Roast. Right. They were making food. He handed it to her with a smile. Maybe she just missed having Mason around the house. Maybe if he kept her busy enough… No, she’d still feel his absence.
Distractions weren’t going to counteract the feelings of acute loss at her son having moved out. If it wouldn’t have drawn questions from everyone in the room, he’d have smacked himself.
“How is the team doing?” She sliced the nubby end off the squash and went to work with the peeler.
He nodded. Safe territory. The team. Work. He could handle that. “Good. Better than good. It seems we finally found our vibe and we’re set to make the playoffs.”
Her smile was genuine, warm, and he felt it in his whole body like a shot of serotonin straight to his soul. “I’m glad. Theo took Mason skating the other day. He really does seem like a nice enough boy.”
“He’s finding his feet for sure.”
She paused slicing the squash. “Cat broke up with some douche nozzle she’d been seeing behind my back. I’d say I can’t wait for her to get to college but it’s only going to get worse.”
She wasn’t wrong. Cat was a stunning young woman, smart, funny, and from what Clare had told him, she was popular and had a lot of friends. Hell, half of his hockey players probably wanted to date her after her appearance at prom.
“I can have some of the team watch her back if she comes to the U if you’d like?” Those already in relationships so they weren’t tempted to try to bed her themselves anyway.
He sliced the end off an onion and pulled the skin off with both hands before attempting to dice it. “And by ‘watch her back’ I—of course—mean beat the ever living shit out of anyone who goes near her. And if she ends up somewhere else… I know people.”
How did people make chopping an onion look so easy? Tears streamed down his face and from the mess of onion in front of him it looked like Mason had cut it up with a dull skate.
Not that he could even see it through the welling tears. Was it an extra-terrestrial onion? Did it have super onion strength? That had to be why he was crying like a baby, right?
Clare chortled, moving closer to him. “Here.” She covered his hand with hers. “Tuck your fingers so we don’t end up at the ER. Guide the onion through the knife.”
How the hell did you guide the onion through the knife? Wait. She was moving the food, not the knife. That had to be what she meant, right? As opposed to moving the knife back and forth?
He had to admit—albeit reluctantly—that her way was easier than Hulk-smashing the onion with the knife like he had been doing.
“I think Dad was playing a joke on me when he got me thisexperience. I’m shit in the kitchen.”
Clare bumped him with her hip. “You’re not…shit.”
Out of the corner of his eye he caught her rolling her lips and turning her face away.
“Lies. You…” He pointed the knife at her before going back to chopping. “You’re even laughing at me. Laughing at the afflicted, Clare Reynolds. I thought you were better than that.”
She snorted. “No, you didn’t. And being a lazy asshat in the kitchen isn’t an affliction.”
He paused his knife. “It’s not?”
“Unfortunately not. So I can laugh at you all I want. Jesus, Eli, it’s like you’ve never held a knife before.”
She wasn’t entirely wrong. He did have a tendency to lean on his parents for the food part of his days before everything went to shit. And Denise—for all her flaws—was an exceptional cook.
Now that he lived alone, he avoided the kitchen because cooking for one was such a pain in the ass when every recipe under the sun was written for two fucking people. It was just another reminder of how he’d fucked up his life and ended up alone.
Clare made the class fun, and she took the same care with each stage of the process that she did with everything else in her life. By the time they got to the entrées, she’d thawed enough that they were both more at ease.
“Is now a bad time to tell you that I’m not a big fish eater?” Her stage whisper drew a raised eyebrow from the instructor, but that didn’t faze her.
“What about little fish?” He picked up the plate of salmon and inched it toward her.
“That was terrible.”
It was. But her giggle was worth it. When they sat down to try the salmon course, the teacher stupidly opened a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc which only made them even more obnoxious and giddy.
The dude, who Elliott was convinced kept making eyes at Clare, just ignored them and occasionally passed by their station with a look of contempt and derision. Whether it was at their behavior, or the mess building up around their meal, who could tell?
