Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
The ghost hunting team was at his house.
The ghost hunting team had been at his house for weeks, it seemed like.
Maybe it was more like days, but Xander had to admit that was a lot.
Then there was the renovation, the ghost activity, and his fight with Iago, which had made everyone a little chilly.
Xander had been driven out of his own home.
Basically he’d just given the guys a key and told them to knock themselves out as long as they were gone by the time he got back from working at the restaurant up at the hotel.
He worked up at the pass between Hot Springs Junction and Secret Springs.
He ran the kitchen, the hotel left him alone and let him do his thing.
If he could be home and be by himself, he didn’t care.
Today Xander was making some sort of fish dish. He thought it was rainbow trout, but it was hard to tell while the fish thawed. He was also going to make a nice chicken salad that could go on sandwiches or on top of lettuce leaves and tomatoes and some sort of pasta dish.
Xander was no chef. He’d never gone to culinary school, but he was a line and banquet cook and a good one.
He could take marginal ingredients from cans and the freezer and make them into hearty, filling, yummy food that people would come from both sides of the pass to eat, and people staying at the hotel would really enjoy.
There was a rhythm to it, too, a steadiness to the chopping and mixing, baking, frying, flouring, all of that. It soothed him on a deep level, and it made him de-stress from all of the stuff going on at his house.
Which included Iago. He hadn’t seen his blue-haired nemesis ever since the day he’d been so awful about the guy.
Which, okay, he understood why Iago wouldn’t want to see him, but it was Iago’s job to set up all the filming, and the guys were scrambling to deal with all of that at Xander’s house.
Also, how was he supposed to apologize if Iago never saw him again?
“Hey, Xander.” Laura, who was one of the teenagers who went to high school over in Summit Springs, wandered into the kitchen, tying on an apron.
She didn’t actually work at the hotel. She was volunteering there to get credits for some culinary thing she was doing at school, but she was a big help when it came to mise en place.
He liked Laura a lot, actually. She was clean, she took direction well, and she wasn’t big on chatter, so he still felt like he got his solitude in.
“Do you want to prep all this stuff for a chicken salad: onions and celery, grapes, pecans, all that?”
“Sure.” She pulled a knife out of her knife roll, which he’d given her for Christmas, and got to work on the celery he’d already pulled out
Xander started chopping up things for a slaw to go with the fish, and if he was putting a little too much force behind the cabbage, well that was on him.
Laura eyed him from across the worktables. “You okay?”
“I’m a little grumpy. I have ghost hunters at my house. I think I have ghosts in my house. And I really made a muck of it with somebody I’d like to be friends with.”
She pursed her lips. “Ouch. That sucks.”
“Yeah, I’m really not very friendly.”
She giggled. “You’re not so bad.”
“Uh-huh. That’s why my only friends are Sebastian and Xavi.” Xavier ran the coffee shop right across the way from the hotel up here. He was a cheerful, good-natured sort of guy. Sebastian was, too. He guessed that’s why they put up with him. Everyone needed one Eeyore in their life.
“Nah, they’re your only friends because they were the only ones who were in high school at the same time as you here in Hot Springs Junction.”
“Ha-ha.” Xander pointed his knife at her. “You’re replaceable, you know.”
Laura coughed. “Nobody else would work here for what you pay me, which is nothing.”
“I sign off on your credits.” But she had a point.
“So do you still want to be friends with this person?”
“I do. What do you think I ought to do to apologize?” He had thought about making a cake, but he hadn’t had a kitchen to do it in. He supposed he could do it today because he was up here at the hotel. They wouldn’t care if he used their ovens.
“You should totally make food. That’s your best quality, the way you cook. So good.”
“Thanks. I think.”
“Oh, it’s totally a good thing.” She ran her knife through the celery, making nice even dices.
“I was actually thinking of a cake.”
“Cake definitely says I’m sorry. Pasta not so much. That’s like date night food. Tacos, tacos say let’s be platonic friends, but cake says I’m sorry.”
“How did you get to be so smart?” He thought she had some amazing maturity for her age. More than he had, in fact.
“I watch a lot of rom-coms.” She beamed at him. “Make a cake.”
“Okay, I will.” He pulled out his phone to text Colton.
What is Iago’s favorite kind of cake?
He got back a smiley face.
Are you apologizing?
I’m full-on groveling
He wanted things back to what constituted normal in Hot Springs Junction, which meant Iago working with his best friends, being able to come to the house to work on the ghost hunting series. He didn’t want to be the reason everything broke down.
He had to admit he was missing the sight of the blue-haired wonder.
He got defensive when he got emotional about things, and Iago made him feel shit. Emotional stuff, attraction stuff, and half the time he figured he wasn’t even into that, so he hated it when it blindsided him.
He loves coconut cake
Perfect. I think I have all the stuff to make that right now
Make sure you make enough for everybody
He sent back devil horns and shook his head. No this was for Iago, and if he wanted to share it with everybody, that was great. But if not, he could just sit and eat the whole thing with a spoon.
Xander did make an empowering coconut cake, though, so if anything was said I’m sorry, it would be that.
And maybe that would help them start over again.