I was settling them on my hips when Johnny appeared back in the hall.
He went right to his sweats, and I tried to take it as good he glanced at me as he did, not avoiding me, my presence or even eye contact.
He nabbed them and yanked them up as he asked, “You like eggs and bacon?”
“My mother was a vegan.”
He stopped in the process of tying the drawstring under his navel and stared at me.
His hair was even messier now, falling over his forehead and nearly into his eyes.
It made him look disheveled and more handsome than ever, especially my firsthand knowledge of and participation in how it got that way.
“I’m not,” I went on.
He kept staring at me.
“A vegan that is,” I shared. “I tried. About seven times. Even vegetarianism didn’t stick. So uh . . . yes. I like eggs and bacon.”
He slowly finished tying the drawstring on his sweats as he asked, “There a story behind all that information?”
“No, just, my mother wasn’t a vegan. She was a militant vegan,” I told him.
“Ah,” was all he said in reply, but he did it lifting his chin.
“And my sister was a vegetarian for years and years, until she met a guy who thought that was stupid and he introduced her to cheeseburgers.” I shrugged. “The rest is history. I had long since been a lost cause, but my mother never got over that.”
I was blathering and doing it mostly because I was beside myself with relief that he asked me if I liked bacon and eggs, which meant whatever strangeness I felt after we finished didn’t mean he was going to ask me to take off his shirt and put on my clothes so he could take me back to town and be rid of me.
“Not sure there’s a vegetable in this house, unless you count a bag of frozen corn,” he said.
I couldn’t stop myself from looking alarmed.
Johnny of course didn’t miss it and any of the cold I had left at the strangeness of how he left me in bed melted away when he burst out laughing.
I’d heard him chuckle. It was throaty and rich and lovely.
His laughter was that times a thousand.
But still, there was something about it that sounded . . .
Rusty.
“I’ll get the mugs,” I said in order not to do something stupid, like watch him laugh like a besotted teenager seeing her first boyband crush in concert.
I turned to the doors but turned back when he called, “Iz.”
My eyes met his.
“You eat a lot of vegetables?” he asked.
“Three quarters of your plate should be vegetables,” I answered.
“She eats a lot of vegetables,” he murmured through a white smile.
“I really need coffee,” I blurted.
“Then get our mugs, babe. I’ll get cracking on breakfast.”
He moved toward the kitchen.
I moved toward the deck.
I came back with the mugs and he was at the stove, but I knew he heard me enter when he ordered toward the stove, “Dump that out, we’ll get fresh.”
His cup maybe only had one last mouthful in it. I hadn’t even taken a sip.
“I’ll nuke mine,” I told him.
“Dump it out,” he returned.
“It’s okay. I nuke coffee all the time.”
And I did. I nuked coffee. I found creative ways to use leftovers. I slammed my lotion bottles on countertops to force down the last dregs.
What I didn’t do was waste, and I didn’t waste partially because I was an environmentalist but mostly because I grew up with government cheese in the refrigerator. When you didn’t have a lot, you not ever wasted what you had.
“It’s been sitting outside for almost an hour,” he stated.
“It’s still good,” I replied.
I made it to the kitchen, seeing he had a fancy drawer microwave in his island.
I was heading there when I stopped because I was divested of the mugs in my hands.
I watched Johnny go to the sink and dump both cups. He rinsed them, shook them out and then went to the coffeemaker.
“How do you take yours?” he asked.
“Just cream.”
“Little, lots or in between?” he asked.
“Little,” I answered.
He poured coffee while I watched. He then turned and put both cups by the stove. After that, he turned again, came to me, put his hands to my waist and shifted me around, then backward. Finally, I had to bite back a surprised cry when he lifted me up (without even a grunt of effort) and planted my behind on the counter next to the mugs, but removed from the stove where there was already a clump of strips of bacon cooking in a skillet.
Once he had me settled, he nabbed my cup and handed it to me.
He then grabbed his, took a sip and set it back down on the countertop. He went to a drawer, took out a fork and moved to the skillet in order to separate and straighten the bacon.
I guessed I was drinking fresh coffee.
And I guessed I was doing it sitting on the counter while he cooked, keeping him company.
“You put your panties back on,” he noted while I was swallowing my first sip.
“Uh . . .” I mumbled, not saying anything more.
His mouth hitched in the direction of the skillet before he put the fork down and went to the fridge.
I took another sip of coffee and looked around his room.
It was then I noticed that the massive TV hanging on the wall hung on the wall opposite the bed, but the couch, oblong coffee table and two flanking armchairs had their backs to the TV.
I guessed he watched TV in bed.
Or not much at all, considering the number of books practically falling out the many bookshelves and covering the table by the chair in the corner with the fabulous tripod floor lamp beside it.
“How long have you lived here?” I asked.
The utter silence this question received made my shoulders instantly tense and my gaze move directly to Johnny.
He had eggs out and was taking down a bowl from some shelves over where he was working.
What it appeared he wasn’t going to do was answer what I thought was a non-intrusive question.
It then came to mind our conversation last night at the bar.
A conversation that I hadn’t noticed until right then, thinking back on it, was one-sided.
I was new to town. I had to move there for reasons I didn’t like to think about. But I’d moved there because Deanna was there, she’d moved there years before, right after she married Charlie, and she was always talking about how fabulous it was. How friendly. How community minded. Added to that, property values were way cheaper than in the city. You could get so much more for so much less.
The one downside was that the commute was long and could be horrific if traffic got backed up. But I’d learned in the two months I’d been there that it was worth an hour’s (and often longer) commute every day.
That said, Deanna and Charlie were the only people I knew in town and I’d decided, with spring turning to summer, it was time to be more social, get to know my neighbors.
So I went to the one and only local bar, On My Way Home, known as Home. It was a drinking establishment like any other, with a rectangular bar in the middle, tables around, TVs all over the place. I’d heard they sometimes had bands but most times it was just a quiet place to catch a game or meet up with friends, have a chat and throw some back.
I’d actually seen Johnny pulling into the lot at the back when I’d finished parking. I’d glimpsed his magnificence through the cab of his truck. I’d even heard his car door close as I was walking in the back door of the bar.
And I’d barely sat down when Johnny had come up beside me.
He didn’t look at me, just slid into the space between me and the stool beside me.
He’d received instant attention from the female bartender whereupon he’d said, “Usual, Sally, and whatever she’s having.”
&nbs
p; It was not the most original pick up line ever.
But it was the best one ever used on me, only because Johnny used it.
Thus ensued him sitting next to me and asking my name.
“Eliza. I’m Eliza Forrester. But everyone calls me Iz or Izzy.”
Sharing that got me my first grin.
And for the next couple of hours, I shared a lot.
Johnny had asked questions as I did. But when I’d done the same with him, he deflected them, bringing the conversation back to me.
Sitting on his counter in his kitchen after having sex with him four times in eleven hours, it occurred to me very belatedly I didn’t know a thing about him but his name, he drove a truck, he lived in a house with a water wheel in the middle of some woods and he was an exceptional lover.
Uncomfortably, I sipped my coffee, casting my mind frantically out for a conversational gambit that might actually work.
In the midst of failing at that, he answered, “Three years.”
I looked to him not because he answered but because it sounded torn from him.
“It’s a great place, Johnny,” I said quietly.
“Been in the family generations,” he shared, cracking eggs into the bowl. “Dad kept it up so folks who came to visit us had their own space. Wasn’t like this though. When I moved in, cleaned it up, fixed it up, updated some shit. Now it’s home.”
“It’s very attractive,” I told him. “And peaceful.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“The water wheel is cool,” I remarked.
“Yeah,” he repeated.
“Is it still being used for something?” I asked.
“Place was a gristmill. Now it’s not,” he answered in a way that was that and there would be no more.
Time to try something else.
“You don’t have pets,” I noted.
“Nope.”
And that was that too.
He turned the bacon. Got out another skillet. Put it on a burner. Walked to the double door pantry at the edge of the kitchen and got out a loaf of bread.
He brought that to me and set it by my thigh on the opposite side of the counter from his mug. He pulled a toaster from the wall.
“You wanna be in charge of toast?” he asked, his gaze finally coming back to me.
I nodded. “I think I can manage that.”
His head tilted to the side. “You know how to cook?”
“I was a latchkey kid. My mom worked and I was the oldest. So yeah, I know how to cook.” I smiled at him. “And I definitely can make toast.”
His impassive face softened before he reached up beside me and pulled down a plate.
He gave me a knife and the butter.
I grabbed the bread.
“How many pieces do you want?” I asked.
“Two,” he answered.
He reached across me to grab the butter, shoved a huge pat of it in the empty skillet, then reached back across me to replace the butter.
I slid the lever down on the first two slices of toast just as a cell phone rang from somewhere in the vicinity of his bed.
“That’s my tone,” I said.
“Mine too.”
Another sliver of information about Johnny, he had an iPhone.
He moved into the room and I watched him toss his jeans aside and come back with my purse, which was ringing.
He handed it to me.
I dug out my phone.
He took the purse from me and set it on the island as I took the call and he went back to the stove.
The call was from Deanna.
“Hey there,” I answered.
“Where are you?” she replied.
“I’m, well . . . still with, uh . . . Johnny,” I stammered.
“Okay, then, just so you know, went by your place and took care of your menagerie. All fed and watered, including Serengeti and Amaretto.”
Serengeti and Amaretto, my palomino and bay horses, respectively.
“I’m still here,” she went on. “Letting the dogs have a good roam. I’ll bring them back in before I go, but could you call me when you get home?”
I suspected, since this was not my done thing, and she’d lived through my last nightmare with me (and others besides), she just wanted to make sure I was not only okay right then, but that I got home okay.
“Sure,” I replied. “And thanks.”
“Not a problem, babe. Later,” she said then rung off, which I found a little odd.
I mean, she knew I was there with Johnny so she couldn’t have a girlie gab at that particular moment about my hookup, but she seemed matter of fact to the point of being blunt.
Maybe it was a problem I asked her on a Sunday morning to go look after my babies.
I made a mental note to bring over some treats as a show of gratitude some time that week and definitely call her when I got home as I brought the phone down and saw the notifications had come up after the call.
Three texts from Deanna that came in unnoticed sometime during the activities last night (or this morning).
Call me.
Babe, call me.
As soon as you can, call me.
Oh God, maybe she really couldn’t look after my babies but had to because she hadn’t heard from me.
I engaged my texts, typed in, I’m so sorry. I didn’t get your texts. If it was an inconvenience to look after my zoo, I apologize. I got caught up in things. It means the world you took care of them anyway, I can’t thank you enough and I’ll totally make it up to you.
I sent the text with a whoosh and Johnny asked, “All cool?”
“I think so,” I answered uncertainly.
“What’s the thinking part of that?” he queried.
“I don’t know, but it might be that Deanna had something on and I didn’t get her texts after I’d texted last night so she went over, but still, it seems like something’s up.”
My phone binged and I immediately looked down to see Deanna’s response of, No, no, it’s cool. Totes cool. All good. No worries. Just call me when you get home. No biggie. Just want to chat.
I relaxed.
“Okay?” Johnny asked.
I looked at him and nodded. “Read it wrong. She’s cool.”
“Good,” he muttered, turning his attention to pouring the eggs in the skillet.
The toast popped up.
Johnny finished up the eggs and bacon and I finished up the toast. He served up and I hopped off the counter to toss my phone in my bag and warm up our coffee. He took the plates to a small, round dining room table with highly polished wood that radiated out beautifully from a center circle and space-age angled legs that had four scoop-backed chairs around it.
My mind screamed when he didn’t get a placemat before he put the plates down on that wood but I kept my mouth shut. I brought the mugs over. He returned to the kitchen and came back with the toast, a bottle of ketchup and a jar of grape jelly.
“Sit,” he ordered, putting all that on the table and going back to the kitchen.
He’d set the plates on the curve next to each other and he’d dished up equally, so I just picked a seat and sat.
“No, Iz, other plate,” he said, coming back with cutlery.
“Sorry,” I muttered self-consciously, shifting to the other chair.
“Better view, baby,” Johnny murmured close to my ear as he set a fork and knife next to my white plate.
I looked from the flatware to the room to see I was positioned facing it, and the windows, so he was right.
It was a better view.
I felt my chest warm as he took his seat.
Johnny grabbed the ketchup and squirted it all over his eggs.
I picked up my fork and stuck in.
I ate, alternately looking to my plate to get food and chewing it while staring out at the lush leaves dappled in sunlight beyond his wall of windows.
“Quiet,” he remarked suddenly and softly.
I looked to Johnny.
“Sorry?”
“You’re being quiet,” he noted.
“These are good eggs,” I told him.
His lips hitched. “Eggs are eggs, babe.”
I nodded, though they were actually good. Fluffy and light and well-seasoned.
Then I said, “Thanks for letting me have the chair with the view.”
“I got a chair with a view too,” he replied, his eyes on me telling me what his view was. “And mine’s better.”
I felt warmth in my cheeks and looked to my plate.
“Watched you walk into Home last night, no . . . giving you the honesty, watched your ass walk into Home last night, my plans of havin’ a few and relaxing after the week went up in smoke. Got up next to you, you looked at me, thought you were gonna bolt. Shocked the shit outta me you told me your name when I asked it,” he declared while I turned my attention back to him. “Maybe margarita courage that kept you where you were, just you in the beginning though. Now you’re here, you keep putting on your panties when you know I’m just gonna take ’em off, which means you gotta know I’m into you but you still can’t take a compliment for shit.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He shook his head slowly, not taking his eyes off me.
“It’s your thing and you got no clue, and I seriously don’t know if I should give you one but I’m gonna. You work it, Izzy, so don’t apologize for it.”
I ducked my head and grabbed a slice of toast.
Johnny chuckled.
“Yeah, it’s your thing,” he muttered.
I tore a bite of toast off, eyes to the table, chewed it, swallowed and announced, “I used your toothpaste.”
“Seeing as I kissed you after you did it, that kinda wasn’t lost on me.”
My gaze flitted to his to see him taking a bite of his bacon. “I didn’t use your toothbrush, though.”
He swallowed before he stated, “Iz, you’ve spent time sitting on my face. Do you think I give a shit you use my toothbrush?”
I was somewhat appalled. “That’s kind of gross.”
“Sitting on my face?” he asked, though I could tell by the sparkle in his eyes he was teasing.
“No,” I said swiftly.
“Since you didn’t use it, I don’t have to be grossed out by it.”
“True,” I mumbled, putting my toast on my plate and picking up some bacon.
“I understand,” he said quietly and I looked again to him while I chewed bacon. “You had to go through my stuff to find toothpaste. You don’t want me to think you got nosy. But I got nothing to hide, Izzy.”