15. Roderick
RODERICK
November rolls on. Before the end of the month, I leave my rent check on the counter when I leave for work at five a.m. It’s money well spent.
Every morning I wake up in a snug house instead of in my car.
And I sleep soundly at night knowing that the door is locked and that there’s a burly farm boy somewhere in the house.
I’m a pack animal. I’m not cut out to live alone.
Also, I’m already deeply in love with Kieran’s house. The living room has a high ceiling and shiny wood floors. It has the old bones of a home that’s been standing for a century. I love the creaky built-in cabinets in the dining room we don’t use. And the ornate staircase spindles.
Little by little, we’re furnishing the place. Kieran shops at stores and online. One morning when I wake up, I find a large, creamy rug in the center of the living room. I lie down in the center of it and decide I approve.
For my part, I’ve been haunting the thrift shops in Montpelier, slowly furnishing the kitchen with my finds. I’ve bought coffee mugs with roosters on them and a shiny copper teakettle.
One Saturday I swing by a church rummage sale and hit the motherlode: egg cups, serving spoons, a two-dollar cast-iron griddle with the tags still on it. And those are just the bigger purchases.
On Monday, for the first time ever, neither Kieran nor I has a shift at the coffee shop. That’s the day that Zara and Audrey have claimed to work together. “We’ll get a chance to start the week and talk. Just the two of us,” Audrey had said.
I wake up at six thirty, though, because I’ve trained myself to be awake in the morning. I run out for groceries, because it’s time for Kieran’s next cooking lesson.
He comes downstairs at eight, wearing flannel pants, a snug-fitting waffle-weave shirt and sleep-tousled hair. As usual, I experience a rush of affection for the hot farm boy who rescued me off the streets.
I don’t gush about my gratitude, though, because it’s clear that Kieran doesn’t know what to do with praise. And my exuberance generally makes him a little uncomfortable. So I try to rein myself in whenever we’re together.
Still, I can’t stop wondering how good it would feel to be grabbed up in those strong arms and hugged. Or, say, pinned to the bed while he fucks me. I’m not picky.
“You didn’t have to do that,” is the first thing Kieran says to me this morning.
“Um, what?” I’m still distracted by my morning sex fantasy, and by the way his hair is grown out and starting to curl. I want to sift my fingers through it.
“The soap dish in my bathroom,” he clarifies.
“Oh!” I wave a hand to dismiss this bit of nonsense. “Lucky find.” The dish is made from a single piece of waxed, carved wood. It reminded me of Kieran.
“I can pay you back,” he says.
“Sure, man. If you really want to, I’ll take your twenty-five cents.”
“Wait, what?”
“Church rummage sale. But look! I also got this…” I grab his muscular wrist and tug him over to the stove where my new Dutch oven waits. “It’s the best that four bucks can buy.”
“Wow.” He chuckles. “What are you going to make in that?”
“Not me, you. I shopped for your next lesson.”
“I want to pay for the groceries,” he says immediately.
“Fine. I still have the slip somewhere. Today you’re making pulled pork. The cooking time is five hours, so you’d better get started. Here.” I hand him a mixing bowl. “Two tablespoons of brown sugar. And a quarter cup of paprika. You’re making a dry rub.”
He blinks at me with sleepy eyes. “Before coffee?”
His expression is so unguarded and sweet that I just want to give him a hug. But I’ve learned that Kieran is not a toucher. When I sometimes slip up and pat his arm, he always grows still and wary.
I grab the stove-top espresso maker—another thrift-store find—and fill it with water. “I’ll caffeinate you. But you’re rubbing that butt.”
He blinks. “Sorry?”
“Pork butt. Also called shoulder or picnic roast, depending on where you are in the country. Preheat the oven to two seventy-five.”
“Isn’t that kind of low?”
“Yep! Low and slow. Just how I like my…” I break off laughing, because Kieran’s face is reddening already, and I haven’t even made the joke yet.
“Never mind. We don’t have a slow cooker, so we’re using the oven.
Real pulled pork is made in a smoker, but this will still be super good. If you ever get started.”
Kieran finally takes the hint and preheats the oven.
After I bully him into stirring six spices together, and rubbing the mixture all over four giant chunks of pork, he scatters a few quartered onions in the bottom of the pan and lays the spiced meat on top of it.
“There you go!” I cheer. “Put that puppy in the oven. Good. Now I’m going to make us some yeasted pancakes.” I set my new griddle on the stovetop. “We can’t smell pulled pork all day on empty stomachs.”
Kieran watches me stir together the batter I left overnight on the counter. “Can’t you make pancakes a little simpler than that?” He’s leaning against the counter, sipping the coffee I made for him. As he lifts the cup, I admire the dark hair on his tanned forearms and sigh inside.
“Sure. These are better, though. More flavor.” I whisk together the batter, and then turn on the burners under the griddle.
Kieran drains his coffee. “What’s that noise?”
“Hmm?”
“That weird little chirp. From your phone.”
I glance at the counter where my phone is charging. “You don’t know that sound, huh?” Fascinating .
“No?”
I grin. “That’s the sound Grindr makes when someone messages you.”
“Oh.” He looks into his empty mug.
“It’s another clue,” I add. Kieran doesn’t seem to date men or women, but there are times when I’m sure he’s checking me out. Then again, I’m sort of vain. And Kieran is the hardest man to read on earth.
“To what?”
“To you . If you don’t know the sound of Grindr, it’s a clue. I’ve been trying to figure you out.”
When he speaks, it’s not to tell me to fuck off and mind my own business. “If you do, let me know,” he says. Then he goes upstairs until I call him back down again to eat pancakes.
After breakfast, Kieran leaves to do chores at his parents’ farm. He reappears at suppertime, when the house smells like heaven.
“Wow,” he says, tossing his coat onto a hook he installed this week. “That smells amazing. Did it work?”
“It always works,” I say, swirling the wine in my half-empty glass. I splurged on a cheap pinot noir, which I’ve been sipping while I wait for him to reappear. “I pulled it out three hours ago. You check it, okay? Use the tongs.”
In the kitchen I watch as he lifts the pot and pokes the meat. “It’s falling apart. I just want to dive in head first.”
“You will,” I promise. “But my rolls are in the oven for another fifteen minutes, okay? Turn on the burner and we’ll heat this up. I’ll call you when it’s time.”
“Awesome. Right back,” he says, then disappears upstairs.
When the bread is done and steaming up the kitchen, I call up the stairs. “Kieran?”
There is no response.
After a second try, I climb the stairs slowly. This is Kieran’s private domain, and I don’t want to invade it. On the other hand, there’s pulled pork waiting.
When I reach his room, I realize why he can’t hear me. He’s facing his desk, painting away on a giant, propped-up pad of watercolor paper, earbuds in his ears.
“Kieran.”
Nothing.
I step closer. “Food’s ready!” I call.
He startles violently. Then he drops his head, as if embarrassed. “Sorry,” he says, yanking out the ear buds.
“I didn’t know you painted.” I try to see around him. “Is that…a tractor?”
He puts his hands on my shoulders for the first time ever—their weight is way too enticing—and steers me away from his work. “It’s terrible. Let’s eat.”
His hands fall away as we jog down the stairs. “Did you always paint?”
“No, almost never,” he says heavily as we enter the kitchen. “Can I have some of that wine?”
“Of course you can. I already poured your glass.” I point it out on the counter. “But you have to pull the pork first. Here.” I hand him two forks. “Easiest thing in the world. But you have to do all the steps yourself or it doesn’t count.”
“Count as what?”
“Something you made yourself. We’re cheating already with the barbecue sauce.” I open a bottle from the store. My cooking-school buddies would never let me live it down, but I didn’t want to overwhelm Kieran with recipes just yet.
He gets to work tugging the meat apart, while my mouth waters.
“So why don’t you paint more often?” I ask, because the wine has already obliterated my crappy impulse control.
He stops working for a second, as if trying to decide whether or not to answer me.
Then he puts the forks down and looks me right in the eye.
“When I was twelve years old, my mother was hanging one of my thousands of drawings on the refrigerator. And my father said, ‘Don’t encourage him. We don’t want him to grow up to be a faggy artist.’”
“Oh,” I say slowly. “And maybe that hit a little too close to the truth?”
“At twelve, I really didn’t know…” He shakes his head instead of finishing that sentence. “I stopped drawing immediately. For, like, ten years.”
My jaw hangs open. “Don’t you draw at work, though?”
“I do now. A couple of years ago I said fuck it and picked up a set of colored pencils. It took me a long time to stop hearing his voice in my head.” His eyes are deep pools of pain right now, and I just want to give him a hug.
“Shit. Don’t I know it,” I agree. “I still hear their voices in my head. It’s fucking sad that you didn’t draw anything for ten years.
But maybe you’re smarter than me. I took the opposite route, rubbing it in my parents’ faces every chance I got.
That’s how I found myself living under a bridge when I was eighteen. ”
His eyes widen. “You did? For how long?”