Page 97 of Aftersome
Not anything.
“Here’s the remote.” He grabbed it off a couch arm and handed it to me. “Help yourself to the kitchen, and bathroom is just in that hallway we were walking through.”
He went to walk away but I quickly accepted his escape.
“Well, what about you? Aren’t you hungry?”
Peering back at me, he almost looked surprised that I was asking.
“I can try to make us something for dinner? No guarantees it’ll be good, though. I’m not exactly known for my cooking skills.” I chuckled, pushing back some pink strands that were getting in the way.
His throat bobbed.
“That’s fine. Use whatever you can find and I’ll come back down to check on you when I’m done.”
Mal looked nervous, and within seconds he vanished, leaving me alone and even more confused than before. Then with the shake of my head, I headed toward the kitchen. It took me a minute or two to find the light switch, but once I did, everything was now illuminated.
This was a nightmare of a kitchen for a non-cooker like me. Fancy appliances, an array of pots, pans, and knives, already I could see myself failing before I had even started. Everything was clean and organized, and to further confirm that, I opened almost every drawer he had.
Nothing was out of place.
Freakishly so.
I found the pantry soon after and sifted through all his food. From top to bottom, I came across many options but settled on something easy—spaghetti. Grabbing a box of angel hair noodles, a can of pasta sauce, and some garlic bread, I got to work.
Soon, I had a pot of water on the stove boiling and found some ground beef in his fridge that I could brown up. Luckily, there were no mishaps yet and not too long after, had my noodles almost finished and the garlic bread cooling off from being in the oven.
“I was expecting at least something burnt or dirty dishes all over the place,” Mal announced from behind me, causing me to almost drop the pot of noodles onto the floor.
“No burnt food here.” I smiled confidently, until my eyes landed on the plate of garlic bread. “Well, at least seven out of ten of them aren’t burnt.”
As I carried the pot of boiling water and noodles over to the sink, I took a quick glance over at Mal who was standing with one hand propped behind him on the counter. He looked better, as if the shower had helped his mood, but it was the lack of shirt—again—that had my thoughts all scrambled up.
My throat went dry almost immediately.
In only a pair of black sweats, he looked every bit of a woman's fantasy. An extremely good-looking man standing barefoot and shirtless in the kitchen as he watched you cook.
Sounded too good to be true, but here I was, right in the middle of it.
“Looks good to me. When you said you weren’t a good cook, I was thinking more on the lines of, you might burn the house down.
He grinned as my cheeks went flush.
Little did he know that was exactly what I almost did to my house, but he didn’t need to know that.
“I’m bad, but not that bad.”
Once I had the noodles strained and the sauce warmed up, I went to grab some plates.
“Why don’t you go sit down and relax. I can bring you a plate,” I offered, but he seemed reluctant to do so.
His top teeth gnawed along his bottom lip, but then on a sigh, he pushed his back away from the counter and nodded.
“Fine,” he grunted.
I had a feeling Mal wasn’t used to having someone to look out for him. I mean, obviously he wasn’t when he’d never hadanyone else in his home besides me. He was so used to being in control all the time and now that he was injured and had me here to help him, he felt useless.
But in no way did I see it that way.
