. Some didn’t. No one ever preached or pushed those who claimed the offerings on the lines. We just wished them a happy holiday season and then added a new scarf or set of woolen mittens.
“I think I have that glacier blue yarn you ordered last week,” she shouted at the top of her lungs.
Nope, no hearing aid today.
“Awesome. I’ll grab it Thursday night,” I said with more volume.
“What?” She cupped her hand around her ear. I sighed. She was doing really well for being eighty-seven with two new knees and sparkly new teeth. Now if we could just convince her to wear her damn hearing aid.
“Franny, where is your hearing aid?” I shouted back to her.
“No, I don’t think you paid, but I ain’t worried. I know where you live.” She laughed aloud, turned, picked up her watering can, and toddled back into her shop.
Chuckling to myself, I grabbed my yarn bag, my lunch, and opened up my own shop for the day. The brick building that housed my business was built by my grandfather in the late-’50s. He was a watch repairman and supported his family of five for many years on what he earned fixing timepieces. Then the red brick store had gone to my father, who turned it into a thriving small engine repair shop that he had left to me. The front was large, with two big windows that allowed the meager winter sun to shine in on new chainsaws and other small gardening tools and accessories such as oil, gas cans, and the like. I enjoyed keeping the showroom in good shape, tidy and dust-free, because most people out here still used firewood for heat, myself included, and that was a thriving side of my business.
With winter fast approaching, I had been setting aside my chainsaw work for snowblowers, snow throwers, and generators. I did have a lot of ice fishermen dropping by as a nice lake sat a few miles out of town. Augers, mostly, were brought in for repairs. I also offered winterization services for summer equipment. For a small fee, I’d drain the fuel, change the oil, replace spark plugs, and the like. The back room was packed with jobs for next spring as well as stock, a workbench, and a woodstove. The shop wasn’t fancy, and it smelled like oil and gas, Gilda always commented on, but it kept us fed, warm, and able to buy skeins of yarn for a K-pop sweater for her birthday.
Flicking on the lights and then flipping the CLOSED sign to OPEN, I found myself chiding the lonely inner Mitchell. Lots of people managed just fine being single. The podcast host was right. Focus on the good things the day would bring. Like new yarn and a happy daughter and spaghetti for dinner. I’d had one grand love. Having two would just be greedy.
With that pep talk completed, I set about stoking the fire to warm the shop and hanging the thin clothesline for outerwear in the window with the shiny red chainsaws. I placed a small empty mayo jar under the line, the same one Gilda had painted last year, with DONATIONS FOR THE FOOD PANTRY, then nodded at my work. It looked good. Now I needed to get knitting. Maybe during my lunch hour, I could whip one up. Using a simple pattern, I could get one mitten done easily in two hours. I’d use larger needles and thicker yarn to speed up the process. I had some red yarn in my bag. That would be festive to start things off. Maybe some green too. I’d have to check what I had left over from last year’s drive when I got home. I had a tote stashed in my bedroom closet.
While I was thinking about mittens and a matching bonnet for a child, a beat-up truck pulled up and Wilson Garrett, an old farmer who raised beefers out on Pock Willow Road, slid out of the Ford. He lifted a chainsaw with a badly bent bar from the bed. I winced. How the heck had he managed this? With a sigh, I put aside mulling over knitting patterns to tend to the first customer of the day. Seemed like today was on track to be another normal, quiet day in the life of Mitchell Baxter. Not like anything exhilarating ever happened, and gosh darn that was just how I liked it! Accept the day for what it is and revel in its monotony. No, wrong word. Revel in its magnificence. Yes, that was the word the podcast host had used.
At that moment, I didn’t love that I still lived at my parents’ house. I was a grown man, at age twenty-three, I really should live on my own. Although it wasn’t totally weird for an unmated omega to live with their parents a little while longer. If I was in college like many of the den members my age, living at home would have made even more sense. But I wasn’t in college, I actually had a full-time job. As the only omega enforcer in the den, perhaps I should be more independent to set a good example for the other young omegas.
Perhaps if I was a human, it would make more sense to move out of the family home, but as a bear, I liked being close to my family, and I wasn’t ashamed of it. Although, at times like this, when I was trying to sneak out of the house quietly, being near my family was a detriment. They knew I was going on vacation, they just didn’t like it.
My mom, dad, brother, and his omega, Jules, all sat at the table looking at me when I came to the bottom step. In front of each of them was a cup of coffee and a pastry, like this was some normal family get-together and not a make-shift intervention. I let out a sigh.
“I’ll be fine.”
My mother wrung her hands in her lap. “We worry about you.”
“It’s just a resort. A normal one. Not like the one he went to.” I gestured toward my brother. Like a smart sibling, I tried to deflect as often as possible. It wasn’t easy when my brother was Mr. Perfect and my sister had already provided the family with grandchildren. As the only one unmated, and the baby of the family, I got more attention than I wanted. It didn’t help that I was an omega.
“This isn’t about me,” Westley said. My brother had accidentally booked a vacation at a resort where he also booked an escort. They later became mated, but still! That was way more weird than me booking a solo-vacation at a normal resort. Plenty of people went on vacation alone, especially if they wanted to find their mates.
“I spoke to the front desk guy, Branson, just yesterday. He is super nice. My cabin is all ready for me, and there are a lot of activities going on around the resort that I plan on enjoying. I won’t be alone the whole time moping in my room like a weirdo.”
“I just don’t understand why you want to vacation on your own,” Dad said. “Why not wait until the whole family to go? We can help you.”
Ugh. Family vacations were fun when I was five, but at twenty-three? No, thank you. Maybe when I was mated and had kids of my own, but going out with my family as the only single one was just weird and left me feeling like a third wheel.
“What’s not to understand? I want to meet other people. I’d like to meet my mate. Clearly they aren’t in this den, or I would have met them by now.”
I mean, there were plenty of alphas here who were eligible bachelors. Braxton came to mind—only he was so out of my league it wasn’t even funny. He was definitely not my mate. He and I had known each other for years, and we worked together. He wasn’t mine, and someday he’d meet his real mate. I didn’t want to be single when that happened.
I shook that thought away. As soon as I met my real mate, things would be different. I wouldn’t even think about Braxton and his handsome face or silly teasing. I bet my mate was way better-looking and more muscular than him anyway.
“Honey, have you considered that you might have the same condition your father did, and that’s why—”
“Of course I have! But that’s only a one-sided issue. If my mate was here, he or she would have come forward. That’s why I’m going,” I said. “I don’t want to miss my flight.”
My parents exchanged a glance, but otherwise, seemed to concede the fight.
“At least let me drive you to the airport,” Westley said.
I groaned. “I already arranged for a car.” And I didn’t want to endure a lecture for the next hour.
He crossed his arms over his chest. “You ordered an Uber? You have family who can drive you places, Kip.”
“Yes, and you are all amazing and I love you. It’s a member of the den who does it for fun, so it’s not that big a deal. It’s no different than me having you drop me off.”
“But you’re paying for it.”
“Well, if I had to ride in the car with you, you’d pester me with questions and give me lectures. At least this way, I can ask for silence. Can you all please just trust me?” I looked around the room at all the people who loved me most in the world. They cared about me and my well-being. I knew that. Of course I did. But didn’t they see that I was suffocating here? Everyone around me had met their person, and I was pining after an alpha who would never be mine. Braxton seemed to think of me as a younger annoying brother, and someday, he would find his mate. I had to go out and find my mate. I had to.
“We do trust you, Kip. It’s not about trust. We love you, and we want you to be safe.”
“Right. But to everyone else who doesn’t take me seriously as an omega, even though I’m an enforcer for this den, it looks like you don’t trust me.” As soon as I was home from vacation, I needed to move out. It was for my own good.
“That doesn’t even make any sense,” Westley said. “Nobody else knows that you’re going on this vacation.”
That wasn’t entirely false. People knew I had time off. They just didn’t know that I was actually leaving the den. I didn’t exactly want to advertise that I was going someplace in hopes of finding my mate. It would be embarrassing if I came home without one. If anyone searched the resort I was going to, they’d see a ton of match-making activities and events surrounding finding one’s perfect match.
“I promise that I’ll call every day. How’s that?” I might call when I knew they were all busy and therefore wouldn’t have time to interrogate me, but I’d call.
“I guess that will be acceptable,” my mother said. “We just want you to be safe, dear.” She stood up and wrapped me in her arms. She kissed my cheek with a loud smack.
“Thank you for caring about me,” I said. “But please—trust me. I’ll go out there, meet my mate, and you’ll all see that this was a brilliant plan.”
Jena WadeShe lives in Michigan. By day she works as a web developer, and at night she writes. Born and raised on a farm, she spends most of her free time outdoors, playing in the garden, or riding her horses. She also helps run the family dairy farm.
Lisa likes to tell stories, mostly with hot guys and happily ever afters.
Lisa lives in tropical North Queensland, Australia. She doesn't know why, because she hates the heat, but she suspects she's too lazy to move. She spends half her time slaving away as a government minion, and the other half plotting her escape.
She attended university at sixteen, not because she was a child prodigy or anything, but because of a mix-up between international school systems early in life. She studied History and English, neither of them very thoroughly.
She shares her house with too many cats, a dog, a green tree frog that swims in the toilet, and as many possums as can break in every night. This is not how she imagined life as a grown-up.
Lisa has been published since 2012, and was a LAMBDA finalist for her quirky, awkward coming-of-age romance Adulting 101, and a Rainbow Awards finalist for 2019’s Anhaga.
Lily Morton
No Business Like Snow Business by JA Rock & Lisa Henry
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