Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 83394 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83394 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
“I know how you like breakfast.” He’d made it that day for me.
He smiled.
I smiled.
“Deal.”
Gage took out bell peppers and onions, and I washed them while he set up cutting boards and knives. He grabbed a package of sausage next, the kind in the tube that you could slice or cook ground up. He did the latter, tossing it into a skillet and breaking it up.
Once it was going, we stood side by side, bare arm bumping bare arm, as we cut the veggies.
“Oh God, Gage. Stop. What are you doing? You’re mutilating it.”
“Huh? I’m cutting it. Sorry my squares aren’t perfect like yours.”
I pointed to his cutting board with my knife. “Mine aren’t perfect, and those aren’t squares. You’re randomly slicing and dicing, and wait…that looks like a penis.”
He laughed, deep and husky, the sound wrapping around me, hugging me, caressing me, comforting me like fingers massaging my scalp and warmth around my chest.
“Oh shit. That does look like a dick. How did I do that?”
“I don’t know, but you’re off chopping duty. You man the sausage; I’ll deal with this.”
“Yes, sir,” he said playfully, and oh, did I like that too. It made me feel…good. He made me feel good, while at the same time I hated it that I let myself have that.
I continued chopping while Gage stirred the meat, then grabbed a bag of frozen hash browns from the small freezer, put oil in the skillet, and waited for it to warm up.
My eyes darted to the side, landed on him. He was staring at me. “What?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head. My fingers itched to touch him, but I didn’t allow it, didn’t let myself do it.
He put the potatoes in the pan, and I added the veggies. “I’ll do the eggs,” I said. The fridge was on the other side of him, so I had to squeeze around him in the narrow space. My hand found his waist, his warm body like the sun against my skin when I’d been lost in the rain for what felt like a hundred years.
I let go and moved around him, grabbed the eggs, cracked them into a bowl he gave me, and scrambled them.
We finished cooking, mixing it all in a breakfast skillet.
His table was tiny, barely fitting two people, but we sat there and ate. Even though we both knew what day it was today, neither of us mentioned it. We wouldn’t. It was an unspoken agreement I didn’t need to put into words for Gage to know.
After breakfast we did dishes together, and Gage asked, “Can I show you something?”
“Yeah.”
He led me outside. We went around to the other side of the house. I hadn’t seen it as it was partially hidden. There was a gate, and when Gage opened it, I saw the garden. “What’s this?”
He cocked a brow and gave me a half grin.
“Okay, well, obviously I know what it is.”
“It’s mine, sort of. Darrel mentioned he wanted to start one. I asked if I could help, which led to me researching gardening, and, well, you know that’s not easy for me. It took a while, but I did it, and we’ve been working on it. It’s…amazing. I know it’s not huge and there’s a long way to go, but when I come out and see something new had sprouted, I feel strangely accomplished. Maybe it’s dumb, but—”
“It’s not dumb,” I cut him off. “It’s beautiful.” Because he was doing something he was proud of. He was discovering new ways to find joy in life. And as we stood there, I wished that maybe, just maybe, I could have the same thing. I wished I were doing more, like Gage or Darrel.
“I don’t know about that.”
“I do.”
Gage looked away. “Anyway, I wanted to show you, and now you’ve seen it.” He crossed his arms. “I don’t know what to do here, Joey. We could leave and find something to do? I know there’s not much at the house. I just… I don’t want you to go, so I’m grasping at straws here.”
Oh God, I could feel it, feel the shift inside me, cracks in the walls I’d built and moats I’d dug. He was going to find a way around them all. It wouldn’t matter if I tried to prevent it, Gage would find his way inside. Hell, maybe he never left, and I’d just been fooling myself. “I don’t want to leave.”
So I didn’t. We went back inside and watched TV. Took turns reading to each other, and played cards, and talked…just talked. For the first time since I was eighteen, I could just be.
With each passing hour, with each minute ticking by, closer and closer to eight, my anxiety increased, my skin felt too tight, my heart began to thud as go and stay warred inside me. I didn’t know which would win.