Chapter 29
You ridiculously practical sex god
Gage
Jesus, Disaster. When’s the last time you did laundry?” I asked, wrestling the overflowing basket out of the back seat.
Zoey shrugged from the other side of the SUV and grabbed her overnight bag. “Hey, it could be worse. I’ve sold, like, half my wardrobe online since moving here.”
“Guess you didn’t need that big closet,” I said, leading the way through the garage’s side door out into the driveway.
“Don’t you dare touch my closet space. I fully plan to become successful enough to eventually start buying clothes again.”
Nana was doing her “Where have you been? I’m hungry” bark inside the mudroom. There was a soft thump, and her blond head and front paws appeared in the glass.
“You know, for a dog, she’s pretty cute,” Zoey said as we trudged up the porch steps.
“Less conversation, more paying attention so you don’t fall and break another wrist,” I reminded her as I opened the side door.
Nana greeted us as if we’d been lost at sea for a decade, wiggling and whimpering, whipping our legs with her tail.
“Yes, hello, pretty girl,” Zoey said, giving the dog a resounding chest thump with her good hand.
“You can feed her while I get started on Mount Laundry here. One scoop in that bowl, and make sure she’s got fresh water,” I said, gesturing at Nana’s dishes in the open cabinet I’d designed specifically for feeding a sloppy dog.
Zoey put her overnight bag on the island and toed off her shoes. “Come on, you big silly hair ball. You must be starving.”
Nana pranced over and helpfully picked up her food dish in her mouth. Clearly worried about subtlety, the dog bashed the metal dish into Zoey’s shins.
“Ow,” Zoey responded dryly. “Give me that.”
I let them wrestle their way through dog dinner while I started the first load of laundry, tossing in a few pieces of my own.
My phone vibrated on the counter, and I saw a text from Mom.
Mom: Can you do me a teeny tiny favor because I never ask anything from you?
Me: The record reflects otherwise. What do you need?
Mom: Can you put the animals in the barn and feed them? We’ve been invited to Laura’s for dessert…to officially meet Valerie.
Me: Zoey’s with me. But since I’m your favorite son and overflowing with magnanimity, I will grant you this favor.
Mom: Interesting. Do you youths have a term for a two-night stand?
Me: It’s called Nunyabizness.
Mom: Just don’t let her break any more bones.
Me: Don’t commit any crimes at Laura’s. I have enough cases on my plate right now.
I put the phone back on the counter and found Zoey trying to mop up Nana’s water bowl flood.
“Let’s go, ladies. We have some chores to do before dinner.”
Zoey gasped and paused her dramatic toweling of Nana’s face. “Did you lure me out here under the false pretense of free laundry to put me to work?”
“And for more sex.”
“Thank God.”
“Fart Blaster 2000, you have to stop leaning on the gate,” Zoey complained. She was wearing an old pair of my mother’s field boots and one of my most ancient sweatshirts. Her curls were exploding out of the knot she’d pulled them into on top of her head.
“She’ll stop leaning if you stop scratching her ears,” I said, shooing the rest of the cows across the drive and into the barn’s paddock.
“Gage says I have to stop petting you,” she said in a stage whisper made all the more comical by the miniature donkey with his head shoved under her arm.
Pepe was usually a pain in the ass to put in the barn at night, but with his human girlfriend here, I had a feeling we were going to be able to march him right into his stall.
“All the feed in the right bins?” I called to her. I’d had her do the feed while I closed the chickens back into their coop and tempted the alpacas into the barn while doing my best not to get spit on.
Fart Blaster heaved a sigh and clomped across the drive, through the paddock, and directly into the pen inside the barn.
“Okay, bring your boyfriend,” I said, manning the paddock gate.
Zoey strolled over with the donkey at her heels.
“Put him in that last stall on the right,” I said as I swung the gate closed. I managed to get a quick picture of woman and donkey from behind as they entered the barn together and shook my head at the irony of a woman afraid of animals turning out to be Dr. Dolittle.
Inside, I found Zoey and Nana outside Pepe’s stall, wishing him a good night. All around me, animals who had come from vastly different circumstances bellied up to tubs and troughs in their secure stalls.
“Please tell me you’re going to feed me now,” she said, turning to face me. “I’m starving after all that…‘yoga.’”
I crooked my finger, and she sauntered my way with Nana shadowing her every move. “For someone who doesn’t like animals, you’re pretty comfortable in a barn full of them.”
“I blame this town for desensitizing me. Everywhere I turn, there’s a sheep or a raccoon or a pig just roaming around like a tax-paying homeowner with kids on the honor roll.”
“I’m proud of you for adapting.” I slung my arm around her shoulders and led her back out into the spring evening.
“I mean, it’s not that different from facing down small armies of pigeons and rats,” she joked.
We drove back to my house in the dark on the bumpy farm lane that connected my property with my parents’. Nana fell asleep with her head on the center console and her feet on the floor of the back seat. Dog radar woke her with a start when my headlights caught the house.
“What’s for dinner?” Zoey asked, holding the mudroom door for Nana, who catapulted herself past us.
“How do you feel about appropriately portioned chicken parm or steak tips with peppers and onions?” I asked, making quick work of switching the first load of laundry to the dryer and adding the second to the washer.
“I knew it! You’re definitely inhuman.”
“Because I have food?” I flicked on the lights in the kitchen, and she followed me in. Zoey let out a groan when she spotted my meal prep fixings on the counter.
“You don’t have food. You have groceries. First the perma erection, now the meal prepping. Real humans don’t do that. Influencers pretend to meal prep to get sponsors. No one has time to cook one meal, let alone a week’s worth,” Zoey explained.
“This whole thing could have been avoided if you had food at your place,” I reminded her.
“Note to self. Stock up on frozen pizza.”
I patted her on the head as she plopped morosely onto a barstool and poked at a bag of rice. “Would wine and a snack make you feel better?” I offered.
She perked back up. “You have my attention, sir.”
I poured her a glass of rosé and uncovered a small cheese and meat tray from the fridge.
“You knew I was going to end up back here this weekend, didn’t you?” she said, pointing at me with an accusatory slice of ring bologna as I opened a box of crackers.
“I hoped you’d come back. So I planned ahead.”
She peered at me over a thin slice of cheddar. “What other plans will I find if I poke around?”
“Besides the wine you’re drinking?” I asked, washing my hands at the sink. “Guess you’ll just have to wait and see. Now get over here so we can get dinner started.”
She turned on “cooking music,” which seemed to trend heavily toward bubbly pop hits from the last twenty years.
Nana trotted into the kitchen, favorite stuffed alligator in her mouth, to settle under the dining room table.
We worked in tandem with me supervising Zoey’s kitchen deficiencies.
While I seared the steaks, she breaded the chicken breasts.
I refused to let her near anything sharper than a butter knife, so she was in charge of making the rice while I sliced all the veggies.
Together we topped the breaded chicken with sauce and mozzarella.
“I wonder if I could do this for some kind of breakfast,” Zoey wondered as she tossed all the salad ingredients into a bowl. “I’m supposed to start my days with protein to keep my brain from imploding or whatever the medicine says.”
“What do you usually eat for breakfast? Everything has a high-protein version.”
She wrinkled her nose and gave the salad a violent toss that had broccoli and lettuce flying everywhere. “I don’t really do breakfast. Only when I’m with Hazel, so then it’s usually exploded microwave oatmeal,” she explained, scraping up the escapees and dumping them back in the bowl.
I skirted around her, hand skimming her lower back as I reached into a cabinet for another dish. I liked having her here in my space. While I usually enjoyed the quiet of my house, having a bit of her color and chaos was a nice change of pace.
“You don’t eat breakfast. You forget lunch. So you snack on dry cereal in the middle of the afternoon. What do you do for dinner?” I asked.
“Go out or order to-go stuff when I realize I’m dying of starvation,” she said cheerfully as she shook her ass to the beat of Outkast’s “Hey Ya!” playing on the wireless speaker.
I made a mental note to double all my meal prep recipes for the foreseeable future.
“I can hear you judging me over there,” she teased as I ran the knife through the last steak. I felt her hands at my waist as she peered around me, then snatched the dish towel from the counter next to me.
“I’ll try to judge quieter next time. Chicken or steak?” I asked, holding up a container of each.
“Mmm, steak. That ‘yoga’ earlier made me hungry for red meat,” she said, making grabby hands at me.
“Favorite condiments?” I asked.
“I can already feel your judgment, but I’ll tell you anyway. Ranch dressing and A.1.”
“More wine?” I offered as I pulled a beer from the fridge.
She looked up from the pool of steak sauce she was drowning her meat in. “I’m good.”
Normally, I would have cleaned the kitchen, put away all the prepped food, then eaten. But Zoey looked like she was about to start chewing on her own arm.
I poured her a glass of water and handed it over. “Dining room table or here at the island?”
Zoey pursed her lips in thought. “Couch.”