9. Bryson
9
Bryson
Even though we got along great while we were in Las Vegas, I’d been worried about what would happen when Embry moved in with me. Was this going to be incredibly awkward? Would we have anything to talk about?
It seemed to be off to a good start, though. We baked macarons on our first day living together, which turned out to be the perfect ice breaker. Both of us had fun, and it seemed to help him relax a little and hopefully start to feel comfortable here. Also, it was nice to discover some common ground.
The next day, he told me he wanted to decorate the house for the holidays. “It looks Grinchy on the outside, compared to the other houses on this side of the street. Don’t you want to do something fun out there?”
My first impulse was to say no. I didn’t like the idea of him doing stuff to my house, so I tried to use money as an excuse. “I don’t want to sound like a cheapskate, but decorations can be expensive. I can’t see spending a lot of money on stuff that’ll only be used for the next three weeks.”
“I can do it for a hundred dollars.”
He sounded confident, but I said, “That won’t go very far.”
“Sure it will. In fact, I can decorate inside and out for that amount. For the front of the house, I’ll include lights, a door decoration, and a fun focal point in that little lawn area. I’ll also put up decorations in the living room and the lounge.”
“It can’t be done,” I insisted. “Not on that budget.”
“Bet me.”
I knew I had to let go of this need to control my environment. This was his home for the next year, and I wanted him to be happy here. Besides, he really wasn’t going to be able to do much with that amount, no matter what he said. “Okay. What should we bet?”
Embry thought about it before saying, “If I win, you have to cook me dinner.”
“I’m going to do that anyway.”
“But you have to cook whatever I want, even if it’s not up to your fine dining standards, and even if you think it’s weird and gross.”
“Fine. And if I win?—”
He grinned at me. “You won’t. I’m already formulating a plan.”
“But if I do,” I said, “I want brutally honest feedback on some of the dishes I’ve been working on for my new restaurant. I know you’re a vegetarian, so I’ll obviously be mindful of that.”
“Great, it’s a bet,” he said. “Just so you know though, I’ll be happy to give you honest feedback, even after you lose.”
We went into my home office, and I pulled a hundred dollars out of the petty cash envelope in my desk and handed it over. Embry barely noticed. He stuck the money in his pocket without so much as a glance and gravitated to one of my two large, magnetic whiteboards. One was all about food, while the other focused on the look of the new restaurant. They were covered in sketches, notes, and a few inspirational photos printed from the internet or torn from magazines.
It was his first time seeing these, and he murmured, “Your drawings are absolutely beautiful. You’re an artist, Bryson.”
“Not really. They’re just ideas for how to plate some of the dishes I’ve been developing.”
“They’re amazing.” He pointed to a colored pencil sketch of frozen custard pearls and fresh red currants in a delicate meringue box. “Is this a dessert?”
“Yeah. I try not to do too many of those. I’ll obviously hire a pastry chef for my new restaurant, and they’ll want to develop their own recipes. But sometimes ideas for desserts come to me, and I draw them as a way of getting them out of my head. Then I can focus on other things.”
“I do the same thing with my ideas for cakes.” He pulled his phone from the pocket of his hoodie and smiled at me. “Okay, time to get going on the holiday decorating. Step one is to message my secret weapons.” He seemed happy and optimistic, but I was worried he’d end up disappointed when he realized how little that budget would cover.
He sent a text and got a reply a few moments later. “Lark and his boyfriend Dylan are going to help me. Lark is very crafty, and Dylan is studying to be a landscape architect and has access to a lot of great stuff.” I had no idea what kind of “great stuff” he could possibly be referring to, but sure. “I’m meeting Lark at a hardware store in an hour. But before I do that, is there anything around here I can use?”
“There are a couple of boxes of ornaments, a few strands of lights, and a Christmas tree stand in the garage. Help yourself to anything you need.”
He seemed concerned. “I don’t want to use anything that’s going to make you sad.”
“Don’t worry. After the divorce, my dad went out and bought some pretty basic ornaments for our tree, since my mother kept the ones we had growing up. They’re not sentimental heirlooms or anything.”
“Okay. Just making sure.”
“I appreciate that.”
He surprised me by throwing his arms around me and exclaiming, “This is going to be so fun! I’ve never gotten to decorate a whole house before. I promise to do my best and not make it super tacky or anything.”
The important thing was that he enjoyed himself and felt more at home here. If it ended up a little tacky, I’d just have to deal with it. Besides, how bad could it be?
Pretty bad, it turned out. That afternoon, Embry and Lark returned from their outing wearing matching Santa hats and lugging some enormous shopping bags. I tried to hide my frown as they unpacked a bunch of stuff onto the living room floor, including several boxes of purple lights. I had to ask, though. “Why purple?”
“Because they were left over from Halloween and on sale for ninety percent off,” Embry explained, “and because they match the dragon.”
“The what?”
Lark pulled a smashed box out of one of the bags and held it up to show me. The words eight-foot inflatable dragon were emblazoned above a picture of a cartoonish purple creature. It had orange flames shooting from its mouth, and it was sitting up on its haunches, like a dog begging for a treat.
I wanted to be open-minded, but what the actual fuck?
There was an orange clearance sticker on the box. It told me it had been marked down to nineteen dollars, but it also said it was damaged. When I pointed that out, Embry produced a roll of duct tape. “One of his horns is torn off, but it’s not a problem,” he assured me. “Once we patch him up, he’ll inflate just fine.” Awesome.
Dusty was circling the bags and sniffing everything, and when Lark pulled the dragon out of the box, the dog growled at it. I agreed with that sentiment.
I had serious misgivings about all of this, but I tried not to freak out about it. So, I had to live with a janky, patched up dragon in my yard for a few weeks. My neighbors would think I’d lost it, but so what? My dad had been friends with almost everyone on the block when I was growing up, but those families had moved away one-by-one. Now I was surrounded by strangers. Their opinions shouldn’t matter to me.
Embry held up a package of plastic clips and said, “I found these for when we go to put the lights up. They slide under the roof shingles to avoid damaging your woodwork. We’re going to use a staple gun around the windows, but we’ll staple the side of the trim, not the front of it, so it won’t show.”
I asked, “Is Dylan going to help?” Dylan was a former firefighter, and I knew he’d put safety first.
Lark nodded. “He’ll be here soon. He’s borrowing some equipment from an arborist friend of his.”
Embry paused and looked up at me. “That reminds me, is it okay if we block the driveway? You probably won’t be able to get your car out until tomorrow.”
“The car was my dad’s, and I only use it once in a while. Block away.” He thanked me and fired off a quick text.
A few minutes later, I heard the beeping sound of a truck backing up, so I went over to the window. As a dump truck tilted its bed and deposited a huge pile of branches in my driveaway, I muttered, “What the hell?”
Embry joined me, and as the truck lowered its bed and drove off, he said, “Oh, good. The greenery is here.”
“So, that was intentional?”
“Yup.”
“I’ve got to be honest,” I said, as I turned to him. “I’m not sure about all of this.” That was an understatement. I was on the verge of panicking.
“Trust me, Bryson. I promise you’re going to love it.”
That was really what this all came down to—trust. Was that something I was capable of? Apparently we were both going to find out.
When Lark unpacked several red, green, and white plastic tablecloths, I actually flinched. Where the hell were they going? Embry distracted me by asking, “Can I have the key to the garage door? I want to work in there later.”
“It unlocks with a keypad. It’s the same code as the front door.”
“Got it.” He turned back to the window and gestured at an enormous truck that had just pulled up. “Oh hey, Dylan’s here with the cherry picker.”
“What’s that for?”
“I thought that would be the quickest, easiest way to hang the lights, especially the ones along the roofline. It belongs to Dylan’s friend Jimbo. He’s been an arborist for over twenty years, and luckily he had some free time today. He’ll be operating the lift.”
Now I had a whole new list of things to worry about.
We went outside, and I was introduced to Jimbo, who seemed like he knew what he was doing. Then I pulled Dylan aside and made him promise he’d look out for Embry. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I know he tends to be accident-prone, but I’ll make sure he’s safe.”
Embry jogged over to me and grabbed my arm. As he towed me toward the stairs, he exclaimed, “Go inside! We’re about to get started, and I want to surprise you with the big reveal when we’re done.”
“Fine, but please be careful.”
“I will. You have nothing to worry about.”
After I let him herd me inside, I went to the kitchen and started making a list of ingredients for our next baking lesson. I was nervous and distracted though, so after a while I decided to go take a peek out the living room window. As soon as I got there, I heard someone yell, “Be careful, Embry!”
Fear surged through me, and I rushed outside. Lark and Dylan were on the sidewalk, looking up at the house. I ran into the small yard, and there was Embry, directly above me in the basket of the cherry picker.
On the plus side, he was wearing a helmet. But he was also leaning over the side of the basket as he adjusted a string of lights. I was about to tell him to stop doing that when one end of the light strand fell off the house.
My breath caught as he lunged for it and tumbled out of the basket. I braced myself and got ready to catch him, but he stopped in mid-air, spread-eagled like a skydiver a few feet above my head. It turned out he was hanging from a harness, which was fastened around his torso.
I muttered, “Fucking hell,” as Jimbo started to lower the basket and its dangling former occupant. As soon as he was within reach, I crushed Embry in a hug and blurted, “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
“I’m sorry, Bry.”
I kept holding him as I muttered, “You can’t scare me like that.”
“I wasn’t going to die or anything. I’m wearing a helmet and a harness, and it wasn’t even that high.”
“I didn’t see the harness at first, because it’s the same color as your hoodie. All I saw was you falling.”
He wrapped his arms around me and murmured, “Your heart’s pounding so hard that I can feel it in my chest.”
“Well, yeah. Terror will do that.” I finally let go of him and scooped up Dusty, who’d followed me outside. “I’m going to put the dog back in the house, and then I’m going to help with the lights. No arguments.”
Embry looked disappointed. “I really wanted to surprise you.”
“You still can. When it’s dark out, we’ll go across the street and watch while one of your friends plugs everything in. That way, we can be surprised together when it all lights up.”
He perked up at that. “Okay. That sounds fun.”
Once the lights were finished, Jimbo left with the truck and his ladders, and Dylan started sorting the pile of green waste in the driveway. Meanwhile, Lark and Embry went to work on the dragon. They taped him up, ran an extension cord from the garage, and plugged him in. As he rose up in all his wonky, fire-breathing glory, I realized he was filled with lights and glowed, even in daylight. Fantastic.
While I helped by cutting green and white plastic tablecloths into strips—no idea why—Embry and Lark busted out some glue guns. They fashioned a large Santa hat out of a red plastic tablecloth and some white, fluffy fiberfill and glued it onto the dragon’s head at a jaunty angle, covering the duct tape patch.
After that, Lark went to work slicing up another tablecloth, and Embry produced three white Styrofoam coolers, which were maybe twelve inches square. He looked pretty proud of himself as he explained, “We got these for free from a fish market. They were throwing them out, but we’re going to upcycle them. They smell icky inside, but I don’t think that’ll matter once they’re glued shut.”
As he stuck on the lids with hot glue, I tried to guess what he intended to do with the coolers. I obviously could have asked, but it was more fun to watch it come together.
I cringed when he dragged over a six-foot-long dowel, which was broken into a sharp point at one end. He raised it over his head like he meant to stab something with it, and I shouted, “Hold on! Let me help.”
We ended up impaling the coolers at slight angles, and he hot glued them to each other and to the dowel before embedding the sharp end into the lawn. It looked like a white cube tree. I didn’t get it. Was it a reference to something I wasn’t aware of? It made even less sense when he produced a can of light brown spray paint and blasted the back of the cubes, carrying the spray around to overlap the sides by a few inches.
It turned out Lark had been making a massive red scarf with fringed ends and white and green stripes (which were made out of the strips I’d cut). He draped it around the dragon’s neck and glued it in place, and then he and Embry rotated the huge inflatable until its left side faced the street. After they anchored the dragon to the ground, Embry twisted the cube tree, so that the painted side faced the dragon. As a finishing touch, Lark applied glue to the dragon’s hand, and Embry wrapped it around the dowel, so it looked like the creature was holding it.
Suddenly, it all made sense. The cubes became a giant skewer of marshmallows, which were being toasted by the fire-breathing dragon. I said, “That’s very cute.”
Embry stood back and assessed it with a frown. “It would be better if they were cylinders, but this was the best I could do.”
“It’s perfect,” I assured him. “Since the corners on the coolers are rounded, they really do look like huge marshmallows.”
Lark nodded. “He’s right. That was an inspired idea.”
“I have to admit, I was skeptical,” I said. “But you two had a vision, and you’re making it happen in a very clever way.”
“It’s all Embry.” Lark put his arm around his friend’s shoulders and gave him a squeeze. “He’s brilliant and has a ton of great ideas. Dylan and I are just his worker bees.”
Embry seemed embarrassed by the praise. He gave his friend a hug and changed the subject by saying, “I think it’s break time. Let’s all go inside and warm up.”
We invited Lark and Dylan to join us for dinner, and while Embry and his friends hung out with me in the kitchen, I put together a quick meal. I went with spaghetti aglio e olio , along with garlic bread and a green salad. I would have made something fancier if I’d known ahead of time we’d be having company, but it still felt good to cook for people, even if the meal was a simple one.
We lingered over dinner, finishing with coffee and a big plate of the macarons we’d made the day before. Embry looked proud when his friends raved about the cookies.
Eventually, he got up and said, “Let’s go see how the lights look, now that it’s dark out.”
He put Dusty on a leash and brought him with us, and we crossed the street while Dylan went to plug everything in. Embry and Lark wanted to be surprised too, so all three of us turned our backs to the house.
I could tell when the lights came on, because they were reflected in the windows of the house in front of us. Then Dylan called, “Turn around, guys.”
We all spun around, and Lark and Embry gasped and applauded while I murmured, “Oh, wow.” I’d been prepared to tell them I liked it even if I didn’t, but I was totally sincere when I said, “It looks fantastic.”
The lights had been a very dark purple in the box, but now that they were lit up, they were a pretty shade of lavender. And the dragon was pure joy. It looked fun and festive in its holiday accessories, and the huge, toasted marshmallows were a genius touch.
Just then, a car slowed down to look at the holiday lights. A boy in the passenger seat rolled down his window, and a little girl in the back seat clapped her hands and yelled, “Look, Mama, it’s a magical Christmas dragon!”
Embry whispered, “Totally worth it, right there.”
“You win,” I told him. “You did exactly what you said you would, and you probably even came in under budget.”
“I did, but I’m not done yet. I promised something on the door and decorations inside, but I need a little more time to finish.”
When Dylan joined us, he called the end result perfection. “I couldn’t have done it without the three of you,” Embry told us. “Thank you so much.” He was being nice by including me in that, since I’d barely done anything.
“It was super fun,” Lark said, as he put on his Santa hat and tucked his dark hair behind his ears. “I’m always down for being a holiday elf and spreading cheer. Now I’m ready for a hot bath with my boyfriend, so we’re going to head home.”
Dylan grinned at that and kissed Lark’s forehead before murmuring, “Excellent idea.”
Lark took Dylan’s hand and called, “Text me tomorrow, Em, and send me photos of phase two,” as they headed down the sidewalk. I assumed phase two had to do with the pile of dead stuff that Dylan had moved from the driveaway into the garage.
After they took off, we did a lap around the block with the dog. “This was such a fun day,” Embry said, as he linked his arm with mine. “Thanks for letting me do all of that to your house.”
“Thanks for making it the cutest house on the block.”
“It really is, isn’t it?” After a moment, he glanced at my profile and said, “I’m sorry about scaring you when I fell out of the basket.”
“I overreacted. You were using safety equipment, so you were going to be okay.”
“But it still upset you.” He glanced at me again and said softly, “I guess you must care about me.”
“Of course I do. You’re my friend, and I can’t stand the thought of anything bad happening to you.” He hugged my arm a little tighter.
Once we got back to the house, we turned the dog loose, and I helped Embry clean up the boxes and wrappers in the living room. After that, he helped me clean the kitchen and load the dishwasher.
When that was done, I turned to him and said, “Okay, I have to know. What’s with the dead forest in the garage?”
Embry smiled at me. “You’ll see.”
“Can I help with whatever you plan to do next?”
“You don’t have to.”
“I’d like to, though.”
“Well, okay. Put on warm clothes, and make sure it’s stuff you don’t care about. We’re probably going to get pitchy.”
“Pitchy?”
“Yeah, you know. Covered in tree sap.”
I went upstairs and changed into my oldest jeans and a sweatshirt before joining Embry in the garage. The space was pretty narrow, designed to fit two cars end to end with maybe three feet to spare on each side. Some shelves and my dad’s old BMW took up the back half of the garage. A lot of the remaining space was filled with branches and clumps of greenery, stacked four or five feet deep.
Embry had set up two folding chairs in the center of it, and he handed me a pair of work gloves. “Dylan left these here. I’m sure he won’t mind if you borrow them.”
I surveyed the piles of greenery, which had more or less been sorted by type. “Where did this stuff come from?”
“Dylan interns at a landscape company, and they just ripped out an entire backyard, because the new homeowner wanted to start fresh. Normally, it would all go to a place that turns it into mulch, and that’s what’ll happen with the stuff we don’t use. But some of it is about to get one last chance to shine.”
“So, this is everything that used to be in that yard?”
“Well, no. Dylan was nice enough to sort through it and set aside what he thought I could use. He knew I wasn’t going to make holiday magic out of a muddy root ball, or whatever. There’s a ton of great stuff here though, including several types of pines and lots of boxwood. There’s even a huge holly bush, which is a total score. Be careful around that one, though. It’s pretty stabby.”
“Okay. What should I do first?” He asked me to find my old Christmas tree stand, and I made my way to the shelves and fished it out. Then he produced the saddest, scrawniest Charlie Brown Christmas tree I’d ever seen. “This goes in the living room,” he told me. “I want to put it in the front window.”
“We don’t have to use that. You already won the bet and proved you can work miracles on a small budget. Let’s go out tomorrow and buy a real tree.”
I instantly regretted saying that. Embry looked like he wanted to cry. He actually hugged the pathetic pine and said, “No way. This little guy is going to be gorgeous. All he needs are a few hair extensions and some cute accessories.” I didn’t know what that meant, but sure.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to insult the tree. If that’s what you want, I totally support you.”
“Then please take him to the living room and put him in the stand with plenty of water. He’s had a rough day.” I took the tree from him and did as I was told.
When I got back from setting up the very sad sapling in the front window for all to see, Embry was wearing work gloves, wielding a set of pruning shears, and turning big branches into little branches. I asked what we were doing, and he explained, “We’re gathering little bunches of different types of foliage and wrapping the ends with florist’s wire, like this.” He held up a bundle he’d made. It resembled a small bouquet, but with greenery instead of flowers.
“Okay. How many bundles will we need?”
“Tons. Once we have a lot of them, we’ll string them together to make garlands, and we’ll fasten them to metal forms to make wreaths, like this.” He held up a round wire frame and placed the bundle on it to show me what he meant. “I got a bunch of these frames from JoJo. She went through a wreath-making phase at some point, and luckily, she never throws anything away. I’m going to make a super nice wreath for her as a thank you for letting me have these.”
I put on Dylan’s gloves and took over the job of snipping sprigs while he turned them into bundles. We ended up working late into the night, while he told me stories about life on the road and the ways he’d found to entertain himself when he was younger.
Given the way he’d grown up, I realized this project was right in Embry’s wheelhouse. He was used to making something from nothing, using whatever resources were available and spinning them into gold. It was pretty impressive.
So were the things we were making. As the wreaths and garlands came together, each was more beautiful than the next. At one point, I asked, “Where did you learn how to do this?”
“I had a lot of different jobs over the last decade, and each one taught me something new. At one point, I worked for a florist, and she showed me this technique. I guess there’s something to be said for getting fired pretty regularly and jumping from job to job.”
I started to fade around one a.m., and Embry told me, “Go get some sleep, Bry. I’ll finish up here.”
“You sure?”
“Definitely.” I took off the work gloves, and he gave me a hug and said softly, “Thanks for trusting me with this and letting me do what I wanted. It meant a lot to me.”
The next morning when I opened my bedroom door, there was a crisp pine scent in the air. The banister was draped with a thick, elegant garland, and downstairs in the foyer, a beautiful wreath was hanging on the back of the door.
I went into the living room, where another garland graced the fireplace mantel, and discovered the Christmas tree had been completely transformed. Embry had moved it onto a crate draped in fabric to give it some height, and he’d used the white lights and the ornaments I’d had in the garage, but he’d picked out just the red, gold, and silver ones. He’d also swagged it in the wide, purple ribbon he’d bought on his shopping trip, to tie in the color scheme from the front of the house.
But the real magic was in the “hair extensions,” as he’d called them. He’d made longer bundles of mixed greenery, compared to the ones we’d used for the wreaths, and woven them in among the tree’s spindly branches. They gave it shape and volume and made it look like some sort of wonderous fantasy hybrid. The end result was absolutely beautiful.
Throughout all of this, I’d been so impressed with Embry. He was clever and creative, and it made me think he really needed the opportunity to launch the cake business he’d told me about. He’d be great at it. I’d have to figure out what I could do to help him make that dream a reality.
A minute later, I found him sound asleep on the couch in the lounge. There was a pretty arrangement of greenery and holly on the coffee table, a garland on the mantel, and a wreath over the fireplace. They must have been the last things he put in place before finally passing out.
The dog was curled up with him, and he started thumping his tail when he saw me. I opened the back door for him, and Dusty leapt up and ran outside.
That sudden motion woke Embry. He sat up and blinked a few times. It took him a moment to get his bearings, and then he mumbled, “Guess I fell asleep.”
“Really late, by the look of things. I can’t believe you did all of this. The tree is stunning, by the way.”
“Stunning in a good way, or like, you’re stunned by how bad it is?”
“Stunning as in drop-dead gorgeous. It’s absolutely amazing, Embry.”
He flashed me a drowsy smile. “Did I tell you, or did I tell you?”
“I’ll never doubt you again.”
While I made some coffee, he joined me in the kitchen and filled Dusty’s bowls with fresh water and food. As soon as the dog heard the kibble hit the bowl, he raced inside and did a little dance until his dish was set down in front of him.
Embry opened his cabinet and started to reach for a box of cereal, but I said, “Let me make you breakfast. I got some nice brioche bread with our grocery order, so would you like some French toast?”
His eyes went wide, as if I’d just offered him something amazing. “I’d love some. Thank you.”
He took a seat on the stool at the kitchen island, and as I grabbed some eggs, I asked him, “So, what’s on today’s agenda?”
“First, I’m going to harvest every last bit of useable greenery. Dylan’s coming by around ten to pick up whatever’s left. Then I’m going to sweep out the garage. I plan to leave it as pristine as I found it.”
“Would you like some help with any of that?”
I wasn’t sure why I felt disappointed when he said, “No, thanks. I’ve got it.”
When he reappeared at lunchtime, I was sitting at the desk in my home office. I’d gone in there to work on some ideas for my new restaurant, but my mind kept wandering.
He placed a pretty arrangement of greenery and holly on my desk and said, “I found a bunch of vases on the shelves in the garage. I hope it was okay to use them.”
“Yeah, of course. Nothing in there is off limits.” I didn’t tell him they’d come with the flowers I’d received after my dad died. That was just depressing.
“The garage is clean, and I’m done decorating. Here’s your change from the hundred dollars you gave me.” He grinned as he placed five twenty-dollar bills on the desk.
“I know you’re the bargain hunter of the century, but you still spent money. I don’t want it to come out of your pocket.”
“I did spend money—ninety-eight dollars and eighty-six cents, to be exact.” He placed a dollar and fourteen cents next to the twenties as he said that. “But when I was sweeping out the garage, I met Carrie and her wife Toshiko. They live in the house directly across from yours, and they came over to tell me how excited their kids were when they saw the dragon.”
He sat on the edge of my desk and continued, “They also complimented me on the wreath I’d hung on the front door and wanted to know where I got it. When I told them I made it, they commissioned me to make two more, one for them, and one for Carrie’s mom. I thought fifty dollars a piece was a fair price, given what a wreath that big would sell for in a shop, and they were super happy. I just finished making and delivering them.”
He looked a little smug as his grin widened. “So, the total cost of our holiday decorations was zero dollars and zero cents. Go ahead and stick that back in the petty cash envelope.”
“You earned that money. It’s yours.”
He picked up the bills and tried to hand them to me. “I’m the one who wanted some holiday décor, so why should you have to pay for it?”
“I wanted it, too.”
“Just take the money!”
“No.”
He returned the bills to the desktop and started to leave the office, but I grabbed the cash and chased after him. I caught his hand, and he turned back to me and said, “You’re incredibly stubborn, but I’m not going to let you win this argument.”
I couldn’t help but grin. “That’s ironic, coming from the stubbornest person I’ve ever met.” He tried to frown at me, and I said, “Please take the money, Em. You earned it.”
After a moment, he figured out a compromise. “How about if I take it, but I spend it on something for both of us?”
“I can’t control what you do with it.” I held up the money, and he sighed dramatically and plucked it from my hand. I smiled at him and said, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, I guess.”
“Now I owe you the dinner of your choice. So, what’ll it be? Mac and cheese? Homemade pizza?”
He didn’t have to think about it. “Spaghetti empanadas.”
“What is that, exactly?”
“Nice, saucy noodles inside a savory fried turnover, with lots of shredded cheese. Yum!”
“Wow.”
“I know, right? It’s going to be epic.”
“Is this something you’ve had before?”
“No, I’ve only imagined it. But if anyone can make it happen, it’s you.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
We grinned at each other, and then a strange little moment passed between us. We both paused, watching each other while my heartbeat sped up and anticipation crackled around us.
What were we waiting for?
When I realized I was still holding his hand, I let go of him and mumbled, “I’m, um, I’m going to go make us some lunch.” I gestured awkwardly toward the kitchen.
He seemed flustered. “Good idea. I’m going to go… do something until then.”
I nodded, and we hurried off in opposite directions. When I reached the kitchen, I took a deep breath and whispered, “What the hell was that?”