Page 54 of Stoker's Serenity

I had to turn my music up kind of loud, but it worked for me. Something about metal music, if I wasn’t in the right mood for it, could completely set my teeth on edge. So, I plugged my music into my head and laughed at the four waiting plastic pitchers on Stoker’s kitchen counter.

He really liked my tea.

I stretched and tucked my phone into the waistband of my layered handkerchief skirt, the black gauzy material shifting against my bare and freshly shaven legs. I wore it paired with a black, form-fitting, spaghetti-strapped cami and a pair of black, strappy sandals.

It was the height of my version of casual and made me look modern and chic. Probably it was the most modern-looking outfit I owned, aside from my work clothes. I sighed and went to the dining room table, and pulled out the two boxes of tea bags, and the milk-carton-style box of superfine baking sugar. I liked how it melted better in the hot water.

I rooted around in Stoker’s kitchen and found the absolute bare minimum. Like, really, it was painful. He, at least, had a set of dry measuring cups and one wet. I found the three-quarter dry cup, four cereal bowls that would do, and set the tea kettle on to boil.

I worked to the sounds of Florence + The Machine, measuring out sugar, unwrapping an insane amount of tea bags and using the little binder clips I had to fetch out of the grocery bag to secure the bags to the sides of the pitchers so I didn’t have to go fish.

I went through five kettles of water. Once the tea was set to brewing, I set a fifteen-minute timer on my phone and went to see if I had room in the fridge to put them all in when they were done.

I swear someone needed to be standing by with a camera to catch the look on my face when I opened that fridge. I started laughing, probably way harder than I should have, at the discovery I made.

The fridge was empty except for a few condiments in the door and some lunch meat and cheese slices in one of the vegetable drawers. So, yeah, there was plenty of room for the pitchers of tea – once I removed the brand new pressure cooker with the big red bow holding a note to it from the top shelf.

Hopefully having one here buys my sorry ass some cooking lessons.

It was hysterical, but in that way that told me I was ridiculously tired, and definitelyneeded a break from life. That was supposed to be what this weekend was all about: a break, from my life, and a further introduction to Stoker’s.

I took the cook pot from the refrigerator and set it on an empty expanse of counter, plucking the bow and the note from the front of it. I still giggled about it. It waspretty funny. A light touch fell on my shoulder a moment or two later, and I jumped, shrieking, pulling the earphones from my ears.

“It’s okay! It’s okay! It’s just me.” Stoker stood in the middle of the kitchen, his hand pressed to his own chest as we panted in unison from our mutual frights and laughed nervously.

“Food’s here,” he said. “We ordered pizza, thought you might be hungry.”

“Oh, my god, you’re a lifesaver. I’m starving,” I said.

“Figured that might be the case.”

“Yo, man! We good?”

“Yeah!” Stoker called out, and the rest of the men from his band filed in.

“Oh, sorry, um, let me get that,” I said hastily, and rushed to get my bags away from the four-person table.

“You’re cool, we got it.” Finn waved me down and winked one vivid amber eye at me. I hadn’t looked too closely at any of their faces in the garage. He was handsome, his light brown hair in dreadlocks to his waist and held back by one of the ropes wound around the mass of them at the back of his neck.

Gideon looked perpetually dour, his long, dyed black hair shaggy around his face and in dire need of a cut, to lose the split ends, and a deep conditioning treatment, to deal with the uncontrollable frizz of damage to it. He had a deep, five o’clock shadow that shaded the hollows of his cheeks, making his already-sharp cheekbones into razors. He could be handsome, if he only didn’t look so angry and miserable.

Rory looked the least ‘rock star’ of the four of them, his hair a nice and orderly business cut and a light brown. He smiled at me and gave a nod, setting the two extra-large pizza boxes on the table.

“Gonna put this in the bedroom,” Stoker murmured, and hefted my overnight bag. I’d packed light – as in my lightest, airiest dresses and skirts – I was prepared not only for hot weather but also a ride if Stoker decided to take me on one. The weight of the bag was pretty much solely my jeans and a pair of boots that I had packed just in case.

I went and got plates and a roll of paper towels from the kitchen while the guys took seats at the table. I had planned to just get a slice and return to stand at the counter while the guys sat, but Stoker pulled me onto his lap instead. I laughed nervously, certainly not overly used to public displays of affection.

“Best seat in the house,” he told me with a wink.

Dinner was pleasant. When the timer went off for the tea, I squeezed out the bags carefully, as they were hot, added the simple syrup to each pitcher, and then filled them the rest of the way from the cold tap.

“Any of that good to drink, now?” Rory asked.

“Um, yeah as long as there’s ice.”

“About the only thing I keep well-stocked in that freezer,” Stoker joked, and he got up and helped me by filling glasses with ice.

One pitcher was gone between the five of us, and so I put more water on to boil; might as well refill it now while I still had the bags out.

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