Chapter 6
Back at the shop, Lance put on some hideous pop music, heavy on the Katy Perry, donned one of my aprons, and made fast work of the prep I couldn’t do one-handed. He danced to the music, even when hefting big bags of vegetables. I’d expected the kitchen to feel crowded with his presence. I did most of my kitchen work on my own—late nights prepping stuff for the breakfast rush, early mornings setting up soup and sandwiches for lunch.
But to my surprise, Lance never once bumped into me and the kitchen didn’t seem crowded so much as colorful, like a few extra bulbs had been added to the ceiling, casting light in ignored corners.
Ever since he’d made it seem inevitable that we’d be sleeping together again, it was all I could think about. He was a sweet guy, and even if he claimed to want something casual, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d be taking advantage of him. But even as I tried to urge myself toward nobility, I knew I would end up giving in. I poured coconut cream into the mixer with my good hand while eyeing his bouncing ass. Yup. I was screwed.
“You got help in the morning?” he asked as he diced day-old bread for overnight bread pudding.
“I start at four on my own usually. My kitchen assistants show up at five-thirty, then the rest of the Sunday crew comes at six so we can open at seven. I guess I might need to ask one of my guys to come earlier. Why? You offering to sleep over?”
“Whoa. Sleep over?” He feigned surprise. “You haven’t even fed me dinner. I’m not sure I trust you to keep me alive till morning.”
“Brat.” I slapped his ass, immediately regretting it. “Damn. Fuck. Pain shot’s wearing off.”
“Poor baby.” He grabbed my now properly bandaged hand and dropped a kiss across my knuckles.
“Eh. I’m okay. A beer and a jo—pain pill and I’ll be good as new.”
He raised an eyebrow. He knew damn well what I’d been about to say. “I’d better stay. Wouldn’t want you mixing too many things. But, seriously, dude, I know you have the whole live-on-coffee-and-beansprouts-stay-skinny plan down, but the rest of us need dinner.”
“Bossy baby. I usually just order something in on Saturday nights. Too much work to make myself something and handle all the prep. Would pizza work?”
“You eat pizza? Like with real cheese on it? Or is there a vegan pizza place around here?”
“Sssh.” I lowered my voice for dramatic affect—making him laugh was almost as potent as the pain pills. “I’m not strict vegan. That angle was all Randy’s marketing idea.”
“Do you eat some meat? Like fish or chicken?”
“Not fish.” I couldn’t hide my full-body shudder. I’d had to clean and eat a whole fish once at Boy Scouts. I’d been close to tears and ended up hurling all over my sneakers. I’d been a total and complete failure as a Scout, tapping out at as a Webelo, much to my Eagle Scout dad’s chagrin.
“Oh, that’s right.” He gestured at my tats. “Your spirit animal and all that.”
“I very, very seldom eat any type of meat. Or eggs. Cheese I’m down with. But you can get whatever you want on your side and I’m not gonna freak. I want green peppers and black olives on mine.” I dug out my phone and thumbed to Bellagios online ordering screen.
“I love black olives. Have them do those on the whole pie. I want Canadian bacon on my side.”
“Done.” I clicked send.
“Where are the raisins for the pudding?” he asked as he dumped the first batch of bread in one of the big pans I had waiting.
“I don’t usually put raisins in.”
“Oh, dude, you can’t have bread pudding without raisins. Or rum.”
“Rum?”
“My nonna never met a dessert you couldn’t add booze to. But yeah, you need raisins.”
“What the hell.” I searched out the giant tub of raisins from the shelf. “Knock yourself out.”
His halogen-bright smile was worth shaking up the brunch a bit for.
“So what’s with the fish thing? I mean, you’ve got the tats, you’ve got the fish tanks upstairs . . .”
“You noticed my fish? I thought I kept you too busy to be nosy.” My hand was starting to throb, but I gave him a look promising I could keep him that busy again. This was why platonic wasn’t a possibility—he unearthed a flirty side of me I hadn’t experienced before. Something about him made my words more nimble and my movements more deliberate.
“Um . . . dude, you have a bigger fish tank in your living room than they had at the doctor’s office. Yeah, I noticed. They’re . . . nice.”
“I think the word you’re looking for is weird.” I unwrapped some more loaves of bread for him to chop. “It’s a hobby. That’s all. I went to college for marine biology—”
“They have a lot of those majors in Nebraska?” Lance chopped far slower than I did, but where I was all speed and rustic precision, he was a laser-tipped ruler, churning out perfect cubes.
“Hardly. I was the weird, nerdy kid obsessed with oceans.”
Lance laughed. “There is nothing nerdy about you. But what happened? Why aren’t you on a boat somewhere?”
“I get seasick. Like vicious, no-meds-work sick. But I worked at the aquarium in Newport for a while. Wasn’t as much fun as I’d hoped. Randy worked for a restaurant on the coast. He always wanted to move back to Portland . . . so here we are.” I kept my voice light, like the whole thing was just an episode of some stupid comedy, not like those sentences contained some of my most bitter disappointments. Lance was far too sparkly to bother with those.
“Here you are. No more we, right? Why don’t you split back to the coast? Man, if I didn’t have all my family in Portland, I’d want to be on a beach somewhere twenty-four/seven.”
“Eh. I don’t really know what else I’d do. I like being my own boss.” It was hard to articulate how much of myself I’d lost—and found—in these walls. I wasn’t about to let Randy take this from me, beach or no beach. “Shitty ex aside, this is a good life.”
“Why’s he the ex? He cheat with a barista?” Lance scraped this batch of bread into the baking tray I had ready.
“Damn. You met him once and you pegged him that fast?”
“Yeah. He’s a hound. So who cheated?”
“Who says someone cheated?”
“Someone always cheats.” Lance looked at me with the conviction of someone who hadn’t witnessed a lot of breakups but who wanted to believe fidelity alone could be enough to keep two people together.
My joints creaked with years of experience to the contrary as I poured the mixture from the blender over the bread in the pan.
“Actually, we had a very open arrangement about that kind of stuff. He had people on the side. I didn’t care.” Much. “Money was what split us up. We started the second store and he was there all the time and I was here, and when we were together it was to argue about finances. Eventually, we realized money was the only thing keeping us together. He moved out. Got a place by the new store.”
“Ah.” He made a sour face. “I could never do that open relationship stuff.”
“What do you mean? Aren’t you the one with all the friends with benefits?” I helped stage stuff for Lance to wash at the big stainless sink.
“Well, yeah. But that’s not serious. I get a boyfriend, it’s going to be just me and him.” He smiled a little smile, like he was seeing some future version of himself in the soap bubbles and loving what he saw. And like he had absolute faith in his ability to live up to that vision.
I felt as withered as a cartoon villain, a pile of old bones and grudges. I’d been idealistic like Lance once, believing in true love and soul mates and all that crap, but it seemed like it all happened in someone else’s lifetime. After all, I’d been the kid who romanticized the hell out of living on a boat only to discover I was allergic to any type of watercraft. Some dreams you just grew the hell out of.
We finished up just as the pizza arrived.
“Let’s take this upstairs. I’ve got some Ninkasi ale in the fridge. Feel free to grab a soda from down here, though, if you’d rather.”
“No. I’m all over a beer.” He wiped his forehead. “This is intense work. I’m impressed that you pull this off every week.”
I took ridiculous pride in that, my shoulders pulling more upright, the pain receding a bit. The pain came back, though, as soon as I tried to grab the door to upstairs with the wrong hand.
“God. This sucks.”
“Poor baby. I’ll have to take your mind off it in a bit.” He gave me an appraising stare, one that made me feel less of a sweaty, banged-up mess.
“I’m counting on it. You can put the pizza over there.” I pointed to my glass coffee table. Like the rest of the apartment, the living room was small, but it was my favorite room in the place, with my fish tanks along the far wall and the long brown leather couch along the other. Going to the fridge, I grabbed the beers with my good hand.
“So you’re staying, then? I don’t want you to feel obligated to help in the morning,” I said as I returned.
“I want to.” He winked at me. “I better text my mom that I’ll be gone.”
“Gonna get busted for staying out?”
“It’s called common courtesy.” He gave me the same cold stare he’d given the nurse. “They don’t care if I’m gone or wait up for me or anything like that.”
“And you’re out to your whole family?” Given that he’d pretty much announced his sexuality within ten minutes of meeting me, I assumed it wasn’t a huge secret. But I still couldn’t picture a universe where one’s parents wouldn’t cringe at the implication that their kid might be getting laid—in any orientation.
He grabbed a slice of pizza before answering. “Yeah. I’ve never not been out. I was ten or so when I told my mom I was going to marry my friend Todd. Luckily, she didn’t freak.”
“Nice mom.”
“Well, my cousin Vic was already out by that point.”
“Vic’s gay?” I tried to match this information up against what I knew of the man—large, bald-by-choice, tats.
“Very. He’s got a hot new boyfriend. They’re very exclusive.” He said it like I might be tempted to go sampling in those waters. “Anyway, my folks were already moving toward being more open when I started talking about wanting to kiss boys and stuff. I told the rest of the family I was gay senior year, when they kept asking why I wasn’t taking a girl to prom. It wasn’t a big deal.”
“Must be nice.” I struggled to keep the jealousy out of my voice. It sounded like something out of a liberal sitcom.
“Your folks weren’t thrilled?” He sounded surprised.
“My dad gut punched me when I told him. We haven’t spoken since. My mom’s a bit under his thumb.” That’s putting it mildly. “But we talk every so often. I don’t want to make things worse for her, so I don’t really visit.”
“That’s terrible.” Eyes going wide, Lance reached out and patted my knee. “My family is huge and crazy, but I can’t imagine being cut off from them.”
The concern in his eyes made my throat tighten, stole my appetite. I hated talking about this shit. It hadn’t been the first time my dad had laid hands on me, but it was certainly the last. I’d screamed the truth in the middle of an argument about my future and ended up with said future crashing down around my shoulders.
“It’s not all terrible. Surprisingly, my grandmother was cooler with it than my folks. I stayed with her some in college.”
“Yeah.” Lance didn’t sound convinced, and his eyes still had something suspiciously like pity in them. He was still young and idealistic enough to think of family as a good thing, and to see its lack as an injury. Me, I was doing just fine on my own.
“Jesus, my hand hurts.” Even eating the pizza one-handed, my injured hand still kept throbbing.
“Take one of the pain pills they gave you.” He got off the couch and got me a glass of water. He didn’t even need to ask where the glasses were, getting the cabinet right on the first try.
“Pain meds are going to make me sleepy.” I went ahead and took the stupid pill.
“That’s okay.” He touched my face. “And we don’t have to do anything. I’ll still stay, even if you’re too tired to put out.”
“Too tired, huh?” I put down my plate and tugged him over to me. I captured his surprised mouth in a kiss. He tasted like good beer and tomatoes and the memory of our first time—all the sweetness and closeness of that encounter wrapped up in a long, slow slide of lips and tongues.
Breathing heavily, he broke away. “I’m done with dinner. If you’re going to pass out after, maybe we should go to the bedroom?”
“Yeah.” My limbs already felt heavy and I wasn’t sure if it was from the meds or the kissing or simply from hanging with Lance. He was like my favorite quilt—cuddly yet substantial, with all sorts of interesting layers and textures, and I wanted to sink into him.