AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He let the robe hit the kitchen floor with a wet smack so he could don the oven mitts. He grabbed up the robe, awkwardly in the huge mitts.
“Open it!” He shouted to Chance.
The guy, for once, actually listened to something he said. He cranked the door open and jumped out of the way. Ross picked up the soaking robe and flung it into the oven, hoping like hell that it wasn’t a grease fire in there because if it was, he might as well have just kissed his ass goodbye. Although, the robe was so dense, it might smother it. It might also go up in flames as well and then they’d be in real trouble, because that fake furry shit looked like it was highly fucking toxic.
Thank god it wasn’t a grease fire. The flames turned into a mass of smoke that poured out of the oven. He dodged back, gagging and hacking right along with Chance and Alix. The smoke was so thick and black he could hardly even see across the kitchen to make sure they were still alright.
He was about to bark at them to get outside, when two more shadowy shapes entered the kitchen.
“What the hell is going on in here?” Robert, Alix’s dad demanded.
“You caught the stove on fire again?” Jane shrieked. Alix’s poor, poor mother.
Even through the smoke, he watched both of them stop dead in their tracks, because that smoke might be thick, but it wasn’t thick enough to hide the fact he was standing there in his birthday suit, Jane’s oven mitts covering most of his arms.
Whoever invented the word clusterfuck clearly had come up with it just to describe a moment pretty much exactly like that one.
“Why on earth are you naked, son?” Robert demanded, a haunted look on his face.
Jane shrieked again in response. Alix’s face was scarlet. She looked like she wanted to crawl up into the smoky oven and die right next to her ill-fated cake.
Shockingly, it was Chance that tried to salvage the situation. “We were- uh- cleaning the pool. It- well, we got soaked. Ross was just about to borrow some clothes when Alix started screaming about the stove being on fire, so we came running out as we were. Ross saved the house from burning down…”
The total static silence in the kitchen engulfed all of them. Ross stared at Chance, his eyes so wide that they burned in the sockets and not from the smoke. He casually, as casually as anyone could, crossed the oven mitts in front of his junk, hiding it from Jane. She might have changed his diapers as a baby, but letting Alix’s mom see him as a grown man? That was a big hell no. He knew that his face was probably as scarlet as Alix’s was at the moment.
“Alix!” Jane seethed. “You’ve been told to keep the baking to a minimum. You get distracted and you don’t pay attention and then the house burns down. We’ve been over this before.”
Alix chewed on her lower lip so hard that she just about gnawed it off. She was vibrating, though whether with fury, humiliation, or rage, Ross wasn’t sure.
He couldn’t believe Chance was defending him right after he’d tea bagged him for being with Alix at all. The guy really was a true friend after all, despite everything. But he was not going to let him take the blame. “Actually… we weren’t cleaning the pool. I came over to see Alix. I fell asleep like this. Woke up to find the stove was on fire. We put it out. That’s what happened.”
His words swirled through the kitchen like the smoke still escaping from the oven. Thick. Ominous. Dark. Choking. Loaded.
Robert cleared his throat. Jane gasped. Chance let out a sound that was like a feral animal baring its teeth, circling its prey. Alix choked on a sob and slammed her hand up over her mouth.
“You know-” Robert ran a hand through his hair. “I think, now that the danger is passed, that we should all just take some time and cool off. The stove isn’t ruined this time. It was just the cake on fire by the looks of things.” He turned to Alix. “You know we love you, honey, and we’ll support you in whatever you choose.”
“I- we- we should be talking about this,” Jane interjected. She cast Robert a dirty look. “My stove is the least of my worries right now.” Her blond hair was in a mess, which was very un-Jane-like, and her huge blue eyes teared up. Robert’s eyes were dark, like his hair. It was a mystery where Alix got her strange eyes from. Maybe a grandparent or a great grandparent.
“Later,” Robert urged. He wrapped an arm around his wife’s waist. They were dressed in their best, as they’d come straight home from the office or whatever show they’d just wrapped up.
