Chapter 2 #2
Before I can talk him out of it—beg him to stay in the kitchen with me, more like—he’s walking back to the main room.
I groan when I hear the front door, knowing he’s going out to his truck to get tools or whatever it is he thinks he’ll need to save the day.
Humming the Beach Boys, I turn back to the cookies.
If it were anybody else, I’d be embarrassed to look so incompetent.
But Nils—with his bland, neutral reactions—doesn’t ever make me feel lesser.
He’s got a very steady, sure presence. Like an oak tree or a mountain.
Conversely, I would be the psychotic squirrel in that scenario.
He never makes me feel bad about that either, though, which is one of the many reasons he’s my favorite person.
I slip the hoodie back on as I mix together the batter for the cookies, cold once more now that the initial excitement of Nils’ arrival has passed.
I could hear Nils as he came back inside, but the house is silent now, other than the noise I’m making.
After a while, the humming stops scratching the itch, and I sing under my breath instead.
It’s a mix of every song and no song, and eventually, I find myself slipping into that peaceful space I only find when I’m in the kitchen.
I don’t really need to apply myself when I’m cooking or baking, don’t need to pay more than the barest attention to what I’m doing.
Not like when I’m attempting home projects or out on the boat with Shiloh and Nils.
Cooking is floating on a calm sea of mindless bliss.
I’m so centered and focused on what I’m doing that I don’t even hear it when Nils comes back.
His throat clearing startles me mid-chorus of an Eminem rap that I only know one of every dozen words to.
I don’t drop anything, thankfully, but a little puff of flour hits the front of my hoodie when I jostle the bowl.
“Sorry,” Nils says, coming to lean against the counter a good five feet away from me.
“You move like a ninja.” I slide the bowl across the counter so there is less space between us. He talks so quietly, it’s sometimes hard to hear. I don’t want to miss anything.
“Heat is working again,” he says, and indeed, it’s so soft I can barely hear the words over the sound of me folding the dough in the metal bowl. I pause. Sure enough, I can hear the soft click and feel warm air against the back of my neck as it blows from the vent.
“Wow, thank you. What was it? Was it the…pilot light?” I ask in the hopes I’ll sound a bit like I know what I’m talking about.
I’m pretty sure pilot lights are a thing.
Although, now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t know if I heard that phrase on one of the HVAC videos I watched or another one.
Shoot, pilot lights are on boats, not houses, right?
Clearing my throat, I continue talking before he can answer or correct me.
“Thanks for doing that. I think I’ll have to replace it, eventually. It seems to be ready for retirement.”
I pat the counter so my haunted mansion knows I don’t have any hard feelings.
“You can’t stay here without-ou-ou-ou-t heat,” Nils says, finishing with an annoyed twitch of his shoulder and a glare at the wall over my shoulder. I watch him from the corner of my eye, drinking in the sight of him in my kitchen.
We’re about the same size, but something about Nils always makes me think big, and something about myself seems to make other people think small.
When I worked at the Mirage in New York as a line chef, my friend Simon told me I had “twink energy.” He’d said it with something of a sneer in his voice, clueing me in to the fact that it wasn’t a compliment.
It’s possible I don’t have a good grasp of what kind of person a twink actually is, because I don’t see one when I look in the mirror.
Not that it matters, I suppose, although working in such close proximity to Nils and Shiloh this past year has made me think of the twink energy comment more often than I used to.
Maybe twink is a vibe, not an aesthetic.
In which case, I probably am one. Sure, I’m tall and muscular like them, but while Nils and Shiloh look like grizzled Vikings fresh from a day of plundering, I’m fair-skinned, pink-cheeked, and prone to breaking out in song.
“What?” Nils says, snapping me back to attention.
It takes me a second to figure out that look on his face—wide-eyed and a little confused—is because I’ve just said all of that out loud.
I grimace. Inside thoughts, I remind myself, once more managing to sound like my father.
My cheeks feel hot. I turn my face away from him.
“Oh, sorry, that…” I probably won’t do myself any favors by admitting I hadn’t meant to say that out loud. Instead, I utilize an old standby and say, “That was a joke.”
Nils doesn’t laugh, which I’m appreciative of.
If he had, he’d have been laughing at me.
Puffing out my cheeks, I scoop the cookies and start placing them on a pan.
I wonder what he was expecting when he got into his truck to bring me eggs.
Probably not home repairs, a twink identity crisis, and baking.
“All right,” I tell him cheerfully, sliding the baking sheet into the oven. “In twelve minutes, there will be fresh-baked cookies to exchange for all the hard work you did fixing my heat.”
Nils smiles and makes a vague hand gesture toward the front door that I interpret as an offer to leave. I shake my head and fill in the blanks.
“You don’t have to leave! Unless you’re busy or need to get back to the chickens.
Is the winter hard on them? Do they roam around free, or are they locked up?
I really don’t know anything about keeping chickens, if I’m honest. I’ll have to watch some videos.
Or”—I perk up—“you could teach me. Then, if you ever need to go out of town or something, I can pop over and take care of them while you’re gone.
It’s kind of wild that we’re neighbors, and yet we rarely see one another.
Well, other than work, obviously. But that doesn’t count.
I mean like this”—I wave a hand around the unfinished kitchen, Nils watching me with steady, brown eyes—“when you come over for fun.”
Nils makes a soft noise like a laugh caught in his throat. Likely thinking of how he’s never once come over for fun before. I don’t correct myself, because by now I think he’s fully aware that words come out of my mouth long before I’ve thought them through. He doesn’t seem to mind. Thankfully.
“You can meet the chickens,” he confirms. I beam. Today might be the first time he’s ventured my way for fun, but it sure as heck will not be the last.
I open my mouth to reply, but my gaze catches on Nils’ throat. Sometimes, before he speaks, he swallows a couple of times or moves his jaw like he’s chewing on the words and getting a feel for them. It usually means he’s got more to say. Snapping my own overworked jaw closed, I wait.
“They stay locked up where it’s warm,” Nils says, giving me a slightly stern look that I have no trouble interpreting as because their heat actually functions.
“It was only one night,” I tell him in my own defense, not bringing up the dozens of other nights this winter where the unit stopped working and I had to sleep in a parka. “And it really wasn’t that cold last night. Maybe for a chicken, but I’ve got plenty to keep me warm.”
I pat my stomach. Nils’ eyes follow the movement, another very small smile curving the corners of his lips.
I wonder how many people miss out on his microexpressions simply because they aren’t staring hard enough at him.
Dryden Roy—who, admittedly, doesn’t have a lot of nice things to say about anyone—says Nils is the cardboard man.
But he’s not. You only have to know where to look.
It’s not until later—when we’re sitting on my plastic-sheeting-covered couch, feet propped up on the crate I use for a coffee table, plates of warm cookies in our hands—that Nils speaks again.
“Call me the next time you lose heat.”