Chapter 17
Silas
Wednesday evening and I'm in the garage not working on anything.
The carburetor on the lift is fine. I rebuilt it yesterday. But I'm sitting on the stool with a wrench in my hand pretending to be busy because Devin is in the bar kitchen trying to cook me dinner and I've been told, firmly, by both Robin and Jason, to stay out.
"He wants to do this for you," Robin said, pushing me toward the garage door. "Let him. Go be somewhere else."
"It's my kitchen too."
"It's Jason's kitchen and you know it. Go."
So I went. And now I'm sitting in the garage listening.
"No — salt the water first, THEN bring it to boil." Jason's voice, patient but precise.
"How much salt?"
"It should taste like the sea."
"What does that even mean? I've never been to the sea!"
Robin's voice cuts in: "Just a good pinch. Like this —"
"Robin, that is not a pinch. That's a fistful."
"It's a generous pinch."
"A generous pinch is still a pinch. That's a tablespoon. You're going to —"
"Jason, I've been cooking longer than you —"
"You've been BAKING longer than me. Baking and cooking are different disciplines. Baking is chemistry. Cooking is art. You're trying to apply chemistry to art and it's —"
"Guys." Devin's voice. Quiet but firm. The voice he uses when café customers are being difficult. "The water is boiling. What do I do?"
Silence. Then Jason: "Salt it. A tablespoon. An actual tablespoon, not Robin's interpretation of a tablespoon."
I hear the clink of a spoon. The pour.
"Good," Jason says. "Now the pasta goes in. Stir it once. Then leave it alone for eight minutes."
"How do I know when it's done?"
"Bite one. If it's chalky in the center, it needs more time."
"That's very imprecise."
"Cooking is imprecise."
"Everything should have error codes," Devin mutters, and I smile in the empty garage because that's exactly what he'd say.
The pasta conversation continues. Jason walks Devin through a simple sauce, garlic, butter, parmesan, pasta water. Robin keeps trying to add things. Jason keeps vetoing. Devin mediates with the calm authority of someone who manages Robin professionally.
"What about basil?" Robin asks.
"No."
"A little lemon zest?"
"No."
"Just a —"
"Robin, the man has never cooked a meal in his life. We're doing cacio e pepe. Four ingredients. No lemon zest."
"Cacio e pepe has three ingredients."
"I'm adding garlic because I'm not an animal."
"The Italians would disagree."
"The Italians can fight me."
I hear Devin laugh. Not the quiet, careful laugh he does in public. The real one, the full one, the one I first heard on the couch when I read to him. The laugh that means he's comfortable enough to not monitor the volume.
He's comfortable with them. Without me in the room.
My lion settles deeper into the quiet. Not jealous. Satisfied. The pride is doing what prides do. Taking in someone new. Making them part of the structure not because I brought him in but because he belongs.
I put the wrench down. Pick up my book. Read in the garage while the sounds of Devin's first cooking lesson drift through the door.
"Now you toss the pasta in the sauce. Use the tongs."
"Like this?"
"Faster. You want the starch water to emulsify with the butter and cheese."
"That's a very fancy word for pasta."
"Food IS fancy, Devin. Food is the most important thing humans do besides breathe. Every culture in history has defined itself by what and how it cooks. You're not making dinner. You're participating in the fundamental act of civilization."
Pause. Then Robin: "Jason gets like this about food."
"I'm passionate."
"You're insufferable."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive."
"The pasta's sticking together," Devin says.
"MORE TOSSING."
Twenty minutes later, footsteps on the garage stairs. Devin appears in the doorway, flushed, a little sweaty, wearing an apron that says KISS THE COOK in Robin's handwriting and holding a plate of pasta like it's a newborn.
"I made this," he says.
"I heard."
"Jason only yelled at me twice."
"That's good. He yelled at Vaughn six times when Vaughn tried to make soup."
"Robin tried to add lemon zest to everything."
"That's Robin's love language. Unwanted citrus."
He sets the plate in front of me. Cacio e pepe. Simple, steaming, the cheese and pepper coating each strand. It looks right. It looks like something Jason would approve of, which is the highest bar there is.
I take a bite.
It's good. Not Jason-good. Jason is operating on a different plane of culinary existence. But genuinely, honestly good. The pasta is cooked correctly. The sauce clings instead of pools. The pepper has bite. The garlic is subtle.
"Well?" Devin asks. He's trying to look casual but his hands are clasped in front of him and he's holding his breath.
"It's really good, Dev."
"Really?"
"Really. The pepper's perfect. Did Jason help with the ratio?"
"Jason gave me an exact gram measurement. Then Robin told me to ignore it and add more. I went with Jason's number."
"Smart."
He sits on the stool next to me and watches me eat. The garage is quiet. Just us, the bikes, the fluorescent lights buzzing. The plate is warm on my knee. His shoulder is warm against mine.
"Jason told me something," Devin says, quieter now.
"Yeah?"
"About food. About how it's — he said cooking for someone is the most intimate thing you can do with your clothes on."
"That sounds like Jason."
"He said the first time he cooked for Ash, really cooked, not just threw something together, he was more nervous than he'd been about anything. Because you can hide in a lot of ways but you can't hide in food. The food tells the truth about how you feel."
"What does the cacio e pepe say?"
Devin looks at the plate. Then at me. "That I don't know what I'm doing but I wanted to try. For you."
"That's a pretty good message."
"Jason also said —" He stops. Starts again. "He said the first meal is the important one. Not because it's good. Because it's brave. He said learning to cook for someone means being willing to fail at something while they watch."
"Jason's wise."
"Jason is terrifying. He has opinions about everything."
I'm laughing. Actually laughing, in the garage, with cacio e pepe on my knee and my boyfriend's shoulder against mine and the sound of the pride moving around us. Robin's voice, Jason's clatter, Ash's murmur, Vaughn's boots, Knox's silence that fills whatever room he's in.
"I want to learn more," Devin says. "Jason said he'd teach me while you're doing whatever you do in the garage."
"I fix things."
"You sit on that stool and pretend to fix things while actually reading."
"I'm a complex person."
"You're a nerd who likes grease smells." He steals a bite of pasta off my plate. "Is this what it's like? Having people teach you things?"
The echo of something. I've heard him say this before, or almost. The wonder of being taught. The newness of someone taking time.
"Yeah," I say. "This is what it's like."
"It's good."
"Yeah. It is."
He leans into me. I put my arm around him. The plate balances on my other knee and we eat the rest of the cacio e pepe together in the garage, passing the fork back and forth, and it's not a restaurant and it's not a date and it's just a Wednesday and it's perfect.
* * *
Thursday morning. Knox calls me to the back lot.
The five acres look different than they did a month ago. The scrub brush is cleared. The ground is graded, drainage trenched, utility lines laid. Two concrete foundations sit dark against the dirt. Rectangles, precise, the beginning of something.
"Framing starts Monday," Knox says. He's got blueprints under his arm and the look he gets when he's building something. Focused, certain, the alpha channeled into creation instead of control. "Dave's crew will be here at seven."
"How long for the first two?"
"Three months if the weather holds. Vaughn and Robin. Jason and Ash." He unrolls the plans on the tailgate of his truck. "Then three, four, and five go up simultaneously. Another two months."
I look at the blueprint for house five. Two bedrooms, one bath, open living area. The revision Dave sent on Monday has the changes: built-in bookshelves on both walls of the second bedroom, a reading nook with a window seat in the living area.
"Bookshelves look good," Knox says.
"Yeah."
"He know yet?"
"About the house? He knows it exists. He knows it's for me. He hasn't seen the bookshelves."
"The reading nook?"
"No."
Knox nods. He doesn't push. That's not how Knox operates. He builds things and makes space and waits for his people to fill them.
"A couple weeks until his apartment," I say.
"And then?"
"And then he lives in his apartment. On his own. For as long as he needs."
"And the house?"
"The house will be here when he's ready."
Knox folds the blueprints. Looks out at the foundations, the trenched earth, the bare trees along the property line. The five acres that have been his since before any of us came, the land he bought with the bar, the space he always said was for the pride.
"You know," he says, "Before anyone it was just me and five acres and a bar that barely broke even."
"I know."
"I didn't know what I was building. I just knew I needed space. Room for something. People, eventually. A pride." He glances at me. "Took twelve years to fill it."
"Worth the wait?"
"Every year." He claps my shoulder. The alpha grip, firm, brief, everything he can't say in words compressed into three seconds of contact. "Be patient with him, Silas. He's worth building for."
"I know."
"Good." He picks up the blueprints. "Now come help Vaughn with the fence line. He's been out there since six and he's getting grumpy."
"Vaughn's always grumpy."
"Grumpier."
I follow Knox to the fence line where Vaughn is pulling old posts with the focused aggression of a man who'd rather tear things apart than talk about feelings.
The morning is cold, the work is physical, and the sounds of the bar waking up behind us, Jason's kitchen, Robin's voice as he leaves for the cafe, Ezra's laptop, the rhythm of too many people living on top of each other in a space built for far less, remind me why we're doing this.
My phone buzzes at 9 AM. Devin: Good morning. How's the garage?
At the fence line today. Manual labor.
Devin: You? Manual labor?
I contain multitudes.
Devin: You contain a lot of opinions about Patrick Rothfuss. Manual labor is new.
Vaughn's teaching me to pull fence posts. It's harder than it looks.
Devin: Everything Vaughn does looks hard. He's Vaughn.
Fair point. How's the café?
Devin: Robin's making me test Autumn Awakening v7. It's actually good this time. He's suspicious of his own success.
That tracks.
Devin: Also someone complained about the espresso and I fixed it while maintaining eye contact. Robin says I'm "weaponizing competence" and he's giving me another raise.
You're going to make more than me soon.
Devin: I already make more than you. You work for free in a garage.
I work for pride and family.
Devin: That's a beautiful sentiment and also not legal tender.
I put my phone away and go back to pulling fence posts.
The foundations sit behind us, solid and waiting.
A couple weeks until Devin's apartment. Five months until the houses.
The math isn't mine to do, but I find myself doing it anyway, measuring the distance between now and the reading nook, between the apartment he wants and the bookshelves he doesn't know about yet.
Knox is right. Be patient. Build something worth coming home to.
I can do that.