Barry pursed his lips and tilted his head like I was being obtuse.
“What’s not to like about you?”
I opened and then snapped closed my mouth, refraining from listing many, many unlikeable qualities about me.
I needed him to stop saying things like that, things that were making me feel. . .confused. My body was so far beyond that, very sure that we should be standing close to each other again, maybe kissing like we had in New York, and the other stuff, too.
I shook myself and stood up straighter while Barry filled a glass of water and took a long drink. I watched his throat as he did, then looked decidedly away from him. “Thanks for the help with the shelf.”
“Of course. That’s what I’m here for, right?” He drained the rest of his water and then immediately started washing his cup instead of stacking it in the sink like I would have done.
I blinked, suddenly distracted by other things my traitorous body seemed to think he was here for.
“Right, well, I do appreciate it, but I’m not entirely helpless, you know.”
Barry’s hands paused in rinsing the glass, and he looked at me with confusion written all over his face. “What are we talking about here?”
“It’s just, the meals, the helping hands—it’s not that I’m not grateful, but I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”
Barry turned off the sink and then stared blankly at me. “And that wrong idea would be what?”
“That I can’t take care of myself,” I said, hopefully sounding more confident than I felt. “I can cook for myself. Can take out my own laundry. Have for years. I can hang up shelves like nobody’s business, too.”
It was his turn to blink in surprise, reorienting himself in this conversation, which was quickly taking a turn for the confrontational. Whatever. It was better than horny-ass tension crackling from me like a Taser.
“Of course you can take care of yourself, I don’t doubt that.”
“You don’t? Like, do you believe I know how to feed myself beyond jalapeño burgers? Because I swear I do.”
I thought of the meals he made for me, the stacks of them that were sitting in the fridge even now, all kinds of food and easy-to-put-together ingredients for us both, a shit ton of it, even when I knew most days he ate breakfast and lunch at the practice facility.
“No, it’s—Iliketo cook. And I want to help make your life easier. You’re growing a literal human in your body. You should have good food when you need it.”
“But you’re so busy,” I said. “I really can take care of myself, is what I mean. I don’t want you to think I’m some incompetent kid who needs caretaking.”
It’s how I felt about myself sometimes—especially when Kate nagged me about nutrition, or vitamins, or my protein and fiber intake—but this was just her way. She’d hovered over Jeremy and me since we were kids, but ultimately, we could both take care of ourselves.
“I’m not so busy that I can’t cook some meals and help you with your projects. It’s kind of the whole point of me staying with you, right? To help?”
Not to keep tabs on me?I wanted to ask.
“I don’t have a single doubt that if I wasn’t here, you’d still be eating three round meals a day, this shelf would find its wayperfectly level to the wall, and your laundry would get done. But the whole point is that you have another body around to help share the load.”
“Right.” I tried to see the last days through the lens of a helping hand rather than a man who thought I couldn’t take care of myself. “You don’t feel like I’m…taking advantage of your kindness?”
“No, you’re just not doing everything alone anymore.”
I didn’t say that I’ve never been alone with my family always buzzing around, but even with Kate coming over as often as she did, she wasn’t myroommate, taking on the shared mantle of housework in my house. And yes, she’d help with the baby when she was born, but she wouldn’t beco-parentingwith me.
“And honestly you’re not using me enough, Harvey.”
Calling me by my last name, like I was one of his teammates, made my neck hot for an unknowable reason. It was a new level of familiarity, a new thing that felt like flirting. It felt dangerous.
Plus,using himalso invoked unbidden images of other ways my body was craving, very loudly, to use him that made me feel like a pervert, so I instead busied myself which drilling the screws into the wall.
“What’d you have in mind?” I asked over my shoulder after I screwed in the first one.
“Well, I know how to use power tools,” he said. “You tell me where to drill and I’d do it.”
