“You betterhope so." Imade a face, stirring the pot.
He snickered.
The silence felt pretty awkward while I dealt with the food cooking. Trying to kill the tense silence, I tried to think about something to talk about. “So you’ve known Sonny for a long time?”
Dex was sitting there next to the bar with both elbows resting on the counter, hunched over it. “Ever since your pa used to drop him off with my madurin’ club meetings.”
“You didn’t go to school together?”
He shook his head. “Nah. We lived in different hoods. Him and Trip went to school together.” For a brief moment, he got this far off look in his eye that made me wonder what kind of crap he was remembering. Probably nothing good.
“Oh. I don’t know why I got the impression you two were pretty close.”
Dex pushed away whatever had caught his attention on memory lane. “Close enough. I didn’t even know he still kept in contact with you ‘til a few years ago. He used to take off and not say shit to anyone about where he was goin’.”
Yeah...that sounded like Sonny. I lifted up a shoulder at him.
“Thought you were too good to come see him.”
And that had me narrowing my eyes over in his direction. It was a fact. A statement, and if I took the time to absorb what he was saying, I’d understand his point. So I saved my smart ass comment and went for a scowl. “I didn’t have money or time.”
He gave me a long look before nodding. “Yeah, I get that now.”
When he didn’t say anything else, I tried to think of what else to talk to him about. The distance between us wasn’t so painful at Pins, but at his house? It was. Oh lord, it was. I was grateful to him for letting me stay and sitting there quietly, well, awkwardly quietly, seemed wrong.
“I like your house,” I blurted out the first thought that came to mind.
He glanced up and looked around his kitchen, tipping his chin down. Dex’s mouth formed a serious straight line. “Me too.”
“Have you lived here long?”
“Almost a year in November,” he answered.
Why was he making this so difficult? I glanced at the bare walls and clean counters, listened to the cicadas outsides, thinking of the fact he lived out of the city limits. “I’m a little surprised you have a house out here and not an apartment like Trip’s.” A little shudder curled through my spine when I thought of the state his toilet seat had been in.
In typical Dex fashion he picked up on the last thing I would expect. “You been to Trip’s place?”
Did his tone sound off or was I imagining it? One look at the straight line of his jaw had me deciding I’d imagined it. “Once.”
“Huh,” he huffed. Those dark blue orbs narrowed for a split second. His fingers tapped against the counter before he started talking again. “I used to live in the same complex before I bought this place. Fuckin’ hated it there.”
“Really?”
Dex lifted up a shoulder. “Made me feel like I was livin’ in a beehive. Kinda reminded me too much of bein’ all cramped up in a double-wide as a kid, too.” When he went to start scratching at his throat, I understood how awkward and uncomfortable the memories of living in a trailer made him feel.
Then I remembered everything he’d said about growing up with his drunk of a dad. That kind of man in such a small place? Oh hell. With two sisters? Where the hell would he have even slept?
Acid built up in my chest and throat so quickly it caught me off guard. I was suddenly the one that felt uncomfortable. “I had to share a room with my little brother—bunk beds—until I was nineteen.”Yia-yia’s house had been so small, but it’d been home. I swallowed hard at the memory of sleeping on the couch at the apartment we’d moved into after selling the second home I’d ever known. “So I get it.”
And then, nothing. Silence.
O-kay. I could let that topic go.
Ifumbledmy way through making sauce for the pasta, hoping it wouldn’t taste completely bland since I didn’t have the right ingredients. In the mean time, Dex watched quietly, only getting up to grab a beer from the fridge and asking if I wanted a drink.
We sat on opposite sides of the kitchen bar, Dex drinking a beer and me with a bottle of water he’d pulled out from somewhere in the fridge I hadn’t seen. Considering the absence of necessary condiments and herbs, I thought the food came out pretty good. Dex’s murmurs of enjoyment told me he was either a great liar or it wasn’t too bad.
“Good food, babe,” he finally muttered after twirling ribbons of pasta around his fork, gaze leveled on me.
