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After the second knock, the door wrenches open. I’m met with a man who looks nothing like that long-ago picture in a glossy movie magazine.
Thisman is a wild animal.
His sandy hair sticks up in every direction, his eyes bloodshot and his face flushed. The liquor leeching from his pores is eyewatering, not to mention the smell of somebody who hasn’t taken a shower yet today. Or yesterday, either, probably.
“Who the hell are you?”
The level of aggression in that question ranks somewhere between “confronting a Jehovah’s Witness on your porch” and “threatening a burglar.”
Meanwhile, my level of bravery is rapidly shrinking from “curious adventurer” to “grandma who got caught at Coachella.” I’m regretting my decisions and I want to retreat.
“I’m Theo,” I squeak. “I’m a friend of Sullivan’s.”
“Sullivan lives over there.” He jerks his head toward the main house while he tries to close the door in my face.
I should let him. But my foot has a mind of its own—it darts out and wedges itself in the doorway.
His eyes flick down to my sneaker then back up to my face.
Sullivan’s father has blue eyes, remarkably bright, like the Pacific on a sunny summer day. But if you’re imagining them in any way to be gentler than his son’s, think again—at this moment, with their current level of bloodshot, those eyes could belong to Cujo. And their owner looks about as pleased by my presence on his property as an actual rabid Saint Bernard.
“I’m staying with Sullivan,” I babble, “because my apartment’s being fumigated. I was cooking lunch. I’m a chef—I mean, usually I’m a chef, not exactly right now… But anyway, I made extra, so I thought…”
I trail off, feeling stupid.
He runs a hand back through his hair in almost exactly the same way that Sullivan does. But that’s where the comparison ends because while Sullivan is impeccably groomed and wickedly charming, his father is half-dressed, unshaven, swaying slightly on his feet, and seems incapable of smiling.
In fact, judging by the deep lines carved in his forehead and etched at the edges of his mouth, I’m not sure this man has ever cracked a smile.
“So let me get this straight…,” he says in a gravelly voice that sounds like he hasn’t cleared his throat in about a hundred years. “You’re a chefsometimes…but not right now…and since you made yourself lunch, you found it imperative to walk over here, bang on my door, and wake me up to tell me about it.”
“Well…not just to tell you about it.” I hold out the plate with its mixing-bowl dome. “I brought you some.”
He regards the plate and, after a moment, allows me to place it in his hand. He kind of has to because of the way I shove it at him.
Now the mixing bowl lid looks ridiculous. I’m wishing I’d used plastic wrap instead.
So I pull it off with a flourish, trying to salvage this whole thing by saying, “Ta-da!” as I reveal the sandwich and sweet potato fries.
Sullivan’s dad stares down at the plate. His face goes pale—I watch it happen, the color draining away until his eyes look almost as dark as his son’s.
“Why did you make this?”
“W-what?” I stammer.
He glares at me as color floods back into his face, red as brick now and furious.
“Who told you to make this?”
The hand not holding the plate has clenched into a fist. He’s so angry, I think he’s about to fling the whole meal in my face.
“I…I’m sorry…” I stutter, stumbling back. “I didn’t mean to?—“
“Get out.”
He doesn’t have to tell me twice.
I turn tail and sprint back to the house, leaving the plate and sandwich behind because there’s no way I’m going to risk taking them out of his hands.
