Page 13 of Painting Together a Family
“Come on in. Would you like a drink? I figure we’d order whatever you guys ate. I don’t cook.”
Bryan blinked a few times, taking that in. “At all. Like not at all?”
Dev gave him a warm smile. “Nope. I had a housekeeper, but she had to move to be closer to her grandchildren. I’m interviewing for someone new, but for now, we’re just making do.”
There was a period of time when if Bry hadn’t been able to cook, and do so on an extreme budget, they wouldn’t have eatenat all. Hell, he’d frequented the food bank when Grant had first left them destitute. It had only been by the grace of God, and the Pereiras that they hadn’t been homeless. “We’ll have to have you over for a home-cooked meal then. As a thank-you for tonight and tomorrow’s adventure.”
“Oh, that’s very kind. We’d love to.”
“Awesome. Chicken, broccoli, and what was it your other daughter prefers again?” He had a few casseroles that might fit the bill. And he could always look something up on the internet. You name it and there was a recipe for it.
“She’ll eat anything, but she prefers for it to be terrible for her.”
Bryan chuckled. “We’ll come up with something for them.” His boys would want to ‘help’ cook for guests. “Maybe Sunday? Say, late afternoon?” That would let them sleep in a little bit, go to the market for food, and have everyone go to bed early enough for school Monday morning.
“Sounds amazing. Thank you.”
“Excellent.” He didn’t examine too closely how it made him happy that he would be spending the entire weekend with Dev and his girls. He knew he was lonely, but it was more than that—so far from what he knew of Dev, he liked the guy a lot. Handsome, fierce about his kids, a smile that lit up his face, and they had something in common on top of that.
“So what do you guys want tonight?” Dev asked.
“Oh, right! What are our choices?”
“Basically, anything you want. You name it, I can have it delivered.” Devon grinned. “I actually have a folder of menus, if you want to search through. She left two months ago, and we had to improvise.”
The temptation to say ‘oh poor baby’ was huge, but he didn’t, because he had no idea. Maybe Dev didn’t cook because he didn’t know how. Maybe he worked twelve-hour days.
He was going to have to reserve judgment, no matter how weird not cooking at all seemed to him.
“Well, my boys love anything Mexican. Especially tacos and flautas. Pretty much if it’s finger food, they’ll eat it. And there’s lots of other stuff they’ll eat—that was just off the top of my head.” He’d learned to make tacos at home, but he couldn’t do anything that got deep fried. He could probably learn how, but the hot oil thing was intimidating, and fryers weren’t cheap. “And I’ll eat anything. Pretty much literally.”
“Well then, let’s do tacos. My girls love tacos. We had chicken soup last night. I’d ordered it earlier in the day, but it wound up being the perfect choice. We all needed a little comfort food after our unexpected and unwelcome visitors. Not you of course.”
Bryan couldn’t imagine ordering chicken soup. Part of what made that comfort food for him was that it was homemade, but he wasn’t judging, right? Everyone was different.
“Tacos sounds good. Can we get a few flautas, too? They really do love munching on those.” And he maybe liked them even better than tacos himself.
“Absolutely. How do you feel about guacamole? I’m a chip and dip person, all the way.”
“I like a good guac. Especially if it’s mixed with some salsa and sour cream.” Hopefully Dev wasn’t a purist who would think that was gross. Bry liked all the flavors together on one chip.
“Ooh… okay. So, tacos, flautas, all the dips, chips.” Dev nodded and went to make an order.
He thought maybe Dev didn’t approve of the way he ate his guacamole. He chuckled and relaxed back on one of the couches. This was very comfy. He closed his eyes, just for a moment.
Before he knew it, he smelled food and heard his boys giggling.
Bry blinked. Shit, he’d fallen asleep. He looked around. “Oh man, sorry. Sorry.”
“Shh. You’re fine. We all made art.” Dev’s smile was so kind.
“Oh, that’s sounds nice.” He blinked a few more times, smiled at his boys.
“You was sleeping, Daddy,” Micah informed him, both he and Dylan giggling some more.
“I was. I guess I was more tired than I thought and your couch is so comfortable,” he told Dev. So many people had couches that looked great, were classy and such, but were not comfortable to sit on. Dev’s couch definitely fell into the comfy category. At least the one he was on did.
“It’s amazing. I love it. It’s like puffy heaven. Both of them are.”
