“Hey, you were the one who decided we were besties, not me.” Harris snorted, sounding amused rather than frightened. “Look, Cole. I’ll help, okay? I’m just trying to get over my surprise that you care enough to ask for it.” He paused. “Tell me everything that happened between you.”
When I did, Harris was silent for a long time afterward.
“Well, it sounds like he might go for emotionally unavailable men,” he said at last. “After the first ex, I guess that makes sense.”
“I didn’t call to talk about Eli’s exes. I called so you could help me fix him.”
“First rule: you can’t fix him. He has to fix himself, and you can’t rush that. It might take him a lifetime—or never.”
I scowled. “Then this entire conversation was a waste of time.”
“Humans aren’t toys, Cole.” Harris paused. “Good God, I can’t believe I’m about to do this.”
“Do what?” I demanded.
“Help you.” Harris sighed. “Cole, let’s walk back through what Eli said.”
“About the ex-boyfriends?”
“No, not that. He’s got a messed-up love life—it happens. But if you look at what else he said, he already told you exactly how to make him happy.”
“Oh,” I said, understanding at once what Harris was getting at. Once he pointed it out, I felt very foolish. “Yes, he did, didn’t he?”
“Good,” Harris grumbled. “Glad that’s settled. Now, would you please, for the love of everything holy, hang up the phone and let me get some sleep?”
* * *
Eli seemed baffled when I knocked on the door the following evening. “Hey, Cole.”
I greeted him with, “Earlier, you said you didn’t have plans. But now you do.”
Eli stared at me, and when his eyebrows hit his hairline, I tacked on, “If you want, that is.”
He chuckled. “Yeah. Though a normal guy might’ve called me first.”
“I was in the neighborhood.”
Eli rolled his eyes but smiled at the same time, as though I’d amused him. It caused a warm feeling to bloom in my chest. It was like seeing the sunrise.
“What are the plans?”
“Do you trust me?”
Eli smiled again. “Give me a half hour to get ready and I’ll head over.”
I nodded solemnly.
Exactly thirty minutes later, Eli knocked on my door. He was freshly showered, his hair still damp. He smelled even more strongly of church incense and—very faintly beneath it—French lavender.
“Okay,” he said warily, stepping over the threshold. “What is this about?”
I beamed at him and held out an apron. “Doctor De La Cruz, you and I are making dinner together.”
He snorted, taking it from me. He closed the door behind him with a soft click. When he turned around, the expression onhis face was incredulous. “Wait a second… You invited me over so I could cook you dinner?”
“No,” I said, pulling him in close for a soft kiss. Then I stepped back and finished tying my own apron strings into a neat front-facing bow. “I invited you over so we could cook a meal together.”
“Oh.” Understanding filled his expression. Emotions chased each other across his face. “Oh.”
