“Yes, ma’am,” he said as we moved into the kitchen.
I’d planned on making lasagna, since I had everything for it. I’d never gotten to cook when the house was so empty, so it would have been nice, but I had a tall and lurky shadow.
“What can I do, oh kitchen goddess?” He held out his hands as if he was waiting for me to put something in them.
“First of all, you can get out of my way.” He moved aside as I assembled the ingredients. I was going to make it with pepperoni, but figured I could skip it and then Taylor wouldn’t have to worry about trying to find the pepperoni-free sections after I’d baked it.
“Here. Chop.” I handed him a knife and a bag of fresh spinach. I figured he could at least do that much.
“Cutting board?” I got it out and handed it to him as I mixed the rest of the cheeses together.
It was clear after a few seconds that Dusty had only rudimentary culinary skills. Jesus, he couldn’t even hold a knife. Once again, if this were a movie, I’d come up behind him, put my hand over his and show him how to properly use it. During which he would turn slowly, the knife would clatter to the floor and he would sweep me up in a passionate embrace.
What really happened was that I started laughing at him as he mangled the spinach.
“I can hear you laughing at me,” he said, not turning, but putting down the knife. “I’m sorry. I’m used to either ordering out or nuking something in the microwave. This is not in my wheelhouse. At all.” He stared at the spinach as if it was out to get him.
“Then why did you agree to help?”
He turned around and faced me. “Because I wanted to spend time with you.”
“You did.” It wasn’t a question.
“Believe it or not, Red, I enjoy your company.” He gave me a smile as if to say, what do you make of that?
“Even when I’m constantly insulting you?”
Pushing himself away from the counter and toward me, he said, “I especially like that.”
“I thought you said you weren’t into me.” When did swallowing become so hard to do?
That stopped him from his advance across the kitchen.
“I’m not. Can’t I just want to hang out with you? Are you one of those girls who think that guys and girls can’t be friends without one of them falling for the other?”
“No, actually, I’m not.” I’d already proved that not to be true.
He nodded. “Neither am I. So, with that said, would you please finish this so I can stop screwing it up?”
I rolled my eyes and went to take the knife from where he’d set it on the counter.
“I can’t believe you don’t know how to chop. You’re hopeless.”
“But now I have you to teach me, Red.”
I put the knife in my hand, showed him how I gripped it and chopped a few pieces.
“It’s like a teeter-totter. Back and forth.” I held out the knife to him and supervised him from a few feet away until he had it. Sort of. Once he was done with that, I tossed the spinach in the bowl with the cheese mixture and made him use those arms to good advantage by opening the jars of sauce.
I let him layer the noodles and sauce and then it was time to shove the thing in the oven.
“Do you seriously not cook?” I said as I set the timer.
“I seriously don’t.” He hopped up on the counter and started making a drumbeat noise. He was like Hunter with his tapping. Nervous, the pair of them.
“Well, if the zombie apocalypse happens, I guess you’re going to have to learn.”
“That’s only if my cooking skills are needed. It’s far more likely my zombie-slaying powers would be needed.”
Okay, he had a good point, and he knew it.
I just rolled my eyes again and went to the fridge to get the garlic bread. It was premade, so I only had to stick it in the oven with the lasagna at the end so it would get warm. We needed a side dish, but we were out of lettuce, so I found a bag of broccoli in the freezer and put it in a bowl to steam in the microwave.
“Well, if you keep coming here more often, I’m sure Taylor or Darah would rope you into helping with the cooking or baking. They’re big on baking.” Taylor didn’t let a week go by without some form of delicious something getting put in the oven, and Darah was just as bad. They took domestic to a whole new level.
“Can I tell you a secret?” he whispered after dramatically looking around the room. Yes, we were still alone.
“Yeah, sure.” I needed something to do, so I wiped down the already-spotless counters.
“You promise to never, ever reveal this information to anyone at any time for any reason?” He was making a big deal out of this.
“Cross my heart,” I said, making a crossing motion over my chest. It wasn’t my imagination that his eyes went to that area when I did it and lingered longer than they should have.
He hopped off the counter and crooked his finger at me to lean in. I crossed my arms over my chest and turned my ear toward him.
“I’ve never baked anything in my life,” he said, and I almost jumped out of my skin because he was so close to me. His cologne messed with my senses and overwhelmed the smell of the baking lasagna.
My brain stuttered like a freezing car engine in January.
“I—I won’t tell anyone,” I said, stepping away from him and pretending I had something really important to do in the sink.
“So I think the first time I bake something, it should be special. With someone I trust. I don’t want to bake with just anyone.” Why did I have the feeling we weren’t talking about baking anymore?
I knew when I turned around from rinsing the sponge in the sink I would find him there, and I was right.
Even though my hands were wet, he grabbed both of them and knelt in front of me. Jesus H. Christ.
“Will you, Joscelyn Archer, be my first?” I was so, so glad he couldn’t hear what my heart was doing, because it definitely wasn’t beating in a normal fashion.
“Baking, you mean?”
Rising to his feet, but not letting go of my hands, he started to smile.
“What did you think I was talking about, Red?”
Not baking, that was for sure.
Why wouldn’t he let go of my hands? Also, why were his so big? They completely encompassed mine.
The door slammed and Dusty dropped my hands like they were on fire.
“What smells so good?” Renee said, her arms weighed down with bags from the mall. Darah and Taylor were right behind her, equally as burdened.