“No, get the potato salad from the market counter not the display case,” I instructed Teak, smiling when he simply blinked at me. “That way it’s been prepared today, probably this afternoon, and it’s fresh. In the display case it was probably yesterday. We’re going to go right home and eat it so why not get it just made?”
“Oh, good point,” he agreed and set it back down. I did laugh when he caught back up with us and had ordered two pounds of it though.
While he was gone, I showed Aspen and Cypress how to pick out ears of corn. They were both very attentive students, neither brushing me off or seeming bored with something so basic. It made me hopeful that this could actually work.
They really did want to be fed.
I went to the meat counter for the burgers, fully aware that I was brat when it came to my meat. Hey, I felt the same premises applied to the burgers as the potato salad. Maybe it was all in my head, but I swear I could taste the difference. It might have ended up being a little bit more expensive, though worth it to me when I didn’t have to get frustrated mashing meat together to make patties.
Plus, I was going to start sending them out to Costco and buying fresh patties in bulk that we could freeze so that would save us on cost anyways.
“Smoked chicken okay for tomorrow?” I checked with them as I stopped at the display. I chuckled when three soft groans was the answer I received. Guess so.
The bill wasn’t too bad for four adults even if it was what I normally spent in a week on groceries. Aspen stepped in front of me when I went to pay, but at least let me use my Fuel Saver card so we got the discount. Then I let him keep the physical card, explaining if they were going to do the running around for supplies, they should get the discount on gas. He agreed, but I saw Cypress roll his eyes.
I’d never asked after Aspen’s comment earlier about coming from
old money expectations
. Maybe they were loaded. Wasn’t my place to ask, but after Cypress’s antics, I had the feeling they were. Whatever. At least I didn’t feel bad for them paying for my two burgers after they were the reason the ones I’d been cooking were ruined.
We were all starving by the time we got back. I laughed as they booked it into my house, not even letting me carry a single bag. Yeah, I could
totally
get used to this deal.
“What can we do?” Cypress asked as they pulled everything out of bags and laid it all out on the counter.
I blinked at him a moment before bursting out laughing. “After you told me you started three kitchen fires in a week?
Nothing
.”
“There’s gotta be
something
we can do to help you,” Teak argued, glancing around.
I thought about that one a moment as I walked out onto the deck and turned the grill back on, plucking off the dead burgers and tossing them in the garbage. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. We’re not just going to stand here and stare at you while you cook,” Aspen chuckled, leaning over the counter on his forearms. “That would be creepy and annoying. Give us a job. Burgers don’t take that long so it’s not like there’s enough time for us to go back home and entertain ourselves to get out of your hair before we’d have to turn right back around.”
“The garage needs to be cleaned out.” I shrugged, nothing else popping into my head that I wouldn’t have to take time showing or explaining to them. “I use the leaf blower and broom, but yeah, there’s cobwebs and leaves from winter and fall. I normally wipe off the shelves, neaten up, organize everything back in an orderly fashion after I pull something out and just toss it anywhere because it was too cold to be in there long.”
“Done,” Cypress agreed, leaning in and kissing my cheek. The others followed suit, all smiles and excitement.
“It’s just burgers, guys, not the Holy Grail,” I called after them, rolling my eyes at their antics.
“Hey, there’s mango smoked chicken tomorrow too,” Teak threw back over his shoulder.
Wow, they were easy.
I put the corn on first because it went on the top rack and took longer on low than the burgers. Then I pulled my cheese from the fridge, hating the American cheese Hy-Vee carried. Yeah, there was that brattiness, but we liked what we liked. I sliced tomatoes, washed the lettuce, before getting the condiments, plates, silverware, and pickles out on the now cleared off table.
Then I threw the burgers on the grill.
I almost fell over when the three of them were standing in the kitchen when I came back in the house. “No way.”
Aspen shrugged. “There’s three of us.” I raised an eyebrow, walked past him, down the half flight of stairs, up the other few steps, and out the door to the garage—and about fell over.
It was
spotless
. I mean it looked like they had taken a mother fucking power washer to it and squeegeed it dry. Every tool was organized along the back wall, the shelves were cleaned off… It was perfect.
“Holy
shit
, guys,” I whispered, glancing back at the three of them standing in the doorway. “This would have taken me all day. Thank you.”
“We really,
really
appreciate an actual meal,” Teak replied with his normal huge grin.
“Apparently,” I chuckled, shaking my head and walking back to them. We headed to the kitchen again, and I reached above the microwave for the foil. “Okay, can you guys take orders to
prepare
food without burning down the house?”
Cypress glanced at his friends and shrugged. “Most likely.” Just in case I made sure they were all watching as I walked over to the sink and pulled out the fire extinguisher from the cabinet and set it on the counter with a thump. They all nodded, not even seeming annoyed with me for picking on them, just that they understood and would be careful.
Shit. They were
that
bad then.
“Cut up pieces big enough to wrap each piece of chicken individually with room to spare.” I demonstrated with the foil, going back to work, and laid it out on the counter before handing him the roll. Then I checked on the burgers which weren’t even ready to flip yet. Amazing how cooking
eleven
instead of two made a huge difference in the time it took. I turned up the heat ever so slightly and rejoined them. Next I brought out my little food processor and showed Teak how to chop up the frozen mango.
“Why frozen?” he inquired as he watched me. “You seem to like everything fresh so why get this frozen?”
“Good question.” I hip checked him and smiled. “When you smoke meat, it dries out real fast so I find cooking with something extra moist like frozen fruit and sealing each piece of meat separately locks in the juices. I also throw a few pieces of fruit in with my wood chips that I soak.” I turned slightly and pointed to the cabinet that had those. “Aspen, second shelf there, please.”
“Yes, boss,” he chuckled, giving me a wink.
Teak mashed up the frozen fruit as Cypress finished putting each piece of chicken on its foil counterpart, while I showed Aspen how to mix the alcohol, water, and fruit with the wood chips and stick it in the fridge. Then it was time to flip the burgers. Next we moved on to seasoning the chicken, adding mango before wrapping each piece, and sticking it all in the fridge.
I’d never had so much fun prepping. We were like a well-oiled machine, a dance we’d done a hundred times instead of new friends who were doing something for the first time. I flipped the burgers again as Cypress finished setting the table, excited to try the hard cider in my fridge. Teak washed the food processor as Aspen cleaned the counters and made sure everything was put away.
By the time I added cheese and started bringing burgers in, there was no proof we’d just done major shopping or food prep, and my counters were cleaner than earlier in the day. Fuck knows my garage was better off than the day I’d moved into the house. I was totally on board with this deal.
Everyone had fun at dinner, sharing in a few laughs—mine mostly from the way they ate. It was as if no one had fed them in
years
instead of a week of takeout blues. Teak actually pulled a
are you going to finish that
when my second burger sat there uneaten since I didn’t normally have two, corn, and potato salad. I normally just had two and no sides.
I’d passed him my plate with a smile.
“We should get an extra freezer for your garage,” Cypress offered when we were done and they started clearing plates.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, guys,” I warned, grabbing my notebook and sitting at the counter so I was in the middle of them and wouldn’t have to yell over the water. “Trial week, remember? Let’s make sure we make it past one fun night.”
“So it was fun for you too, right?” Teak checked, glancing at me over his shoulder as he loaded the dishwasher.
“Yeah, you guys are great. I’m just not used to being around people all the time,” I reminded him. “And there’re three of you. Let’s see how it goes before we move into buying appliances together and overwhelming me.” They all agreed and my point had been made… But I also didn’t want to make it a
thing
or beat a dead horse. “So we should make a Costco run with the way you guys eat.”
“What’s Costco?” Aspen asked as he stuck the condiments back in my fridge.
“Like Sam’s Club,” I answered, not looking up as I continued to make my list.
“What’s that?” Cypress hedged.
I slowly raised my head and glanced at each of them in turn, my eyes going wider and wider as I saw each of their blank expressions. Where the
hell
had they grown up that they hadn’t even
heard
of Costco or Sam’s Club. Then I felt a smile that could only be classified as evil grow on my lips. “Oh, this is going to be fun. Aspen, we’ll need to take your truck. Promise me you guys won’t look up what it is and I’ll take half a day off and we’ll go on a field trip. You’re going to fucking love this.”
“Yeah, we won’t look,” he agreed, scrunching his eyebrows together, looking at his friends who nodded. “What do we need?”
I thought about that a second and remembered the only quirk. “They don’t do credit besides AmEx. So you have to make your purchases with a debit card and of course the money in the account to pay for it all. Is that going to be a problem?”
“No,” Cypress snorted, before clearing his throat, trying to cover his slipup.
“Then we’re all set. Be ready to go at nine-thirty. I have a membership so that’s all we need,” I assured them, ignoring the additional clue they were loaded. I’d already figured it out. Aspen had hinted, they hadn’t mentioned jobs, but they’d bought that big house… Yeah, I wasn’t stupid.
I also didn’t
care
.
We talked a bit about foods they liked as they finished cleaning up, then they each gave me a big hug and thanked me for dinner. Again I was energized from them all touching me in a row. Was I really that deprived of attention and human contact that a few hugs left me feeling lighter and almost younger? Maybe. Or maybe I’d been through so much the past year I simply needed some good and happy rubbing off on me to lift my spirits and I read too much into things.
I did tend to do that. Deciding to go with that, I finished up a few things for work, emailing my editor with the edits I’d completed. Then I paid some bills and some other basics before starting the work week tomorrow and my new book I’d been plotting. I like getting the details of being an author done on the weekends while everyone else was busy with their personal lives and not adding to my workload. Then I wrote during most people’s normal work week.
Did it always pan out like that? Fuck no. A creative, fast-moving, and chaotic career like mine did
not
fall under typical nine-to-five parameters. More like hundred hour work weeks because I
loved
writing. The more stressed or upset I was, the more I wanted to write and get lost in writing. But the more I wrote, the more extra stuff that came with it… And those were the things that tended to stress me out.
My mother called it the vicious cycle that would someday eat me alive. I, on the other hand, called it the hardcore and kickass roller coaster ride I never wanted to get off. Everyone’s job stressed them out and had aspects to it that they didn’t like or weren’t good at. Mine still was my
dream
job. How many people could say that?
Even if it was a creative profession, I was still a disciplined person who was sometimes a little too organized for the typical artists. Then again, I attributed that to the reason I’d been professionally writing for over four and a half years and never had a day of writer’s block. Either way, it worked best for me to have a plan, a work week track to know what fell on which days and where the path was I was supposed to be on no matter how crazy things got so I knew which way to veer back to.
It just worked for me. Fuck, I didn’t know why or how… It simply
did
.
I was happy when I shut down my computer at nine and grabbed my lists of potential names I kept in their file folders. I knew one name I was going to use for the main character—there was only one true main character since I wrote in first person—since he’d been in one of the previous series books. This wasn’t one of my serials, so it wasn’t a sequel where it was always the same main character.