“Besides, you can’t prove that I’m scowling. You didn’t even look.”
“I told you that scowling is banned. You think I don’t have scowl-detection systems in place? I don’t fuck around.”
“No,” Shep said, sounding simultaneously enraged and frustrated. “You told me that scowling isn’t allowed. That’s different than banned. Banned means like, you can never come back in the history of ever, unless you get a ban repeal, or something. Saying that something isn’t allowed is way more lax than that. Speeding isn’t allowed, you know, but has that ever stopped anyone? If speeding were banned, then everyone in America would be put in jail, except the guy who ducks out in front of you while turning, even though you’re the only one on the road, and decides to go fifteen under the speed limit for no reason other than to make your life miserable.”
Caleb turned off the water. He turned around slowly and looked at Shep. Were teenagers even human? Caleb had been one once, but he couldn’t recall being half as irritating. “So if I said scowling was banned, would you stop doing it?”
“Fuck no.”
Of course. Caleb nodded and turned back to the sink, wondering to himself if Jayne would be happier as an only child. With a twist of the tap, he turned the water back on, picked up the knife he’d been washing, and resumed work. “Why are you tormenting me, demon child?”
“Because I want to know who you are.”
Caleb ran the kitchen sponge across the blade and rinsed away the suds it left behind. “Caleb. Caleb Alcrest. I’m pretty sure you already know that. Jayne introduced us when you and Parker made it back to the condo.”
Shep trumpeted his lips. “Yeah, okay.Caleb Alcrest,like that tells me anything. I don’t care.”
Caleb pinched his lips together in irritation. “Okay, so, here’s the deal… if you don’t care, stop asking.”
More scowling. It felt like Shep was trying to melt the back of his skull off, or if not, he was doing his damnedest to set fire to Caleb’s hair with spite alone. “I want to knowwho you are.”
“Is this some kind of internet thing?” Caleb deposited the knife in the dish rack before he got any bright ideas. Killing Jayne’s annoying little brother probably wasn’t the best way to win him over. “A meme I somehow missed? A new way to do Common Core? You have my solemn oath that I’m not a math problem. My name’s Caleb Alcrest, okay? I’m twenty-eight years old. I have a twin brother named Aaron and two dads—Marshall and Oliver. Both of them are still alive and live in the suburbs. My blood type is O negative, I would rather scrape every single one of my taste buds off than eat lima beans, and my SSN is 962-51-2906.Is that enough?”
Caleb couldn’t see it, but he heard a rustle of fabric, and that rustle made it sound alotlike Shep had shrugged.
With a deep, calming breath, Caleb shut off the water, dried his hands on a nearby hand towel, then decided that giving Shep too much real estate in his head was a recipe for disaster. What he needed to focus on now was dinner. With Everett gone to work for the night, it was going to be Caleb, Jayne, and Shep, and after this morning’s bacon debacle, Caleb was determined to prove that he could do more than burn a pot of boiling water.
“Well, whatever. It’s all cool, I guess.” Caleb nodded at the cutting boards laid out on the island. The chicken was ready to be tossed into the frying pan, but an untouched head of broccoli and a whole red bell pepper still needed to be prepared. “While you’re trying to figure out who I am, how about you come help me out? The broccoli’s not all that hard to chop. All you want are for the florets to come loose. We need small ones—they’ll cook up quick and be easy to eat. You think you can handle that?”
If it was possible, the look of disdain on Shep’s face grew. “I’m not a child.”
“Doesn’t mean you can cook.”
“You don’t need to be able to cook to chop broccoli.”
Caleb shrugged. “You don’t need to sass to do it, either, but here we are.”
The look on Shep’s face made Caleb doubt that giving him a knife was a good idea.
“Or maybe there’s something else you can do, if chopping up broccoli isn’t your jam.” Caleb looked across the kitchen, searching. “You could get the water ready for the pasta, maybe even set it to boil if you’re feeling adventurous.”
“I can chop goddamn broccoli,” Shep grumbled. “Gimme a knife and I’ll do it.”
If Caleb was going to be murdered, at least it’d happen in his own home. Saying a silent prayer for his continued vitality, he pulled a knife from the block on the counter and handed it to Shep.
Shep did not immediately stab him.
Caleb considered himself lucky.
“You know,” Shep said as he pulled the cutting board with the broccoli toward himself. “You’re kind of an asshole.”
Caleb selected a knife for himself, then cut off both ends of the bell pepper. “Because I’m making you chop broccoli?”
“No.” Shep glowered. “Because you’re an asshole.”
“Oh. Well. That’s fair, I guess.”
When Caleb distanced himself from the words coming out of Shep’s mouth, he could almost find humor in the situation. Shep was hilarious. One day, when his body wasn’t puberty’s favorite battleground, he’d be able to take that mouth of his on the road on a comedy tour-de-force. Today, however, was not that day. Shep was too busy scowling to be enterprising. It would come in time.
