I’m an affectionate guy.
I remind myself, this is a quality of Alex, not of our relationship—ourfriendship. It’s not special just to us. I have to remind myself of these things, not just because I want to kiss him, but because when I look at him now, especially given how much less I’ve seen him the past few months, it happens again. I think and feel what I thought and felt that first time at Luna’s.
I love him.
I’m too raw from my divorce, too jaded by what happened, to worry that this love is anything close to the romantic kind. But it’sakind of love, and it just might scare me more than it would if it was romantic. Because it’s different. Because I can’t put my finger on why that is. Because it feels like something that’s seen and seeped through more of my honest, messy self than any love before.
If Alex picks up on my mental spiral, he doesn’t show it. He’s relaxed, slouched in his chair, chewing on his hoodie string, eyes on his cards. “Ted,” he says, “how’s your timer?”
I peer down at my phone, grateful to have somewhere else to tell my eyes to look. I have to stop staring at him. “Two minutes left.”
He nods. “And what’s up next?”
“Pull the crèmes out of the fridge. Sprinkle with a light layer of brown sugar.” I smile devilishly. “Then I get totorchthem.”
Alex bites back a grin. “Slightlyconcerned about how fire-happy you are.”
“It makes me feel so powerful, wielding fire!”
“Yeah, maybe we’ll torch the crèmes outside,” he muses, turning over the top card in the kitty.
“Pass,” I tell him when I see what he turned up.
He turns it over, too. Before he might call trump, I say, “Alex?”
“Hmm?” His eyes are on his cards, rearranging them.
“Why did you say yes when I asked to learn to make crème brûlée?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“You don’t think I need to learn other things first?”
“Youhavelearned other things,” he says.
“I helped you make wedding soup,” I point out. “And asked you to show me how to make homemade pasta. Then tonight, I asked to learn how to make crème brûlée. I’ve been a chaos demon, and you haven’t held me back.”
He peers up at me. “Did you want me to hold you back?”
“No,” I tell him. “Unless… you think holding me back would have been better for me, for teaching me how to cook.”
Alex sets down his cards. “Before Mia, I would’ve told you that you had to learn other things first. I would have walked you through what they teach at culinary school, in that same order, by increasing degrees of difficulty and skill. I would have been an uncompromising, exacting hard-ass who made you do the same thing over and over until you perfected it, before I let you move on.”
I hear regret in his words. It makes my heart ache.
“But then I had a kid,” he says, “and I stepped away from the restaurant. And I started raising someone who learned best when she was personally invested, when she had arelationshipto what she was learning, when she could be curious and explore. When she didn’t feel like what mattered most was pursuing a perfect outcome but instead figuring it out along the way. Because that brought her joy. Even though it wasn’t how I was taught to learn or how I’d taught others, she learned everything she needed to. You were invested in helping me make soup, then learning how to make homemade pasta and crème brûlée. I could tell you were excited about them. That’s why we started there.”
“So what you’re saying is, I have a childlike disposition?” I tease.
“I’m saying,” he tells me, “you havejoy, Ted. And the last thing I’d ever want to do is dim that. I’ve done enough dimming for one lifetime.”
Alex tears his gaze away, back down on his cards. “Your timer’s about to go off. Sugar’s on the counter.”
I push up from my chair, then circle the table. “Cards abreast!” I warn him.
Alex slaps his cards down on the table, brow furrowed as he watches me come closer. Standing behind his chair, I bend low enough to wrap my arms around his shoulders and chest. I set my chin on his shoulder.
“Ever readThe Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up?” I ask.