Free Between Two Promises by Shelter Somerset

sure only that one?”
    “Yes, yes, it was only that one mouse,” the innkeeper said. “We’ll make sure to set traps first thing in the morning to catch him, if he hasn’t already run off back outside.” He ushered her into her room, smiling and nodding at Aiden and Daniel.
    Back in their room, Daniel climbed into his bed, yet his eyes remained open. He stared at the ceiling, his thick lips pursed. Something had irked him. Outside the window, morning twilight was coloring the snowy landscape a murky blue.
    “You want to get some breakfast somewhere,” Aiden said. “I don’t think we’ll be able to get back to sleep after that. We’ll have to get up in a little bit anyhow.”
    At a corner diner on Ivy Street in town, Daniel fiddled with his silverware while they waited for the waitress to bring their orders. Snug in their booth, the craziness with the mouse receded. Yet Daniel’s aloofness remained. A small consolation: Daniel had thrown on his English clothes so that Aiden didn’t feel like an outsider.
    “What’s wrong with you, Daniel?” he finally asked.
    Daniel set down his fork with a thud on the Formica tabletop. “You shouldn’t have been so willing to switch rooms with that woman. How would things look if she accepted, us staying in a room with only one double bed?”
    “Daniel, for crying out loud, it’s no big deal. You’re really becoming paranoid.”
    “No need to give the community any reason to suspect,” Daniel said. “No more than they already do.”
    “You mean like us sitting together in a booth?” Aiden whispered sardonically.
    Daniel took a sip of his orange juice, his eyeballs darting from side to side over the rim. “It doesn’t help.”
    Suppressing a guffaw, Aiden said in a low voice, “Why are you worried? It’s not like we’re advertising. Look around. Lots of men are sitting together. No one is assuming they’re boyfriends, not me anyway.”
    “Aiden, you don’t understand.”
    “You’re right, I don’t.” They were quiet a moment, the subdued murmur of morning chatter around them. “I know it’s complicated to come out,” Aiden said. “Especially in the Amish world, but you act like you want to protect the community’s feelings more than mine.”
    “You cut everything down to your feelings,” Daniel said into the window above their booth, where outside enough darkness lingered that Aiden could see their reflections in the glass. “If you listened to yourself, you’d hear how selfish you sometimes sound.”
    “Selfish? Daniel, I’m only worried about you being unhappy, about you being so uptight all the time, about how it’s unfair to the both of us the way you’re afraid of what others might think.”
    “Shtill, here comes our food.”
    Aiden hushed up like Daniel had warned, and the young waitress set their food on the table, smiling warmly, especially at Daniel. Keeping her gaze on Daniel, she asked if they needed anything else. When they refrained, she strolled to the counter and leaned against a stool, her smile at Daniel unabated.
    “That waitress has been flirting with you,” Aiden said, cutting into his western omelet. Normally, a waitress’s flirting with Daniel would’ve struck him as cute. Now, he wanted to claim Daniel, but it was impossible at the diner. Or anywhere, apparently, other than back in Montana in their cabin, or deep in the backcountry, where he could drape an arm around his shoulder, lay his head on his chest, or even kiss him full on the mouth without Daniel flinching in horror.
    “I don’t pay attention to those things,” Daniel said, pouring strawberry syrup over his buttermilk pancakes.
    “It’s rude, if you ask me.” Aiden toyed with his food. Suddenly his appetite waned. He glanced out the window. Light filled the sky, slowly turning the bluish landscape pink and golden. “And you’re Amish, too. What a way for her to behave.”
    “She has no idea I’m Amish.” Daniel chewed a forkful of pancake.