Page 49 of A Lesson for Laurel

17

LIGHT HIM RIGHT UP

“Iwasn’t expecting this when you said you were going to cook dinner,” Laurel said hours later.

“What did you think I was going to do?” he asked. “Burgers or a steak?”

“That thought crossed my mind. I didn’t expect vegetables.”

He finished chopping the red peppers and added them to the bowl with the carrots. He stopped to stir the chicken in the skillet, then opened a bag of pre-cut broccoli and cauliflower. Some of the bigger pieces he cut in half.

“My aunt made meals like this. I’m a pro at it. Simple but filling. My uncle, Abe, and me. We were big eaters and we didn’t like vegetables. Well, I didn’t mind them. Abe wasn’t too bad, but my uncle hated them. My aunt found a way to make it hard for him to pick everything out without putting some in his mouth. He got used to them after.”

“That’s funny,” she said. “My aunt did most of our cooking. She lived upstairs and either cooked up there and brought it down or cooked downstairs. My father wasn’t home on time a lot so she was feeding me more than anything and he’d get leftovers when he got home.”

Easton found the dynamic that she had growing up easier to understand than many of his other girlfriends in the past.

Or maybe it had to do with the fact she didn’t have a traditional upbringing any more than he did and they had that bond.

He added some salt to the water and saw it was almost ready to boil, then checked the chicken he’d diced up and transferred that to a plate.

The carrots and peppers went into the pan the chicken came out of and he added some chicken broth with it to cook them down and then dumped the elbow macaroni into the boiling water.

“That was nice. Did your father cook?” he asked.

“He did. On the weekends when he was home, he didn’t like my aunt to do it all, so he cooked and invited her down. She had friends though. She’s pretty social and she’d go out.”

“But she never dated again?”

“No,” she said. “Didn’t have any interest in it. My father did, but nothing stuck. Nothing that had a woman moving in with us at least. But he did have some long-term relationships for a year or more.”

“But they didn’t move in?” he asked.

Most women wanted to move in with him after a few months. He’d been the one to hold them off for a year. Rachelle moved in before a year and that was only because he’d moved and it was a pain for the commute and she wanted him to see her.

It was probably a stupid reason on his part to have her move in, but they had some good years together.

At least he thought they did.

“No,” she said. “Some had kids and weren’t going to move in with their kids. Others didn’t like the house wasn’t that big and my father wouldn’t move out. I think in the end it worked out. It’s not as if my father rushed to have anyone move in either. Ithink there might have only been two people that it was even a mild conversation that I know of.”

He was watching the vegetables in the pan and stirring them with a wooden spoon, then doing the same with another spoon for the pasta.

He almost used the same one but didn’t want her to laugh at him. To him, everything was clean and cooked enough.

“I think people know when they do,” he said.

“That is my thought. Are you sure there isn’t anything I can do to help? I feel bad sitting over here watching you and drinking a glass of wine.”

They were in her kitchen and he’d gone to the store to buy everything for dinner and stopped for a bottle of wine for her. He was drinking a beer. He could throw back wine at times, but it wasn’t what he liked to drink.

“You worked today,” he said.

She smiled. Her hair was in a ponytail, she had on a pair of those jogger cotton pants in gray that were snug on the waist, a little baggy on the hips, and fitted around the ankles. Her feet were bare and her toenails were bright red. No surprise that they were painted.

Her shirt was as red as her toenails and very snug to her body. Fire engine red to light him right up.

He was eager to cook because if he started to sweat then he could blame it on the meal he was preparing.

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