Trevor got up the next morning and found a grocery list waiting for him on the kitchen table. It was not their usual sort of list and not his regular shopping day, but his grandmother must have been up early watching a new cooking show. He and Ellie went for their jog, then he showered before heading out to shop as requested.
He was surprised again when he came home and found his grandmother already in the kitchen, where she recruited Trevor into food prep, to try again to make him a better cook. Trevor would have complained but paying attention and actually trying was a refreshing change in routine.
Then his grandma said, “Is Sky still eating those noodles you made me try?”
She had not enjoyed her cup of instant ramen, although she had researched real ramen with interest afterward.
Trevor snorted. “Yes. Sometimes I can get him to add vegetables to them, but for that he has to have the vegetables on hand first.”
“You know,” his grandmother said, in a tone that should have warned him, “if you could cook, you could make sure he eats right. The thing about men,” she paused and looked vaguely embarrassed, although, like Trevor, she was not an easy blusher, “some men,” she corrected herself, “is that you need to woo them through their stomachs.”
Trevor was so proud of how smoothly she’d referred to Sky, as opposed to how his dad sometimes still hesitated over it despite being introduced to Sky with the use of he/him, that Trevor decided not to contest anything else she’d said, except to remind her that he and Sky weren’t dating anymore.
His grandma stopped what she was doing to look Trevor up and down with her eyebrows raised high. “Okay,” she said at last, shaking her head. “But you can still cook for him. And for other men too, if you can find any as patient as that one. Anyway,” she went on, grumbling, “who am I going to pass my recipes on to? Your mother? Save me from that fate.”
“Grandma!” Trevor objected with delight. But there was no better reason to finally accept the cooking lessons.
Except maybe one.
But that was no longer under discussion, unless he counted his grandmother reminding him to thank Sky for her extremely bootleg-looking DVD “Best Of” set of some Swinging Sixties spy show that she and Sky must have talked about over email.
It was only when his grandmother got out the 1980s CorningWare dishes with glass lids that she used to take food to events or to grieving family members that Trevor understood that the extra cooking was about more than giving him lessons.
He might have complained to her about G.G.’s situation too much the night before. But G.G. had looked a mess and clearly must not have family or friends close by for him to call on in his time of need. Trevor could only imagine the horrors if G.G. had gotten seriously ill in that house all by himself. And who knew how much blood he’d lost in the first place by taking the time to clean up the kitchen before going to the hospital.
His grandmother had listened to all of that with an unhappy expression and tutted several times when Trevor had gotten to the part about all the pet stuff clearly meant for more than one spoiled kitty.
Still, Trevor was caught off guard when he came back into the kitchen after pulling some weeds and playing with Ellie in the backyard and his grandmother cornered him by the fridge. She put a glass lid over a cooled dish of half-Cheesy Cauliflower Rice Casserole and half-Cheesy Potato Casserole “in case G.G. was carb conscious and wanted options” and placed the dish in his hands.
Trevor was red in the face and sweaty, as well as wearing the hat he wore in the garden which said Point Pleasant, WV in big, blocky letters, and in smaller script above it, only obvious from very close, Mothman ate my ass in... with a silhouette of Mothman in the background.
Trevor had forgotten the “ate my ass” part the first few times he’d put it on to garden, and by the time he’d remembered, his grandmother must have seen it already and chosen not to acknowledge it. She wouldn’t be pleased about him wearing it out now. But making a big deal out of changing to go see G.G. would make his grandma suspect something was up.
Nothing was up, but her thinking something was would make the nothing more obvious.
Or something. Trevor was a little overheated.
But, dirty and probably smelly, he headed over to G.G.’s with the gift of a double casserole.
He was prepared to wait a while for G.G. to come to the door but not for the sight of G.G. looking significantly more mussed and rumpled. He had managed to change his t-shirt but his eyes had deep shadows beneath them. Trevor guessed the strong painkiller had worn off.
“If you need something, I can do a grocery store or pharmacy run,” Trevor said instead of hello or good afternoon. The grocery store delivered but delivery times could be later than people wanted, depending on demand.
G.G. blinked several times. He focused briefly on Trevor’s hat, then on the rest of him, then his face. “You want to go to the pharmacy for me?”
Want to was not the phrasing Trevor would have used. Not out loud.
“I’m willing. You know. Neighbors.” He cleared his throat in such a cartoonishly fake way that he felt like a Muppet. Kermit, specifically. “My grandma likes you, and I really do go to the pharmacy all the time anyway. For her, I mean. Not me. Not yet. I’m only twenty-eight, though age and disability come for us all, right? No way to pretend otherwise without being ageist and ableist.” Trevor was not normally inclined to talk too much without alcohol in his system. He had no idea if this was pandemic isolation-related or if it had something to do with the fast beat of his heart.
Then he thought, Oh, this is a full-blown crush now. Fuck.
He’d forgotten how annoying crushes were.
Then he wondered how long it had been a crush, only to realize it had been at least since he had seen that fucking cat tree, but probably longer.
“Twenty-eight?” G.G. gave Trevor a sleepy look almost like a frown, which made Trevor sigh internally at how cute it was even while he half-expected G.G. to make some sort of joke about Trevor’s generation.
“Yeah,” Trevor confirmed, refusing to be sheepish about his age even though it was one more reason there was nothing up between them. “I know I look older because….” He waved a hand over his head to refer to his lack of hair, only to then recall that he had a hat on. G.G. focused on the hat again. Trevor rushed back to their previous topic of conversation. “So, about the pharmacy… if you need me to grab an antibiotic prescription or ibuprofen or something, let me know.”
G.G. had raised his head at “ageist and ableist” but didn’t return to that topic. He said, slowly and carefully, “I was in the ER. Masked, but I should still be careful around your grandmother.” His voice must be husky all the time. He paused and some of his usual sharp perception returned. “Her arthritis is getting worse, isn’t it? Among her other issues. I’d hate to cause her more problems.”
He really did notice things.
Trevor nodded slowly, warm and fuzzy for a man giving a shit about his grandma. “Yeah, it is. It’s not the worst case and she’s still pretty mobile, but there’s no repairing it. Even if she gets the full hip replacement, that leaves her knees and hands, and then there’s the recovery and that impact. Honestly, that’s less of our concern right now though. Thyroid,” he explained, as though he’d known anything about thyroids a few months ago. But G.G. was older, so maybe he knew about them already. Maybe he’d dealt with aging relatives with wonky thyroid glands plenty of times. “And my grandpa was a smoker for years when they were both younger, so who even knows with her lungs. Now we have to be extra careful with her and all this.” All this being how Trevor’s father referred to the current state of the world, a phrase which had caught on with the whole family. “But, um, yes. Yeah. I try to take care with her.”
“She’s fortunate to have you there,” G.G. said quietly, leaving Trevor staring at him for several seconds too many.
He looked down and remembered the casseroles.
He held the dish out and felt like a desperately lonely, touch-starved pervert when their hands brushed as G.G. took it from him. G.G. was considering the food with an expression best described as consternation. That was cute too.
He might have been wondering how to get away with not eating the strange food his neighbors had brought him, which was fair. But Trevor doubted he’d been cooking anything; he probably wasn’t eating much at all at the moment. He’d had a serious injury, and trying to keep something like a dominant hand immobile or trying to use it despite the stitches could cause real pain, and that kind of constant pain did not make people want to eat. Trevor had broken his forearm as a kid and remembered the experience vividly.
Judging from the t-shirt, sweatpants, and slightly unkempt beard, G.G. was already having issues trying to get things done with one good hand.
Trevor couldn’t make him eat, but obviously, he had to at least try to make it easier for him.
“It’s part of a cauliflower rice casserole and part of a potato one. Identical except for those two main ingredients. Grandma wasn’t sure about your dietary preferences. There’s milk and cheese in them as well. And garlic and broccoli, if you’re allergic to either of those. She didn’t use the bacon the recipes called for. All you have to do is pop the dish in the oven to warm the food up.”
Trevor stared back innocently when G.G. looked up at him with his eyebrows raised.
Griffons were supposed to have a lot of wisdom. At least, according to some tabletop games. They also might potentially rip someone to pieces with their talons.
G.G. didn’t look close to ripping Trevor to pieces. He looked touched, but also like he didn’t know what to do about that.
“I promise it’s not poisoned,” Trevor said lightly, although he didn’t feel light watching G.G. struggle to comprehend that someone had done something nice for him. “Judging from her grocery list this morning, she’s planning on making more meals for you,” he revealed. “And I will bring them over, because there’s no telling her no, and because it’s no trouble for me to do it.”
That was close to pushy, so even though G.G. didn’t object, Trevor stepped back and smiled. “She’s also been bored and I think trying new recipes gives her something to do. You’re doing her a favor.”
The fierce stare returned. But instead of calling Trevor out, G.G. said, “She doesn’t have to.”
“Oh, she fully knows that,” Trevor assured him. “But she probably will. When I lived on my own, she would make ‘bachelor food’ comments about me and bring me all kinds of dishes. You’ve given her an excuse to fuss. Sorry not sorry.”
“Fuss?” G.G. echoed.
Trevor caught himself as he was about to say, “Yeah, you know how families are.” Not everyone had families who fussed, lovingly or otherwise. Sky’s family didn’t. They loved him, but fussing was not their brand. They were a ‘go on vacation over the holidays, not visit your loved ones’ type of family. Send a card with money in it for graduation, but only maybe attend the graduation itself.
Actually, in Trevor’s family, it was really him and his grandma who were the fussers to the degree that they were. But the others still jumped into the group chat with advice, needling, and gossip.
“Bring the dish back whenever you feel up to it,” Trevor said instead of more family talk. “Or wait, and I’ll collect it when I’m back with the next one.”
He might have flashed a bright smile with that part, but it didn’t matter since G.G.’s phone buzzed from one of his pockets. G.G. made no move to check it, but he couldn’t, awkwardly balancing a casserole dish on his forearm and one hand.
Trevor backed up another step, taking the cue to stop bothering the mythological beast in sweatpants. Which was probably for the best. Another few minutes and Trevor would have been offering to put the food in the oven for him.
Trevor spent an hour being corrected by his grandmother on his knife technique, which was informative both in the sense that he needed to learn the skill and thus needed the correction, and also in how it reminded him of how much he hated being told what to do.
Though his grandma was nicer about it than his teachers or some others in the family had been. She didn’t ridicule him or get short-tempered; she reminded him it was for his own good and then told him that he was doing a good job for someone who had to unlearn the incorrect methods first.
Since Sky would absolutely have found Trevor being told “good job” funny, Trevor took several pictures of the process, including one of him sweating over a pot of potatoes and another of an artfully arranged salad full of tomato, red onion, and slices of hardboiled egg.
He hadn’t realized timing boiling eggs was essential to getting them the perfect yellow, but the time management aspect of cooking was appealing to his weird brain. Although that was also another thing that would make Sky give him an amused study. Because of course Trevor would be interested in the planning and logistics part of the meal first.
Look at what I helped make. Not just the chopping. I actually cooked this time.
He sent that with the pictures and got a reply not long afterward.
You’re cooking? Like real food?
Well, I stirred and added herbs and things. I’m learning.
“If that’s Sky, tell him thank you if you haven’t already,” Trevor’s grandmother cut into the exchange pleasantly instead of ordering Trevor to pay attention to the food.
Grandma says thank you.
Sky somehow managed to convey a chirp with text. She is very welcome. You learning for any special reason?
Trevor took a picture of his grandmother while she taste-tested the salad dressing. The picture showed his grandma, small and freckled, short white hair held out of her face with a barrette. Her shirt and loose pants could double as pajamas. She made a face that wrinkled her nose when she saw what Trevor was doing but allowed it.
She doesn’t trust anyone else with her recipes. It had been gratifying for her to say that, but…. But she says I have to learn the basics of chopping and pans and spices before I’m allowed to really cook. She also had another reason for teaching Trevor all this. I’ll have to cook for you properly someday. When I don’t suck. If I don’t suck.
Cook for mw
Which was a typo and not even a sentence, so Trevor didn’t know how to respond. Maybe Sky assumed Trevor would be a terrible cook and was worried. Trevor tried to reassure him. Yeah of course. But you don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to.
Sky seemed to have resolved his typo problem. Surprised you didn’t take some food to Hot Neighbor
That was a jump. Except for smart-boy wizards, probably. Trevor didn’t even try to keep up.
We did. Grandma’s idea.
Trevor had to pull the chicken out of the oven so his grandmother wouldn’t have to. When he picked up his phone again, Sky had sent several messages in row.
It would be wasted on me.
I barely notice food.
But you can learn anything you put your mind to. You always have. At least once you banish the haters.
Trevor frowned at his phone for several moments, then frowned some more while setting two places at the table.
The haters part he decided to think about later or not at all. The rest…. Sky did notice food, just not like a foodie did. He appreciated it when it was put in front of him, but he was never going to cook for himself or have any interest in doing so.
Good food for your big brain, Trevor finally replied. Pretty, nourishing dishes I’m going to set in front of you like a feast from the Redwall books so I know for a fact you’re well fed.
He’d handfeed Sky if he had to.
He watched Sky type and stop typing and then type again, the text version of squirming and frowning and trying to wriggle out of Trevor’s hold before eventually surrendering. I think I’d like that.
He was still trying to wriggle with that ‘I think,’ but Trevor didn’t press the issue. He really would be happy to know Sky was eating better.
I’ll step up my lessons, he assured Sky, then put his phone away to go bring the food to the table so his grandma would sit down.