Page 22 of Home Between Homes

I stepped aside to give him room to work while still being close enough to see what he was doing. “Go ahead.”

He added a teaspoon of the orange paste to the pot and stirred it in. “Let it sit for a minute, then try again.” He turned to go back to the table.

“Oh no, you try it first,” I said with a grin, stopping him in his tracks. “How else will I knowyouhaven’t poisoned it?”

“Why do we keep talking about poisoning each other?” He came back and leaned against the counter. “You know I don’t want to poison you, right?” His eyes were between the pot and me as if he didn’t dare look me in the eye.

“Same. Sorry. I have a weird sense of humor I can’t turn off.”

“No, don’t get me wrong. I like it. You had it back then, too. Every time I asked if I could look at your notes, you had a snarky comment ready.”

“Did I? Like what?”

He blushed. “I don’t know. I can’t remember every line. But it was always something like, ‘Can’t you ask a boy to dinner first?’ Or something like that.” He shook his head sheepishly. “It doesn’t sound so funny when I say it. You had to be there.”

“Judging by your story, I was.”

He looked at me, blinking hard. His mouth opened for a moment, closed, then opened again. “Can I confess something?”

“Is it that you would have asked me to dinner if my jokes hadn’t intimidated you?”

“Yeah,” he laughed, now supporting himself with both hands. His shoulders rounded forward, shortening his neck.

Damn.Seeing him so shy made me want to get closer to him even more. “Well, we’re going to have dinner in a few minutes,” I replied. “Better late than never, right?”

His lips curled up and looked too inviting not to stare at them.

“I know this is going to sound strange,” I continued, “but I’m glad you didn’t ask me back then. I probably would’ve turned you down anyway. And if not, I would have ruined the evening by only talking about classes. The two guys I dated in college made sure to let me know how annoying that was when they broke up with me.”Why did I tell him that?“Anyway, do you want to have dinner with me now?”

“I do, but...” The corners of Jack’s mouth turned up more. “...youdated two guysat the same timein college?”

The smug smile on his face as he teased me made me nudge his shoulder. “Yeah, and a clown, a drag queen, and Bigfoot. All at the same time.”

“Wow, you were busy. Good thing I waited then, huh?”

We stared at each other like fools for another second before he pushed himself off the counter and held his nose over the pot. “Let’s see if you like what I did to your soup.” He filled the spoon and blew on it, but instead of tasting it himself, he held it up to me, his other hand underneath to catch any drops that might fall.

I blew on it again and let him put it in my mouth. My tongue was greeted with a much more colorful and slightly spicy dish that tasted a thousand times better than what I could’ve achieved on my own.

“Do you like it?”

“Which old lady do we have to thank for this trick?”

“Mrs. Candice.”

“Seems like she has a knack for spicing things up.”

We both laughed. Hard. It was relaxing. What a way to spend Christmas Eve.

SEVEN

NO COLD FEET

We pouredthe soup into bowls, sat down at the table, and filled our bodies with the spicy warmth of what we had cooked together. It was a good decision because the more time I spent in the house, the more I noticed that the floor wasn’t as warm as it felt when we came back from outside.

While we ate, we complimented each other on our joint accomplishment. We talked about nothing in particular, just what TV shows we both liked and what Jack did for fun around Seastone (short answer: enjoying the peace and nature; for anything else, he had to drive at least forty minutes to neighboring Ashbourne). Our conversation would have been unspectacular if his feet hadn't made contact with mine three times, only to be quickly pulled away each time with an apology, as if it had been an accident.

When he finished his bowl, he leaned back and brushed his right foot against mine again. He rolled his eyes. “I’m sorry. This table is too small for my stupidly long legs.” He slapped his hands on the tabletop, but before he could pull his feet away, I put mine on his to stop him this time.

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