Page 35 of Roommate
“Never mind.” He shakes his head.
“I might what?” I prod.
He puts his phone onto the countertop charger and avoids my gaze. “I want to learn how to cook a little,” he says. “I can’t afford to eat out every night. Could you, uh, recommend a book you like?”
“You can’t learn from a book,” I tell him. “It’s all about technique. I’ll teach you to cook. It’s the least I could do.” I move closer to him, because this idea excites me. Cooking is fun when there’s someone to feed.
Those brown eyes widen. “Really?”
“Sure. No problem. Cooking is like breathing to me. It’s the only thing I’ve ever learned how to do more quickly than other people seem to.”
That, and blowjobs.
“I’d appreciate it,” he says, jamming his hands in his pockets. He leans back a fraction of an inch, and I realize I’ve invaded his personal space. I do that to everybody when I get jazzed up about something.
I take a healthy step backwards. “Let’s eat this food before my rolls burn.” I open the oven and carefully remove the stainless steel lid to my skillet, which I’ve repurposed as a baking sheet. There are four large rolls ringing the handle.
The skillet itself is on the bottom rack, the roast browning nicely in the pan.
“Whoa,” Kieran says. “That’s impressive.”
“It’s a twelve-dollar roast and a dollar’s worth of flour. This is why I never eat take-out food. Oh, and—” I lift the lid of the saucepan, and the scent of apples rises into the air. “Apples are cheap this time of year.”
He snorts. “They’re free if you’re cousins with Griffin Shipley. I eat so many of them in the fall that I might be fifty percent apple.”
The other fifty percent is beefcake. I keep that idea to myself. But Kieran Shipley is so attractive that my slutty little mind can’t stop noticing him.
I give myself a mental slap and then ask a nosy question. “Audrey lives at the orchard?” I’m super curious about my new bosses. I pluck the rolls off the skillet’s lid and drop them onto the countertop to cool. Then I pull the skillet from the oven, setting it in on the stovetop to rest the roast before I slice it.
“Yup, they have a big spread. The orchard is their main business, but there’s also a small dairy. Griffin makes hard cider, and that’s turning into his biggest moneymaker.”
“Cool.” I can’t imagine the luxury of growing your own food. And getting Kieran talking makes me feel like I’ve won a prize. “Would it be weird to put applesauce inside the sandwich? Because we don’t have silverware, either.”
He shrugs. “You don’t have to feed me at all. But that sounds pretty good to me.”
“Awesome. Give me ten minutes to assemble this, and I will blow your mind with my pork loin.”
Wait, did that come out sounding dirty?
“Thanks,” he says simply. And then he goes upstairs to change.
Kieran
I thought that having Roderick as a roommate would be super weird. But it turns out that when your life is hellaciously busy, you don’t have time to feel weird. After our awkward dinner at the kitchen counter, I don’t see much of him for a while.
The next two weeks are a blur of coffeemaking, Photoshop, and driving to Hardwick for farm labor. Every night I stop at a store on my way home to pick up things I need for the house. I buy a set of plain white plates and bowls. I buy towels and more sheets. A king-sized quilt and blanket.
I buy a couch that’s discounted by half because one of its feet is missing. That’s an easy fix, because we have all kinds of wood scraps in the barn. It only takes me a few minutes to find one that’s the right thickness, and to cut it to size. Nobody looks at a couch’s feet, anyway.
Climbing into bed every night knowing Roderick’s in the house hasn’t been as strange as I’d thought it would be, either. His light is usually off by the time I stagger upstairs after another busy day.
Roderick still sleeps on a sleeping bag in the middle of his empty room. The only thing between him and the wood floor is the camping mattress I lent him. He seems perfectly happy with this arrangement, though. In fact, he looks much better rested than he used to. The circles under his eyes are gone, and he doesn’t fall asleep at work anymore.
And I’ve been grateful he’s kept his promise not to mention the high school incident again.
One Friday night I come home from the ad agency to find Roderick reading a book on my new couch. “Hey!” he says, slapping the book shut. “I was waiting for you. It’s time for your first cooking lesson.”
It’s embarrassing how much I like hearing that he was waiting for me. “What’s on the menu?” I ask, tossing my coat onto a doorknob. I really need to hang some hooks in the entryway. Soon.
