He lifted a bag with the logo of a local restaurant printed on it. “Have you eaten?”
I blinked.HadI eaten? I was pretty sure I’d had a snack during myBake-offmarathon - some dry cereal - but I didn’t remember having dinner. I’d been so caught up in my eagerness to get to the shelter, and then when Solo and I had arrived home I’d gone right into bonding mode. “Uh, no,” I managed after a significantly-too-long pause to think. “I forgot.”
“Perfect.” Before I could say anything else, he’d pushed past me into the house. “I brought chicken parm and cannoli.”
As if on cue, my stomach growled. Curie, still lying in the corner, raised her head at the noise and then jumped to her feet when she spotted Jamison and trotted over to us.
“Hello, beautiful,” he greeted her. “I’d pet you but I don’t want to spill dinner.”
My brain was still catching up with itself. I felt like I was operating on a few-seconds delay. “You didn’t have to -” I finallymanaged, taking the food bag when he shoved it at me and squatted down to belatedly pet the cat.
“I knew you’d forget,” he told me with a friendly roll of his eyes, rubbing Curie’s left ear. “And what are friends for but to feed each other? And…” He looked up and gave me shifty eyes. “I maybe wanted to see the cats. Just a little.”
I finally felt reality snap into the right timeline. “Ah, so the truth comes out,” I said archly. “You’re only feeding me to get to the fur babies.”
“Damn straight. No guilt.” He grinned. “So? How’s he doing?”
I shrugged. “Wary. He’s under the bed in the guest room, but I did get him to eat a little..”
“How long did Curie take to adjust when you adopted her?” he asked, standing back up and heading for the kitchen without waiting for me. I followed obediently. Maybe he was a little presumptuous, but hey, he brought food.
“It was really different with her,” I said, thinking back. “She was only a kitten, and I think she was so grateful to get out of the cold and into somewhere where she was safe that her little kitten brain bypassed ‘scared’ and went right to ‘adjusting’. Plus, I basically kept her in my hoodie for the first week except when I was feeding her.”
He nodded warmly. “You’re a good cat daddy.” He started unloading the food, and I realized that he may have only referenced chicken parmigiana and cannoli, but there was definitely more to this meal than that. In addition to the foil container that probably contained the chicken and a bakery bag that was obviously full of cannoli, there was also a plastic soup container of some sort of chunky tomato mixture, a loaf of pre-sliced focaccia, and what looked like garlic bread. Mmm, carbs. My stomach growled again.
“Exactly how much dinner did youbring?” I asked, starting to open the containers and eyeball the contents. The tomatomixture looked like bruschetta, and I assumed it went with the focaccia. I reached into the cabinet above my head to retrieve a plate we could lay the bread slices out on.
He colored delicately, seeming to only now realize he’d overdone it. “I figured you could use the leftovers for a day or two afterward?” he ventured. “I mean, I didn’t cook for the first couple of days after I brought the girls home because I was too busy trying to get them to eat and drink and I kept forgetting I needed to do that too, until I was beyond hangry. So I figured I’d head that off for you.”
This man wasn’t even my boyfriend, and he was taking better care of me than my last three boyfriends had. I spooned bruschetta onto a round of focaccia and set it in front of him appreciatively. “Well, thank you. I probably would have forgotten tonight, and then stuffed some pizza rolls into my face just before I fell asleep when I realized how hungry I was.”
He grinned and picked up the bruschetta I’d prepared for him, taking a big bite and closing his eyes in bliss. “Mmm,” he moaned, chewing and swallowing. “Yes, this was a good choice.”
I mirrored his actions, biting into one of the bread rounds myself. Damn, that was good. We ate the rest of the bruschetta standing up at the island, exchanging a few words but mostly concentrating on shoveling the delicious tomatoes and onions into our faces. When Jamison spooned the last of the mixture onto the second-to-last piece of bread, he looked down at the countertop, which was now smeared with little bits of tomato that had escaped us. “Oops?” He cupped one hand and ran it over the counter, trying to sweep up the bits and pieces. “We ate that like savages.”
I snagged a paper towel off the side of the sink, dampened it, and started sweeping up crumbs and tomato smears. “Worth it. We should probably actually sit down for the main course, though.” I waved him to my small kitchen table. “Go, sit.”
He started to turn obediently, and then paused and returned to the cabinets to retrieve two plates and silverware to go with them. How did he even know where I kept my stuff, I wondered silently, and then decided I didn’t really care. Friends learned stuff like that as they hung out.
Friends who…know what each other’s dicks feel like?piped up my treacherous brain. I squashed that thought, along with the accompanying mental image of my hand wrapped around Jamison’s gorgeous pink dick. Nope, didn’t picture that atall.
I tripped over my own feet on the way to the table and nearly lost our dinner, but caught both it and myself at the last second. Jamison, who had just sat, jumped to his feet as if he was going to rescue me. “You ok?” he asked cautiously as I stumbled the rest of the way to the table and set the chicken container down with an audiblethump.
I cleared my throat, trying to keep my eyes on his face rather than letting them drop to his crotch as they wanted to. What waswrongwith me? I was having dinner with a friend, not preparing to de-pants a hookup. “Fine,” I said, though it came out a little squeaky. “Just uncoordinated.”
His face relaxed into a smile. “Well, if we’re going to lose the chicken, at least we have the bruschetta and the garlic bread to sustain us.” He popped the top off the chicken and used his fork and knife to pick up a cutlet, which he deposited on my plate. “Here, eat before something else goes wrong.”
Mrrp?
I looked down and found Curie at my feet, pawing curiously at the leg of my sweatpants. Of course, now that there was people food to be had, she was willing to stand up and come socialize. “Nope,” I told her, gently pushing her away with my foot. “This isn’t for you. Cats don’t eat chicken parm.”
“And definitely not garlic bread,” Jamison said, dragging the foil-wrapped loaf of bread across the table and curving his arm around it protectively. “My preciousss,” he hissed quietly.
I laughed at his Gollum impression. “I take it you like garlic bread?”
He hummed appreciatively and broke off a slice, sliding it onto his plate. “So good.” He topped half the bread slice with a cut-up piece of chicken and a bit of sauce and shoved it into his mouth. “Mmm.”
I’d never considered combining the elements of the meal like that, but now that I watched him do it, it struck me as a pretty good idea. I copied him and took my own bite of garlic-parm. Oh, that was good.
