CHAPTER TEN
THE WEATHERturned decidedly colder not long after I flipped the calendar to November. Frost had hit the plants hard, causing them to shrivel, and the things that hadn’t been ripe enough to harvest had fallen off the vines.
“Goddamn, is it always this cold up here?”
Charlie huddled beneath a thick down comforter that I’d pulled from storage and put on the bed. Now that the house had gotten so much chillier, it was time to use both the wood-burning stove and fireplace to throw a little heat. The fireplace was sufficient to heat the living room so I normally used that, but the stove had pipes to take heat to the whole house. I had more than enough wood to keep them going all winter long, so I wasn’t worried about that. What did concern me was the fact that the weather didn’t normally dip into the single digits for several weeks yet. This didn’t bode well for the upcoming winter.
“Not usually so early, but yeah. Colder than a witch’s tit, as the saying goes.”
“No way can I type when my fingers are numb,” he whined.
“Baby.”
The teasing had come so easily. The two of us fit together naturally, despite my… idiosyncrasies. Yes, there were challenges. The first one had to do with seeing him naked. Oh my God. Having seen his body when he ran, I knew he was built very nicely, but nude? My mouth watered every time I helped him get clean. I’d wash areas he couldn’t reach because of his ribs, and being that close to him, seeing him in that way? I couldn’t deny it affected me. Charlie looked completely edible.
The other issues were more problematic, though:
“Charlie? Did you take downMurder in Times Squared?”
“Yeah, but I put it back.”
But he hadn’t. Not really. He’d put it on the shelf, but out of order. My hands itched to put it back, but I needed him to understand what the problem was.
“Could you come here for a minute?”
He got up from the desk, where he was looking at something on the computer. “What’s up?”
I bit my lip because I was about to come across as a complete jerk. “Everything has a place.” I held out the book. “This is number two in the series, but you put it in the third place.”
I’d expected him to sigh or huff or just be annoyed. Instead he took the book from my hands. “I am very sorry,” he said, no trace of sarcasm. He put the book back up on the shelf, where it should have been. “Is that better?” he asked.
I reached up and straightened it out, making sure it was in line with everything else. “Thank you. I’m sorry.”
“Hey, stop that!” he said sharply. “I’m a guest in your home. You have every right to ask me to help out. Thank you for letting me know.”
A few days later, I opened the refrigerator to start lunch and found a gallon of milk with the label facing away. I reached in and pulled it out, then turned it. I wasn’t going to say anything, because after the whole book thing, I didn’t want him to think I was going to do nothing but complain.
“What are you doing?” he asked from behind me.
I thought about lying but didn’t. “The milk was in the wrong way,” I said, doing my best to appear nonchalant. “It’s fine. I fixed it.”
He hobbled over and looked inside. “Well, damn, I guess I did. This is kinda new for me, and I swear I’m trying to learn. I don’t want to make your life difficult.”
After that, Charlie did his very best to work with me. He watched what I did, then tried to emulate it. I now found him making certain he’d cleaned his plate, dried it, then put it away. Admittedly, I needed to check it myself after he finished, but the fact that he was willing to put himself out there like that went a long way to making our time together much easier.
“Matt? Are you even listening to me?”
His voice pulled me out of my reverie with his petulant tone. He sat there shivering and looking absolutely miserable. “Sorry, what were you saying?”
“Seriously, Matt. I have a deadline, and I’ve already asked for an extension. My publisher didn’t believe I had broken my hand. I had to text her a picture of the cast. She gave me three weeks, because I already missed the first date she gave me.”
“But the cast doesn’t come off before that,” I protested.
He shrugged. “I’ll just have to muddle through, I guess. Maybe I’ll tell her a block of ice developed around my hand.”
I shook my head. Usually throwing on a sweater would keep me warm. “I’ll get a fire going. It’ll be nice and toasty soon.”
I tossed a few logs into the hearth, and it only took a short time before the house was awash in light from a crackling fire. The warm glow it cast about the room was one of my favorite things about winter. Having Charlie to share this simple pleasure with? I sighed. I couldn’t believe it when I realized how much I would miss him when he went back to his place.
