I’m hungry, but more than that, I need fresh oxygen that isn’t being shared with Boone. It’s only a few feet apart, but it feels like I’m in a different time zone with how my chest suddenly feels it has permission to rise and fall again.
“But what if I do it wrong?” he questions as he assesses all the ingredients and kitchen tools in front of him.
“But what if you do it right?” I tease. “I don’t want to steal your joy in doing it right. You deserve all that joy to yourself.”
I watch him carefully as I devour my omelet in less bites than I should take, but it’s been a little too long since I’ve had decent nourishment. And unfortunately, coffee doesn’t count as nourishment. Something my brother reminds me of often when he remembers to lecture me on taking care of myself.
Boone is bent over the stove, carefully poking at the omelet with his spatula, trying to determine if it’s done.
I appreciate that he is sincere in his request for help when it comes to cooking. He truly does seem to want to learn, which is made even more evident when he turns off the burner, places the omelet on another chipped and fading ceramic plate, and then presents it to me on the kitchen table with a grin that practically takes up his entire face.
“Well done!” I exclaim as I give him three small claps, and I mean it; the texture and presentation of his omelet looks like a duplicate of mine.
“Taste it!” he demands with as much excitement as a kid that just discovered presents under the Christmas tree. Although, he has no tree, and I can’t believe that I’m actually going to admit it tomyself, but I really hate the thought of not having a Christmas tree this year, even my mother’s professionally decorated one lacking any ornaments that hint at the fact that a family once lived there.
“I’ve already had one,” I argue. “You deserve that all to yourself.”
He takes his fork, cuts off a piece, and slides it over onto my plate. Then he dares to push his bottom lip out in a pout. This large man of a man is officially pouting. And it’s, unfortunately, absolutely endearing.
I stab the piece of omelet that he’s offered me and smile at Boone before putting it in my mouth. It melts on my tongue, making my eyelids flutter. “Boone! This is better than mine!”
“Really?” His question is strung out with a hopeful breath to it.
“Really,” I answer. “Did you do anything different to it?”
“I didn’t, but maybe Goose did.” He cuts another piece from it and takes a bite himself, grinning in satisfaction when he realizes that it truly is amazing.
“What does Goose have to do with it?” I ask, my eyebrows furrowing. We both had the same eggs. Three of them. All from the same coop.
“I think I had one of Goose’s eggs in my stash. I bet she laid it with a little extra love for me since I’m her mighty rooster and everything,” he teases.
“She would,” I mumble while standing up, taking my plate to the sink.
He nods his head, still grinning while basically inhaling the rest of his omelet asif it were air.
“Hey, Boone,” I say, while rinsing my dishes. “Is there enough hot water for a shower, with the generator and everything?”
“Oh. Oh, yeah, but there’s kind of a trick to the faucet. I can go show you,” he answers, putting his plate down on the kitchen table before leaving the room and, I guess, expecting me to follow him.
Which I do.
He’s already in the bathroom, grabbing a fresh towel from the cabinet for me before I catch up with him. “I’ve been meaning to fix it for a while, but since it’s just me, I’ve kind of just learned the quirks of the pipes instead of fixing them.”
I scoot between him and the shower, looking at what I’m working with. Looks like a totally normal bathtub-shower combination to me. Standard equipment. Nothing fancy, like my shower back at my apartment that has four shower heads surrounded by glossy white tiles from floor to ceiling, but it’ll do.
“Okay, so the trick with the knob is: you have to jiggle more to the left than the right for it to trigger the hot water. If you just turn it or accidentally jostle it wrong, it’ll go straight back to ice-cold water,” he tries to explain.
“I’m sure I can figure it out,” I say, shrugging my shoulders. It’s a shower. How complicated can it be?
Chapter Ten
Turns out…pretty complicated.
“C’mon,” I beg the hard-water-stained silver handle. “Please, just give me two minutes of hot water. That’s it. That’s all I need. Nothing much. That’s basically a trial period. A really short one. And I’ll give you a raving review. I’m great at writing those. Fantastic even. Everyone will want to shower here soon.”
But the water keeps dripping cold, and yes, dripping. Boone could stand to invest in a new showerhead. I’ve been standing outside the shower, wrapped in the small blue towel Boone retrieved for me, for around five minutes now. The pipes are stubborn, but they aren’t quite as stubborn as I am.
I jiggle the handle again, more to the left than the right just like Boone instructed.
