“I know how to eat.” I match his expression with a fake smile of my own.
I hadn’t expected to say anything, but I’m also not completely surprised that I have. Even though I badly want every living person I meet to like me, I have a short fuse. That’s just a fact. I’ve had it to here with this old man telling me what to do. It’s been building since the first day I got here, and it’s increased exponentially every day since then.
He looks at me for a second and then casts his eyes down pointedly. My placemat is littered with errant grains of rice. He doesn’t say anything, but I can tell he’s thinking,Sure you do, pal.
The rage it incites in me is instant. I feel hot pressure around my lungs and throat. I take several deep breaths to cool down and remind myself over and over that this guy is helping me. I’m living here rent-free. He’s paying for my food too and hasn’t asked for any contribution whatsoever. In fact, when I offered to pay, he flat-out refused. If I don’t live here, my options include moving back to Carmel to live with my mom or living on the street. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mom, but I also—usually—love my job. I work in social media management and content creation for a production company in LA, and it’s pretty much the dream. I’ve spent the last six years building a life in LA, and most importantly,allmy friends are here. Every single one of them. Aside from my mom, there’s less than nothing for me in Carmel. Going back would feel like the biggest failure imaginable.
I finish eating before he does, so I sit back and watch him. He takes his time, chewing slowly, savoring each bite. I bet he’s one of those people who read somewhere that you’re supposed to chew each bite twenty-eight times, and instead of doing it once or twice like a normal person, he’s made a point of doing it ever since. He appears totally unbothered by the fact it’s clear I’m dying to be excused so I can hole myself up in my room for the rest of the night. If anything, he might be eating more slowly because of it. I wouldn’t put it past him. He raises his fork thoughtfully, pausing before opening his mouth. His lips part, and when he closes them around the fork, he lets out a soft little sigh before withdrawing the fork and chewing again. His blinking slows and the muscle at the base of his jaw bunches every time he bites down. His Adam’s apple bobs up ever so slightly and then all the way down as he swallows.
I watch him like that longer than I probably should, and when I start feeling uncomfortable about it, I drop my gaze. He’s wearing a faded denim work shirt with an embroidered patch on the left side of his chest that readsWiseman Landscaping and Planting.
The word planting seems entirely redundant to me, and for the briefest of moments, I consider telling him so. I think better of it and try to sneak a peek at the watch on his wrist. I think I left mine at my old place. That reminds me. I need to ask Wyn to look around for it. The face of his watch is angled away from me, so I can’t make out the time, and Stuart, he of Wiseman Landscaping and Planting, has made it crystal clear that he doesn’t consider phones at the table an acceptable option. His shirtsleeves are rolled up to just below the elbow, the same way they are every day. His forearms are tanned golden brown and peppered with coarse blond hair. His face is tanned too, and his hair would probably be light brown instead of dark blond if not for the fact he gets way too much sun.
I toy with the idea of suggesting he start wearing a hat to work but decide against it when my eyes meet his. His eyes are so intensely blue it’s like looking into crystalline water on a boiling hot day. It’s jarring as fuck.
“…and then Jeff said, ‘Why don’t we keep driving until we get to Sayulita to check out the waves?’ Can you imagine? And the thing was, we did it. God alone knows how he managed to convince my parents, but we did it.” He laughs uproariously at that.
“Hmm,” I say. I know I said I want to know my dad and all that, but a week here has disabused me of that notion. Stuart’s rambling has gone well past the point of being interesting. Now all his stories about my dad do is beg the question: if he’s such a great guy, why the fuck has he always been such a shit father? I’ve lost count of the number of birthdays he’s missed for no better reason than the fact the waves were good. I mean, he missed my goddamn graduation last year because he extended his stay in Indonesia after a weather report predicted a big swell. “That does sound like the kind of thing Jeff would say.”
He looks just as taken aback now as he did the first time I called my dad Jeff in his presence.
“Why do you call him Jeff?” he asks, altering his tone to make it especially mild and nonthreatening.
“Dunno.” I feel my filter slipping, but I don’t have time to do anything about it. “I guess I just figured Dad is a title you have to earn, you know?”
He flinches visibly, making the fine lines around his eyes crease. He purses his lips, pressing them together for a long time before speaking. When he does, his eyes are flooded with emotion so dense I find it hard to hold eye contact. It takes me a second or two to identify it. When I do, it shocks me because it’s in such stark contrast with every word he’s said about my father to date. It’s not just frustration I see in his eyes. It’s not even simply displeasure or discomfort. It’s disappointment.
“You’re right,” he says after a long pause.
I excuse myself from the table and push my chair back. He gets to his feet, takes our plates, and says, “Would you mind putting the placemats away?”
“Sure.” The look he gave me before is making me feel funny. I’m not sure why, but I don’t like it. It makes me feel a whole lot of shit I spend a lot of time trying not to dwell on. To stop it, I add, “Seems a bit of a waste though.” He cocks a brow at me. “I mean, think about it, all this getting the placemats out and putting them back, day in and day out, is a big-ass waste of time, no?”
He chooses to ignore that. “Could you shake them out over the sink and wipe them down?”
“At my house, we don’t bother with them. Yeah, we just go ahead and put our plates directly on the table. And you know what, not a single bad thing has ever happe—”
“Elliot.” The word cuts like a knife through butter. Slicing into my brain, interrupting my cognitive processes, making my dick stiffen so hard and so fast that I don’t know what to do with my face. “In this house, we use placemats.”
And there it is. The thing that irritates me more than anything else about Stuart. It might well irritate me more than anything has ever irritated me.
It confuses me even more.
Stuart Wiseman has just spoken down to me. Again. He’s corrected me and put me in my place. He’s done it firmly.
I’ve been wronged. I’m furious about it, completely outraged and annoyed.
I hate it.
But fuck if my dick doesn’t love it.
2
Stuart
MyGrandpaMoalwaysused to say, “No good deed goes unpunished.”
When I was young, I found it cynical as hell. To be honest, I used to pity him for thinking like that. I thought it was sad to have such a pessimistic view of the world, but I tell you, with each passing year, I find it to be more and more true.
