Page 63 of Spark
He already missed her, but he felt deeply satisfied with the way their second date had gone. He couldn’t wait to go on a third date with her.
Matt heard the crunch of gravel under tires and the sound of Chris’s little Subie pulling up and parking behind Matt’s pickup in front of the house.
“Morning, Chris,” Matt said as soon as the front door opened. He didn’t bother raising his voice, knowing that Chris’s hearing was every bit as good as his own. “Do you want some breakfast? There’s still coffee.”
“Yeah, I’m starving,” Chris said. “Thanks.”
He entered the kitchen and made a beeline for the cupboard where the mugs lived.
“The fire station coffeesucks,” he complained as he poured himself a steaming cup from the insulated pot still sitting on the island on the breakfast bar side.
Sitting on one of the stools, with his elbows propped on the white quartz countertop, Chris looked tired, as if he hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep.
“Scrambled eggs and toast okay? Or would you like bacon, too?” Matt dried the skillet and put it back on the stove top.
After he and Chris had moved in together, Mat had learned pretty quickly that after spending his days cooking for other people, his friend was always grateful when someone offered to cook forhim.
Matt knew that his food could never compete with trained chefs like Daniel or Chris. But like all the Swanson kids, he’d grown up helping his parents and Grandma Elle in their kitchens. And during the big Sunday dinners, everyone in the clan pitched in to prep ingredients, cook, set tables and serve the food, and then tackle the massive post-meal cleanup.
After a fire destroyed the back of the big yellow Victorian ranch house a few years ago, Uncle Dan had convinced Grandma to replace her ruined appliances with commercial-grade ovens, a huge dishwasher, and an eight-burner gas range like the one he had at Calidus.
Uncle Tyler, who owned a construction company, had rebuilt and reconfigured her already-large kitchen to make room for the new appliances. He’d also expanded the fire-damaged dining room to give the clan some elbow room, promising Grandma Elle that his changes would preserve the original historic details in that room and blend seamlessly with the house’s existing Victorian architecture.
Tyler had been as good as his word. When the project was finished, Matt could hardly tell apart the old part of the house from the new, except that it was now possible for three generations of the Swanson clan to sit around the huge new dining table for Thanksgiving dinner. The “kid’s table” of his childhood was now just a memory.
“I would kill for some bacon,” Chris informed him. “Thanks.”
As Matt retrieved the eggs, cheese, and package of bacon from the fridge, Chris asked, “Sophie came by for breakfast?”
Matt realized that Chris must have finally noticed the two sets of breakfast plates and juice glasses still sitting on the island, waiting for me to put them in the dishwasher, and detected Sophie’s lingering scent.
“Yeah, she stayed over after our date last night.” Matt couldn’t help grinning at the memory. A golden sense of well-being warmed him all the way down to his toes.
“So, youfinallygot laid?” Chris asked, his tone unexpectedly sharp-edged. “Is that why you’re looking so damnedhappyright now?”
Matt tensed. This didn’t sound like Chris’s usual harmless teasing.
With an effort, Matt stopped himself from shooting back a brutally honest response.
Instead, he finished breaking a couple of eggs into a bowl before turning to face his housemate.
“Hey, what’s that all about?” he asked, as mildly as he could, but he couldn’t help adding, “You sound kind of jealous.”
Chris frowned down into his coffee. “Maybe.”
“Sophie told me that you two were just friends,” Matt pointed out. “With, uh, benefits, but that it was nothing serious.”
To be honest, he hadn’t liked the ideaat allwhen she told him, but had firmly told himself that it wasn’t his call. Especially not when his courtship was still in the early stages.
But here was Chris, suddenly behaving like he was jealous of Sophie's sleepover. Now, that felt like a big red flag to Matt.
His feeling was borne out by Chris’s next words. Looking uncomfortable, his friend said, “Yeah, about that—I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”
Matt’s heart sank. Whatever Chris was about to tell him, he was sure that he wasn’t going to like it. “So, you’renotjust friends with benefits?”
He could have sworn that Sophie had been 100% truthful when she told him that. Had Chris lied to her?
That wasn’t his housemate's style. If anything, Chris could be a littletoohonest when the situation called for tact and diplomacy.
