Page 78 of Baiting Kong

“Alright, if I dice this beef and these shrimp any smaller, they’ll be unrecognizable.”

“Dude, they look like you hacked the shit out of them,” Carl said, cocking his head as he studied the pile on the cutting board.

Okay, that was fair. When Axel looked over, all he saw was a mound of red sitting beside another round of translucent white. He wouldn’t have a clue what the hell it had started as if Kong hadn’t said something.

“Guess I gotta get up now,” Scout said, caressing Axel’s hip.

“Awe!” he whined, sliding off Scout’s lap.

As much as Axel wanted to remain there and feel Scout continue to grow harder beneath him, Axel’s grumbling stomach urged him to get a move on so they could eat. Still, Axel stayed by Scout’s side when he returned to the stove and turned on a pan he already had oil in, caressing Scout’s lower back while he waited for it to get hot. One after the other, Scout added ingredients that already sat diced in little bowls; some, like the carrots, onions, and garlic, Axel recognized; a few others he didn’t, but they sure smelled good when Scout tossed them in the pan.

“Where are the peas?” Carl asked.

Scout scrunched his nose and stuck his tongue out at that. “Ick.”

“Seriously? You really intend to make fried rice without them?”

“Yup. There was no asparagus at the store, which is what I usually use in place of peas, so I said,Fuck it, grabbed some broccoli florets, and called it good.”

They were diced in a bowl on the counter, but it was the meat Scout added next, before passing Kong a bowl and asking him to crack three eggs into it. Scout cooked those in the pan after the meat and those yummy-smelling bits had finished cooking and been added to the rice along with the brocoli. He folded them all together with the spatula and sprinkled some chopped green things on top, before finally adding the egg bits he’d carefully broken up while he was frying them.

“What are those?” Axel asked, pointing at the green things that had caught his attention.

“Green onions,” he explained. “They are kinda like when you see onions start to sprout. They’ll taste way better than peas, I promise.”

“Anything tastes better than peas,” Axel muttered.

“Seriously, another pea hater?” Carl said.

“Make that three,” Kong replied, waving at him before turning his attention back to the dishes he’d been carefully rinsing before loading into the dishwasher.

“Oh, that reminds me, I picked up more dishwasher pods too,” Scout said. “And I threw the old, empty box away. What the fuck, man? How are you gonna get on our cases about peas when you literally put an empty box back in the cupboard to offer false hope to whoever went to run the dishwasher next?”

“He did that to me the other night with the laundry soap too,” Axel chimed in. “Went to load the compartment only to have the bottle spit out the tiniest dribble ever known to man.”

“Oh, you’re one of those,” Kong remarked, smirking over his shoulder at Carl.

“I throw the old shit away once I bring home replacements,” Carl muttered.

“Which you might have an easier time doing if you’d toss ‘em when they were empty and add them to the list on that notepad you’ve got hanging over there,” Kong said, pointing out the paper on a chain that hung from a magnet attached to the refrigerator.

“There may be some truth to that,” he muttered as he started wiping down the counters.

Soon they were all seated at the table Axel set while Scout finished cooking dinner and plated portions for everyone.

“This smells amazing,” Axel said as he leaned over his plate to inhale the aroma. “Who taught you to cook?

“Not a who, a what,” he explained. “YouTube. Growing up, my old man used to try all kinds of recipes. Some were pretty awesome, but others were complete disasters because there were no pictures to show him what the end result was supposed to look like. Then Sawyer showed him how to use YouTube, and Dad and I got sucked into a whole world of cooking videos, which led to experimentation with a wide variety of things we were curious to try. Now whenever I see something I want to make, I find a few videos, watch them, gather the ingredients, and see if I can pull it off.”

“I’d say you nailed this dish,” Kong said, raising a forkful before shoveling it between his lips.

“Thanks for helping,” Scout said.

“Was better than spending the evening seeing how many beers I could put away.”

“Much better,” Axel murmured, thinking about his old man and how that used to be the first thing he reached for when he rolled out of bed. “My old man came by the gas station today. Sober.”

Looking over at Carl, Axel flashed him a smile.

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