Chapter 6 Beckett
BECKETT
It’s been weird to come home and find the kitchen clean. To see everything spotless and have it smell like something other than cleaning chemicals; fruit, lemonade, vanilla, coffee, or other exotic scents that I couldn’t describe if you told me what they were supposed to be.
It’s nice to have food on the table, to have someone waiting up for me when I get home.
Most nights we don’t talk. We don’t need to because both of us are used to being on our own. We can just exist in each other’s presence.
When I get home, she’s curled up on the couch, asleep. The TV is still on, her laptop open on the coffee table, the screen now black. I take a moment to look at her, really look at her, without the fear of being caught.
She’s gorgeous, in a soft way. She’s funnier than I would have ever given her credit for.
Her light brown hair is pulled up in a messy bun, a few pieces pulled out to frame her face.
Freckles dot her cheeks and the bridge of her nose.
Her skin is a little tan from the Georgia sun she was able to see before moving here.
I hate that I even want to look at her, that I want to admire her, and how far she’s come. Not just her body, but her personality.
The Sloane I used to know would have never cracked a joke about being a pornstar.
Would never tease me about how I take my coffee in the morning.
Would never say more than five words to me at a time.
I like this Sloane, the one who’s not scared to be herself, even if she’s not really sure who that is yet.
I’m proud of her. I haven’t told her that yet, but I am.
My chest aches as I drape a blanket over her sleeping form, because she tried to wait up for me. She doesn’t have to. Hell, she doesn’t even have to make food for me.
Yet she does.
Every fucking night, she takes care of me without being asked, without expecting anything in return, all without a thank you.
I have to look away from her. Sure, I’m letting her stay here, but that’s the bare minimum.
She should be taken care of; she shouldn’t have to be an adult.
She should be allowed to be a normal twenty-one-year-old, to throw a party, to do all the things that she never got to do while living at her parents’ house.
I don’t know how to tell her that without exposing how much I’ve been listening.
Maybe she’s a slightly more glamorized version of herself online than in person, but she’s still herself.
She’s still Sloane. The girl who talks about the gym, food, body positivity, and mental health.
The young woman who has inspired hundreds of thousands of other young adults because of her struggles and what she’s done to better herself.
That’s something to be proud of, and I’ll never understand how her parents don’t see it that way. Probably because she’s done it all on her own. She didn’t need their help to become who she is.
Kaden needed his dad to get him out of bed every morning, to drag him to basketball practice when he thought about quitting.
Someone to practice with, someone to be able to relate to when college applications were due, and he didn’t know which of the twenty division one schools to choose from.
Lottie needed both parents. A mom to enable her spoiled behavior, and a dad to write a glowing recommendation letter to get her into any law program she could dream of.
Not Sloane, she picked a school far away and created this life on her own.
“Beck…” Her soft voice surprises me, as does the nickname, since she’s never called me that before.
Why does it make my heart beat faster, and my body feel all warm? I shouldn’t like the way it sounds, but I do.
“Shhhh, it’s ok. Just go back to sleep,” I whisper.
“Your food’s in the microwave,” she mumbles, rolling over and silently nuzzling her face into my hand. I doubt she even realizes that she’s doing it, since she’s still ninety percent asleep.
I let myself have this moment for just a few seconds before slowly pulling my hand away and moving wordlessly into the kitchen.
After my food is warmed, I take it into my office to eat so I don’t accidentally wake her up again. When I’m done, I work on some paperwork for a little bit before feeling the drowsiness take over. I head back into the living room and kitchen to put my plate in the dishwasher.
She’s still passed out on the couch. I think about picking her up and taking her to her room, but I think better of it and just head upstairs by myself.
I shower then climb into bed, curious about what tomorrow will look like. We’ve only had a few Sundays together, and I can’t say that I mind her being around.
Sundays are the one day off I get to relax and not go to work. The singular day that I had off on my six-day work week. But now my Sundays don’t look boring anymore. I have something to look forward to when I wake up, even if I hate myself for looking forward to seeing her.
I wake up a little after I normally do and head down into the kitchen to make breakfast. She’s not on the couch, and she’s not up yet. I look at the clock and see I have probably close to an hour before she makes her way downstairs.
I look at the recipe I found this morning for making gluten-free pancakes with all-natural ingredients that she’ll hopefully eat.
I start a fresh pot of coffee as I grab all the other items for breakfast.
I use only egg whites and a little oat milk; luckily, we have the right kind of flour, too.
I use chocolate chips in half of them, leaving the other half plain. I cook up some fried eggs and some turkey bacon before grabbing jam, butter, and syrup from the pantry.
She walks down the stairs close to eight o’clock, lets out a little yawn, and stretches.
I find my eyes lingering slightly on her face.
The soft, sleepy smile looks good. Actually, all of her smiles look good, and I think that I’ve gotten more in the last few weeks than in the twenty-one years I knew her before she moved in.
Happiness looks really fucking good on her.
“Morning,” I mumble, turning back to the stove and finishing the bacon as she sits at the counter, looking away quickly before she catches me staring.
I grab a mug for her, filling both mine and hers with coffee. I leave mine black while I put a little bit of oat milk and sugar into hers before sliding it to her.
“What are you doing?” she asks, looking around at the mess I’ve made.
“I’m making breakfast.”
“I can see that, but why?”
“We need to eat, and I was up.”
Her smile is small as she brings her mug to her lips and takes a sip.
I hear her let out a small sigh. “How do you know how I take my coffee?” she asks, her eyebrows scrunching together in confusion as she looks down at the cup in her hands.
I pause for a moment as I turn with a plate of pancakes in my hand.
“You never make it any other way.”
At least not as far as I have ever seen. Not that we bond over coffee, but it’s the only way I’ve seen her make it since she’s been here. That or that weird green drink she makes that smells like fresh cut grass.
“You pay attention?”
I turn, grabbing the other two plates of food and sliding them across the counter.
“Sometimes,” I mumble.
We dish up and eat in silence, as we do for almost all of our meals.
“These are so good, what did you do to them?” she asks, picking up a chocolate chip one and putting it onto her plate with a little bit of butter and the smallest amount of syrup.
“They are gluten-free, made with oat milk and egg whites,” I tell her, not looking up from my plate as I put another bite of food into my mouth.
I can see her staring at me in my peripheral vision, but I keep eating like it’s no big deal. Like, I didn’t spend an hour this morning looking for a recipe that I wouldn’t fuck up and would hopefully taste good.
“Oh…”
I don’t know how to respond to that, so I don’t. I just keep eating, and the two of us fall into silence once again. We finish up our meals before going our separate ways for a few hours.
I don’t see her again until around early afternoon when she brings me lunch while I tinker out in the shop on random projects that I started once upon a time but never finished. Some of them, I’m not sure if I ever will.
She made pasta salad, sandwiches, and brought out some sodas for us as well.
As we eat, I look out the shop doors, admiring the mountainous view from the property. I’ve always loved this house, and I think that’s why I’ve never moved.
Truthfully, it has everything I would ever need if I decided to retire tomorrow. My very own little refuge in the woods: ten acres, animals, trees, mountains, and most importantly, no people to bother me.
I’m close enough to town that if I need to go get food, I can, and most places in town do deliver if I ever want quick takeout.
As we sit side by side, I think about the Sloane that I thought I knew. It’s weird, knowing someone for their entire life but not really knowing them.
She never used to smile, she was the butt of every joke, and seemed to have little joy, despite what everyone would be jealous of her living in a dream world, with money and anything she could ever want materialistically.
She doesn’t stick around long after lunch. While she heads inside, I go back to tinkering for awhile before I head into the house and go straight for the stairs.
I take my time in the shower, letting the water wash away everything from the week in prep for work tomorrow. The weirdest thing happens for once, work actually isn’t the thing that’s at the forefront of my mind. It’s the brunette downstairs in my kitchen making me dinner. And I have no idea why…