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“I’m getting ready to serve dinner,” he answers. “So long as you don’t mind me rummaging through your kitchen cabinets.”
“You’ve already rummaged through my fridge,” I point out, unconcerned. Emerson can rummage wherever he likes. “But that’s not what I meant.”
I sit up, and this time he lets me.
His eyes trail my hair as it drapes in a pink wave over my shoulder, then they travel lower, dipping to the dip of my waist and the curve of my hip before they shoot forcefully back up. He doesn’t answer me for several stretched moments.
“Why are you here?” I whisper. My hand lifts, but I don’t dare to actually touch him. “I know I’m not dreaming, because my dreams are more…” Salacious, but I can’t say that. “And I know I’m not hallucinating because you’ve touched me, and I could feel you.”
“We’re doing this,” he says, meeting my hand where it hovers. His fingers tangle with mine, and he runs his thumb across my knuckles. “This, and that,” he tilts his head toward my studio, where he’s been hard at work for hours, pulling up tile and taking it out to a dumpster he had parked in my side drive this afternoon. “And more,” he finishes. “And right now, our more is going to be us sitting at your dinner table eating the food that you cooked for us both, because you’re sweet, and you wanted to feed a man who could eat you out of house and home if you’re not careful.”
“You could build me a new one,” I reply over the faint rhythm of my heart.
His lip twitches. “I could, and I would.”
“So what’s happening is this, and that, and more,” I conclude, no less confused than before.
Emerson hums confirmation.
“And… Did you mean to reference Stray Kids?” My favorite K-Pop group ever, and not a group I would have guessed the large, blue-collar, constructiony man would listen to.
“They’re your ult bias,” he says before booping the tip of my nose with a rough finger, rising from his knees, and sauntering to my kitchen.
I watch him walk away, jaw on the floor.
He just said K-Pop lingo. On purpose!
And he knows my favorite.
“You want something to drink?” he calls down the hall, and I rather valiantly pull myself together. I can melt when he leaves. Right now, I need to remember that he should not be offering me a drink in my own home, and it’s atrocious that I’ve been such a bad host that he feels he needs to take over duties.
Wincing when I think of what my mother would have to say about my current behavior, I roll off the couch, hit the floor with a dull, but painful, thud, and scurry to my feet. “Don’t get me a drink!” I yell. “And don’t get you a drink, either! Don’t do anything! Don’t touch anything!” If this gets back to Belinda Blackwood…
I grimace, rushing into the kitchen.
Emerson catches me as my socks slide on the sky blue kitchen tile, saving me from total wipeout. “Whoa,” he says. “Baby, relax.”
I whimper, and not just because he called me baby again in that low, raspy way he has. “I have to get you a drink,” I inform him. “You can’t get me one. My mother will skin me alive if you get our drinks, and I don’t even want to think about what she’ll do if I actually let you serve me dinner. Not when it’s your first time here. It’s bad enough that you had to pull the pasta out of the oven.” I grasp at him, grabbing hold of his dusty T-shirt and pulling him down. Graciously, he ducks his head, allowing me to get him face-to-face. “Please, please, please, do not tell anyone that you pulled that dish out of my oven,” I beg earnestly. “Not a soul. Not even your walls. No one can know.”
“No one will know,” he solemnly swears. “Except for us. A secret.” He smiles. “A thing wholly our own. Emerson and Almond’s.”
My lashes flutter. That sounds really nice. My eyes gloss. I can see it so clearly. Me. Emerson. Me and Emerson.
The blush creeps up slowly, surprising me with its warmth when Emerson’s laugh brings me from daydream to reality. From… the daydream… of me with Emerson… to the reality… of me… with… Emerson.
Life is so surreal right now.
“I’m still serving you dinner,” he says. “Because my mom would kill me if she knew I sat around doing nothing while you made me dinner.”
“I don’t know that I would call doing hard manual labor for several hours after you got off your job of doing hard manual labor to be ‘sitting around doing nothing.’”
“Well, I would, and so would my mother,” he counters. “Which means I’m gonna need you to sit down at the table and let me handle the rest. You’ve done enough, pretty girl. Let me tell you thank you the way my momma taught me.”
“It’s mom lesson on mom lesson warfare,” I mutter, brows furrowing. “This is unprecedented."
“This is Emerson and Almond,” he corrects. “This is us finding a groove together. You wanted to feed me, so you’re feeding me. I want to serve you the food you worked so hard to make, so I’m going to serve you the food you worked so hard to make. Does that work for you?”
“We’re finding a groove together?” I ask breathily.
