Chapter 10: Stolen Moments
The scent of fresh paint was thick in the air, a clean, sharp odor that overlay the lingering ghosts of sawdust and citrus cleaner. Sunlight, now familiar and welcome, streamed through the newly spotless windows of the patisserie, illuminating dust motes dancing over the freshly tiled counter. Bry was carefully cutting in along the ceiling line, his movements steady and precise. The cream-colored paint covered the last of the old, tired wallpaper, a final layer of their own making.
Jules watched him for a moment from his perch on a step ladder, a loaded brush in his own hand. The concentration on Bry’s face, the flex of his shoulder as he reached high, it all sent a warm, proprietary thrill through him. This was theirs. Every brushstroke was a promise.
He dipped his brush, a mischievous idea sparking in his green eyes. “Hey, Bry. You missed a spot.”
Bry paused, lowering his brush and turning. “Where?”
With a flick of his wrist, Jules painted a thick, creamy streak down Bry’s bicep. The paint was cool and slick against his skin.
Bry looked down at his arm, then back at Jules, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Oh, you’re going to regret that, Kiwi.”
He dropped his brush into the tray with a wet plop and started toward him. Jules shrieked with laughter, scrambling down the ladder, but Bry was faster. He caught him around the waist, pulling him back against his chest.
“No! It was an accident!” Jules gasped, writhing in his grasp, his laughter breathless.
“Looked pretty deliberate to me,” Bry murmured into his ear, his voice a low rumble. He captured both of Jules’s wrists in one of his large hands, easily pinning them. With his other, he dragged his paint-smeared fingers down Jules’s forearm, leaving an identical, sticky trail.
Jules squirmed, the fight leaving him as the touch shifted from playful to something else entirely. The friction of his back against Bry’s front, the firm grip on his wrists, the scent of paint and Bry’s clean sweat—it was a heady combination. His laughter died in his throat, replaced by a sharp, quiet intake of breath.
Bry felt the change. He loosened his grip, turning Jules slowly in his arms to face him. Paint was smudged on his t-shirt, a dab of it on his cheek. His eyes were dark, his pupils wide.
“Now we match,” Bry said, his voice husky.
He didn’t wait for a reply. He walked Jules backward until the small of his back pressed against the cool, solid edge of the new counter. He leaned in, caging him in, his hands settling on Jules’s hips, thumbs pressing into the delicate bones there. The pressure was possessive, grounding.
Jules looked up at him, his chest rising and falling rapidly. He brought his painted hands up, resting them on Bry’s shoulders, leaving faint, creamy prints on the faded cotton. “You’re messing up the foreman.”
“The foreman started it,” Bry countered, his gaze dropping to Jules’s mouth.
The space between them crackled, the playful energy transforming into a dense, palpable heat. The world outside the grimy windows—the distant traffic, the sound of a siren—faded into a dull hum. All Jules could hear was the sound of their breathing, starting to syncopate.
Bry dipped his head, closing the final inch. The kiss wasn’t gentle. It was a claiming, a release of all the built-up tension from the confrontation with Marianne, the exhausting work, the terrifying, exhilarating leap they were taking. Jules met it with equal fervor, his fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of Bry’s neck, pulling him closer.
The taste of him was familiar, but the context made it new. Here, in their half-finished future, surrounded by the smell of their own labor, it felt like a different kind of foundation was being laid.
Bry’s hands slid from his hips, around to the small of his back, pressing their bodies together. Jules arched into the contact, a soft, desperate sound escaping him. The hard line of the counter dug into his back, a sharp counterpoint to the yielding warmth of Bry’s body.
When they broke apart, they were both breathing heavily, foreheads resting together.
“We’re getting paint everywhere,” Jules whispered, his voice ragged.
“I don’t care,” Bry breathed back. He leaned in again, his lips tracing a path along Jules’s jaw, down the sensitive column of his throat. Jules’s head fell back, his eyes fluttering closed. He felt Bry’s hands slide under the hem of his t-shirt, his palms warm and rough against the soft skin of his stomach.
The ring of Bry’s phone was a violent, electronic shriek in the quiet room.
They froze.
It rang again, insistent and mundane.
Bry let out a shaky breath, his forehead still pressed against Jules’s shoulder. “Ignore it.”
It rang a third time.
“It might be the flooring guy,” Jules said, his voice regaining a sliver of practicality. His heart was still hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
With a groan of frustration, Bry straightened up, pulling the phone from his pocket. He glanced at the screen. “It’s Kaitlyn.” He swiped to answer, his voice rough. “Hey, Kat. What’s up?”
Jules stayed leaning against the counter, trying to steady his breathing. The moment was broken, but the charge of it still hung in the air, a shimmering haze over the paint cans and drop cloths. He looked at the twin streaks of cream paint on their arms, now smeared and blurred. A brand.
“Yeah, we’re at the shop,” Bry was saying, his back to Jules. He ran a hand through his hair. “No, it’s fine. Uh-huh.” A pause. “Tonight? I… yeah, I guess we could. Let me check with Jules.” He turned, holding the phone against his chest. “Kaitlyn and Axle. They want to take us out for drinks. To celebrate the shop. And… you know. Dealing with your mom.”
The normalcy of the invitation was a lifeline thrown back into their bubble. Jules nodded, pushing off from the counter. “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. Tell her we’re in.”
Bry relayed the message and hung up. He stood there for a moment, phone in hand, looking at Jules. The heat from moments before had banked, but it was still there in his eyes, a warm, steady ember.
“We should probably clean up this paint,” Jules said, gesturing vaguely at their arms and the smudges on their clothes.
“Probably,” Bry agreed. But he didn’t move. He just looked at him, a quiet, profound understanding passing between them. The world had interrupted, but it hadn’t stolen anything. It had just pressed pause.
Bry reached out, his thumb gently wiping at a speck of paint on Jules’s cheekbone. “Later,” he said, the single word a promise that settled deep in Jules’s bones.
Jules caught his wrist, turning his head to press a soft, quick kiss to his palm. “Later,” he echoed.
Then he picked up his fallen paintbrush, dipped it in the can, and went back to work on his section of the wall. The silence that fell between them was different now. It was comfortable, charged, and full of a future that was waiting just a few hours away.
The charged silence lasted only until Jules’s stomach growled loudly, breaking the spell with mundane reality. He laughed, wiping his hands on his already-ruined jeans. “Okay, that’s my cue. We need food before we face anyone.”
They cleaned up their tools in a companionable rush, the earlier intensity softening into a warm, buzzing anticipation. The smears of paint on their skin resisted easy removal, leaving faint, ghostly traces behind.
A few hours later, they walked into The Gilded Lemon not as employees, but as patrons. The familiar neon glow felt different now, like visiting an old school. Chloe spotted them immediately from behind the bar, waving them over with a wide grin.
“Look what the cat dragged in! And you’ve got war paint on,” she said, leaning over to examine Bry’s arm. “Did the patisserie fight back?”
“Something like that,” Jules said, his voice light as he slid onto a stool. He felt Bry’s hand rest on the small of his back, a casual, grounding point of contact.
Kaitlyn and Axle were already at a corner booth, a half-empty pitcher of beer between them. Axle raised his glass in a mock salute. “There they are. The entrepreneurs. You both look like you lost a fight with a gallon of milk.”
“It’s ‘Buttercream Dream,’ actually,” Jules corrected, feigning offense as they slid into the booth. “Show some respect for the color palette.”
Kaitlyn pushed two fresh glasses toward them. “So? How’s the space feeling? Less like a horror movie set and more like a bakery?”
“It’s getting there,” Bry said, pouring the beer. The foam bubbled up to the rim. “The counters are in. The walls are painted. Every time we finish something, it feels a little more real.”
“And a little more terrifying,” Jules added, clinking his glass against Bry’s. “But in the good way. The ‘we’re-not-going-to-be-homeless’ way.”
The conversation flowed easily, punctuated by laughter and the clink of glassware. Axle recounted a disastrous wiring job he’d had to fix, and Kaitlyn teased him about his dramatic flair for storytelling. For a while, it was just friends in a bar, the weight of legal documents and family drama feeling distant and manageable.
“Seriously, though,” Kaitlyn said, her tone shifting to something more sincere. She looked at Bry. “We heard about your mom’s little visit, Jules. That was some seriously cold shit.”
The air at the table stilled for a moment. Jules took a slow sip of his beer. “She brought her A-game. But Bry brought a bigger gun.” He nudged Bry’s shoulder with his own. “Told her all about Aethelgard’s numbers. You should have seen her face. It was like she’d bitten into a lemon and found a whole other, sourer lemon inside.”
Axle let out a low whistle. “You pulled the financial independence card? Brutal. I love it.”
“It wasn’t about brutality,” Bry said, his voice quiet but firm. He looked at Jules, not at the others. “It was about removing her leverage. She thought she held all the power because she holds the purse strings. She doesn’t.”
The intensity of his gaze made Jules’s breath catch. It was that same focused, protective energy from the paint-smeared afternoon, now distilled in the dim light of the bar.
“Well, I for one am thrilled,” Kaitlyn announced, breaking the moment. “This calls for a proper toast. Not to defeating evil mothers, but to building your own damn thing.” She raised her glass high. “To Bry and Jules. To Lewter Patisserie.”
“To Lewter Patisserie!” Axle and Chloe echoed from the bar.
They all drank, the moment swelling with a collective warmth that felt like armor. Under the table, Bry’s hand found Jules’s knee, his thumb drawing a slow, absent circle. The simple touch sent a current of electricity straight up his spine, a private echo of their afternoon.
As the laughter settled, Bry didn’t let go. He kept his hand right there, his touch a steady, warm weight through the fabric of Jules’s jeans. He was listening to Axle talk about circuit breakers, but his entire awareness was focused on the point of contact, on the man beside him.
He looked at Jules, really looked. At the way the neon light caught the silver in his earrings, at the faint, tired smudges of paint near his hairline that he’d missed, at the vibrant, unguarded life in his eyes as he laughed at something Chloe shouted from the bar.
This was it. This was the resonance he’d ached for without ever knowing the shape of it. It wasn’t in some abstract future with a wife and 2.5 kids. It was right here, in this noisy booth, with paint under their fingernails and a shared, hard-won future waiting for them in the morning. The loneliness that had been a constant hum in the background of his life for years simply switched off.
He didn’t need to search anymore. The thought was so profound, so terrifyingly simple, that it felt less like a realization and more like a fundamental law of the universe finally revealing itself.
The thought was so profound, so terrifyingly simple, that it felt less like a realization and more like a fundamental law of the universe finally revealing itself. Bry didn’t say anything. He just tightened his grip on Jules’s knee under the table, a silent transmission of this new, solid ground beneath them.
The buzz of the bar faded into a warm hum. He was exactly where he was supposed to be.
Weeks bled into months, a blur of sawdust, drywall compound, and the relentless smell of polyurethane. The space transformed under their hands, each finished task a quiet victory. The day the custom display case was installed, its glass gleaming under the new track lighting, Jules just stood and stared for a full ten minutes, his fingers pressed to his lips.
Finally, the last cabinet was hung. The final outlet plate was screwed on. They stood in the center of the main room, the air clean and still. It was done.
Bry pulled out his phone, his body aching with a deep, satisfying fatigue. He typed a single message to the group chat they’d dubbed ‘The Lewter Logistics Squad’.
`It’s time. The truck is rented for Saturday.`
The responses were immediate.
`We’ll be there with coffee and back braces,` from Kaitlyn.
`I call dibs on carrying the lightest boxes,` Leo replied, followed by a string of laughing emojis.
`Sam and I will handle the books. We have a system,` Maya added.
Saturday morning arrived in a burst of chaotic, friendly energy. The U-Haul was a beast parked illegally outside their apartment, its ramp already down. Their friends materialized on the sidewalk, a motley crew in worn-out t-shirts and gym shorts, a fortress of disposable coffee cups between them.
“Okay, people, listen up!” Jules clapped his hands, a clipboard in hand that he absolutely did not need. “The fragile boxes are marked with a ‘Kiwi’ in green. Those go to Leo and Chloe, because you have the gentlest hands.”
“He’s not wrong,” Leo said, winking at Chloe.
The apartment, once their sanctuary, was quickly reduced to a maze of stacked cardboard and stripped shelves. The air was thick with dust and the grunts of heavy lifting. Bry and Axle maneuvered the disassembled bed frame down the narrow staircase, a complex ballet of pivots and muffled curses.
“Pivot! Pivot!” Axle yelled, his voice strained.
“I am pivoting!” Bry grunted back, the metal frame digging into his shoulder.
Meanwhile, Jules directed the flow of items from the doorway, his earlier organizational system completely abandoned. “Just get it in the truck! We’ll sort it out at the other end! Yes, that box is all shoes, no it’s not fragile, just throw it!”
At the patisserie, the process reversed. Boxes were hauled inside and piled in the center of the room that would soon be filled with the smell of baking bread. The sound of cardboard scraping on clean tile was the sound of a home being made. Kaitlyn and Sam began the meticulous work of unpacking the kitchenware, their movements efficient and synced.
By late afternoon, the truck was empty. The apartment was a hollow, echoing shell. The patisserie’s back room, however, was a mountain of their shared life, a chaotic testament to the move. Everyone collapsed onto the floor or onto various boxes, breathing heavily. The air was filled with the sound of cracking open water bottles and satisfied sighs.
“I think I have a new muscle in my back,” Liam groaned, stretching out on the tile.
“That’s not a new muscle, that’s a pulled one,” Rachelle corrected, nudging him with her foot.
As their friends began to trickle out with promises of pizza later, Bry and Jules were left alone in the quiet aftermath. The sudden stillness was immense. They stood amidst the boxes, the golden hour light painting long, deep shadows across the floor.
Jules leaned against a tower of cardboard labeled ‘KITCHEN - MISC’, his energy finally spent. He looked around at the chaos, a slow smile spreading across his face. It was a beautiful, glorious mess.
Bry came to stand beside him, his shoulder brushing Jules’s. He didn’t see the mess. He saw the ghost of a cream-colored paint smear on Jules’s arm, long since washed away, and the future laid out before them in cardboard and tape.
“We’re in,” Jules said, his voice quiet with awe.
“We’re in,” Bry echoed.He reached out, his fingers finding Jules’s, lacing together naturally. They stood there in the settling dust, surrounded by the silent, waiting shape of everything they had built.