23. Sal
Twenty Three
Sal
Tapping the door lightly, I tug at the collar of my dress shirt and wonder what the hell I’m doing here outside of Cole’s place.
I shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be my date for tomorrow night.
I need to call my dad right now and cancel dinner. We can keep our relationship strictly business.
Determined to follow through on that, I turn to leave but the door swings open and the man before looks so young and confused and stressed.
He never looked that way before I held his dick in the bathroom.
“Come in,” he says, the calmness of his voice not matching the expression maring his features.
I do as I’m told and close the door behind me lifting my nose automatically to the heavenly aroma in the air.
“What is that?” I find myself asking.
“Spaghetti,” he says simply.
I shake my head and follow him into the kitchen. “This doesn’t smell like regular, homemade spaghetti, this smells like a twenty dollar plate of spaghetti.”
He chuckles and washes his hands before lifting the lid of a pot and stirring the source of the mouth watering dish. Inside is a bubbling red sauce with meatballs that he stirs around.
“Google is a marvelous thing.”
Once he’s done he sets the ladle on a holder and crosses his arms, slightly leaning against the counter to the side of the stove.
“What?” I’m prompted to ask from the look he’s giving me.
He shrugs.
I imitate him and lean against the counter on the other side. “I’m sorry,” I find myself saying.
Why do I continue to apologize to him?
“For what?”
The confession pours from me like warmed honey. “For not telling you who my father is.”
He shrugs again.
“I don’t care who your daddy is.”
The way he bites his bottom lip tells me he’s holding back. This is my cue to prod him for more of his thoughts.
“Tell me.”
The way his body bristles I can’t help but risk a glance at his waist. The black joggers he wears doesn’t give me any information and I chastise myself.
No!
We’re not together here for me to repeat what happened between us before. I’m here to… fuck. I should quit all of this.
In a flash Cole is less than a foot away from me, standing on his tiptoes.
We’re still not eye to eye, but a semblance of space and ignoring the tension is gone.
“What?”
His arms wrap around my neck and he’s pressed his body into mine.
As if we do this all the time, my body works on autopilot and I wrap my arms around him and lean down. I let him press his lips to mine and there’s a surge of relief and desire coursing through my core and limbs.
My eyes flutter closed and I let it sink in.
We’re only stopped by the jarring shriek of the timer on his phone.
Cole tears himself away and wipes his face. Blinking away bewilderment, he tears his gaze from me and what’s happened and stops the timer.
I watch as he carefully drains the pasta and sprinkles fresh herbs across the top of the sauce.
He’s meticulous as he does it, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him, or anyone for that matter, work so diligently and delicately.
“Go sit,” he bosses me, and I listen.
From my seat I watch as he carefully fills two plates, pulls crisp garlic bread from the oven and places two pieces on each plate.
Without a word he places the plate in front of me, the heat from the warm dinner rising to greet me.
He seats himself across from me, and starts digging in. For once in my life, I understand the urge to take a photo of my food. The urge to boast about what I’m eating to the world. It’s a work of art.
But it’s not just the food, is it? It’s the man who made it, too, I suppose.
“I thought you liked Italian food?”
The question snaps me from my awe.
“This is art, Cole.”
A snort of laughter is his response.
I look up to meet his brown eyes bright with amusement. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Why aren’t you a professional chef?”
He laughs again, twirling the noodles with a fork.
“I’m not interested in restaurant life. It’s cool and all, but a little too fast paced for me.”
Too fast? The guy who takes his breaks in the parking lot getting fucked?
Jealousy swirls around my brain.
I try to focus on how it sounds like he has experience in the kitchen, rather than focusing on that broad shouldered douche bag fucking him.
It’s quiet for a long moment. I should ask him questions.
Instead, I dig into the meal so I don’t offend him.
The first bite is warm and inviting. I have to hold myself back from wolfing it down.
“My room is a disaster, by the way. I don’t think I have anything but a funeral suit for dinner tomorrow night.”
Maybe the funeral suit would be fitting…
“You don’t have any dressy pants?”
I can’t help but chuckle at the way he morphs his mouth into an unpleasant frown. “I mean, I guess I have some church pants somewhere…”
“What are church pants?”
I use the garlic bread to soak up some of the red sauce as he tells me they’re basically gray chino pants.
“That works.”
“Yeah, as long as you dress casually too.”
“What’s casual to you?”
“Not whatever that is,” he says, gesturing to my normal office attire.
Oh boy.
“What? You want me to dress like I’m about to go play golf with the boys?”
The bright smile that lights his face does something weird to my chest.
“Fine,” I agree, because how the hell can I say no to him when he’s looking at me like that?
We finish dinner and I offer to wash the dishes while he heads back to his room.
I’m concerned as I hear things slapping the wall and a shoe or too comes flying from his room.
Is it really that difficult for him to pick out something to wear?
The mental question is asked by a frustrated huff from him.
After drying my hands, I make my way through the random shit strewn about in the hallway into his room.
He sits in the middle of a muss, face red and only in his plaid boxers.
Before I can think to object, he lays back and stares at the ceiling.
“It’s that hard, huh?”
Cole sighs again and I can’t help but watch the rising and falling of his chest. He looks so small. I fight the urge to leave the doorway and grab him.
“Do you have the gray pants you mentioned?” I ask, averting my gaze from his pebbled nipples in my view until I see him sit up in my peripheral view.
“Yeah,” he mumbles.
Tearing something from underneath him, he chucks pants right at me and I catch the pants.
Inspecting them, I have to agree, they’re nothing dazzling, but I don’t care.
“These work.”
Lifting hangers and lowering them, eventually he settles on a black button up shirt with neon flamingos.
“Yeah?”
No! My insides scream.
His devilish grin gives me a breathe of relief.
“Obvisouly I’m not wearing neon flamingos to your dads house, Sal. You’re dad seems cool but not that cool.”
Now would be the perfect time to tell him my father is a piece of shit.
The moment passes and he resumes lifting shirts and chucking them aside.
Watching him is miserable so I step around the disaster and crouch in front of him.
“Why don’t you let me pick something out and you work on cleaning this mess up?”
“Fine.”
His bratty little attitude makes my arm hairs stand up. Where did this come from? Didn’t he just kiss me?
Noisily he shuffles around the room and I try to take in the clothes still on hangers in a pile on the floor.
After rummaging for ten minutes, I find the perfect shirt.