Page 19 of Love It or List It
“Same,” Joe agreed.“Mind blown, ass numb.”
Now that he mentioned it, Austin was feeling the lack of circulation himself.He glanced at his phone.“Jesus, it’s eight o’clock.”
“That explains why I’m so fucking hungry.”Joe used Austin’s shoulder to leverage himself to his feet, then offered his hand.“Come on, you want to go find dinner?”
For a second, Austin stared at it, uncomprehending.
Joe waggled his fingers.
Austin let Joe pull him to his feet.It left them standing close enough for Austin to feel the heat of Joe’s body from his shoulders to his knees.
But it wasn’t just body heat, was it?It was something else, in the light of Joe’s eyes and the fondness in his smile.Something in the way the touch of his palm on Austin’s seemed to linger even after they let go.
Or maybe he was just delirious from hunger.That had to be it.
Austin cleared his throat.“Uh, I mean, I was just going to make mac and cheese with hot dogs in the trailer.But you’re welcome to join me.”
“Well, if you’re rolling out the red carpet like that….”
“It’s not too plebian for you?”Jesus, Austin’s knees had forgotten his feet even existed.He was all pins and needles.On the way down the stairs, he held tight to the railing.
Behind him, Joe huffed a laugh.“Nah, it’ll be just like the dinners I made the kids before I learned to cook things that didn’t come out of a box.Nostalgic, practically.”
Austin shook his head.He’d seen the evidence firsthand, and it still seemed impossible that a teenage boy could collect seven-year-olds like orphaned ducklings—that he would want to.How different would his life be now, if he’d had a Joe when he was that age?
“I’m not much of a cook myself.Never seemed much point.”
They trotted out the side door, down the steps, and across the driveway to the trailer.Austin gestured Joe toward the tiny table while he filled a pot with water and took out the milk and butter.There wasn’t really room for Joe to help.
“Not much family?”
Joe asked the question mildly, in a way that would’ve let Austin brush it off, but he didn’t.Maybebecausehe knew Joe wouldn’t judge him and maybe because Joe didn’t feel sorry for the kids.He just cared for them because someone had to, and he could.“Foster kid,” he said.Joe didn’t need to know all the details.“No one really took the time to teach me when I was young, and once I was on my own, it seemed pointless to cook for one.”
“I hear that.I don’t even do it most of the time, and Ilikecooking.”
Austin had a vision of the farmhouse kitchen, torn up and redone in secondhand cabinets, Joe standing in front of an oven that didn’t match the fridge and the kids crowded around an island or snatching pieces of roasted turkey off a cutting board while his back was turned.He dismissed the thought with a shake of his head.Just because they were fixing up the house didn’t mean they were keeping it.But maybe they’d have time for a celebratory meal before they sold it.
“Well,” Austin said without thinking, “if you’re willing to cook, I’m willing to eat.Or, you know, do cleanup or grocery shop or whatever.”
“Careful or I’ll take you up on that.”He paused.“Though before I cook anything in that kitchen, we have to deal with the fridge.”
Austin snorted and dumped the macaroni into the pot, the hot dogs into his little frying pan.“If you’d let me handle it two weeks ago—”
“We didn’t even know if we could open the windows yet then.They could’ve been painted shut.”
“Well, it’s getting kind of cold to open them now.”
“It’s not like the pipes are going to freeze.And no one’s sleeping in there at the moment.It’ll be fine.”
For God’s sake.Austin shuffled the hot dogs over, pulled out the colander to drain the pasta.“Why are you okay with it now when you were dead set against it before?And don’t give me the window line.”
When he didn’t get an answer right away, he looked over.Joe was sitting at the tiny chipped Formica table, looking at his hands.“Would you believe me if I said I had fridge-related trauma?”
Fridge-related…?Austin poked at the hot dogs.“Not without follow-up questions.”
The pasta had finished cooking, so he drained it in the tiny sink and scraped the last of the margarine out of the container into the pot.He crossed the two steps it took to open the door and drop the empty container in the blue box next to the step.
When he turned around, Joe was looking up at him, smiling.“Give me a second to come up with a good lie, then.”
