Page 14 of Love Notes

“It’s gorgeous,” he said, leading me through to the small kitchen.“That view of the lake from the loft is to die for.”

“Yeah.When I bought the place, the family that owned it used to come out here for vacations and put the kids in the loft.There was just a ladder then.First thing I did was put the stairs in.”

“You built the stairs?”Adam raised his eyebrows.

I rubbed the back of my neck.“Yeah.And renovated the kitchen and the bathroom.Everything else was in pretty good shape, though, so there wasn’t too much work.”

His mouth twitched in a smile.“As though the kitchen and the bathroom aren’t the hardest part!Even I know that, and I’ve never picked up a hammer in my life.I’ve just watched a lot of shows about flipping houses.”

“Yeah, it took a while, but I liked doing it.I’ve done a lot of work for other people’s houses, but this was the first time I got to do it for myself.”

Adam trailed his fingers along the maple butcher block countertop.“Well, it looks amazing.”

“Thanks.”A lot of the countertop was covered in meal prep stuff, including what looked like a half-made Caesar salad, carrots sliced into slivers, and a bunch of asparagus.A pair of steaks were sitting on a plate near the stove, waiting to go in the pan.“Do you need a hand with anything?”

“No, it’s all under control,” Adam said with a smile.“Go and sit down and make yourself comfortable.”Then he laughed.“In your own house.Yeah, that’s weird.”

It was a little.

I went and sat on the couch in the living room, listening to Adam move around my kitchen, opening and closing the cabinets and drawers as he looked for whatever he needed.I was tempted to get up and help—it wouldn’t take me three tries to find the tongs—but he was my host, and he’d already said he was fine.

I smiled at the little wooden alien who’d migrated from the shelf onto the coffee table and was currently exploring a strange new world made up of notebooks and pens and a laptop.

The sizzle of the steaks in the pan told me Adam had found everything he needed, and his question confirmed it: “How do you like your steak?”

“Medium rare, but I’m not fussy.”

“That’s lucky, because I can’t make any promises, but I’ll do my best.”

I laughed and picked the alien up.He was one of my earliest attempts at whittling, and rougher around the edges than the others.He was the first alien I’d whittled, after starting on the simple animals that Mr.Carver had recommended, like doves and fish.Well, he was the first I’d successfully whittled; there were more than a few misshapen wooden bodies buried in the yard of Mom’s old house in town that would be sure to confuse the people who lived there now if they ever dug them up.

I rubbed my thumb over the alien’s tiny smile, my mouth twitching.I hadn’t known about saints when I was a kid—a side-effect of being raised by non-religious parents—but I’d still ended up with my own shrine, hadn’t I?Not that I believed in magical aliens who’d whisk me away from all my problems anymore, and hadn’t for over half my life now, but I still felt like I owed them something, whether they existed or not.

“Oh,” Adam said, pulling me from my thoughts as he rounded the corner from the kitchen.“Dinner’s ready!If you’re reading my notebooks, please feel free to rewrite every single one of my plot points, because they’re all terrible.Also, if you could tell me who the murderer is, that would be great.”

“Uh,” I said, and held up the alien.“Sorry, I was just chilling with this guy.”

“Oh, he’s been helping me write,” Adam said with a grin.“Or helping me not write, which seems to be what’s really happening.You know how software engineers solve problems by explaining them to a rubber duck?Well, I’m explaining my outline to this little alien.It’s not really working, but I’m willing to give him another chance just to avoid actually putting words in a document.”His grin grew wry.“I’m a hell of a procrastinator.”

“Sorry he’s not more helpful,” I said, setting the alien back down on the coffee table as I stood.I nodded at the shelf.“Maybe you should try one of the foxes.They might be sneaky enough to plot a murder.”

Adam laughed, his eyes dancing.“Maybe I should.”

The table in the kitchen was small.If there had been any more of us, we would have been knocking elbows as we ate, but it was just right for two people.Usually when I had guests, we sat at the fire pit outside or on the couch, but it was rare that I invited people for a sit-down dinner.I wasn’t an overly sociable person, but I liked to eat out for a bit of variety.If it was just me, I’d be living off sandwiches.

“So tell me about you, Ryan,” Adam said as we began to eat.“I know you live in an amazing lakeside cabin, usually, and you have a sister called Rebecca and a bunch of fun friends and that you make amazing things—wait, no, I’m not going to say ‘wood.’That seems like an awkward word to say on our first date.”

“But you just said it anyway,” I pointed out, a tiny thrill running through me at hearing him call this our first date, implying he wanted at least a second one.“I got over the wood jokes in high school, trust me.”

“Oh, you heard a lot of them?”

“There isn’t a variation of ‘Ryan loves playing with his wood’ that I haven’t heard, yeah.”

Adam snorted.

“But that’s all about there is to me,” I said.“The stuff you already know.I don’t have an exciting life.I’m actually pretty boring.”

“You say that like I’m supposed to think it’s a bad thing,” he said.

---