“Tree Man?”
He raises his head and grins before putting space between us that I know I need, but I don’t fuckin’ want. “It’s what I called you in my head when I didn’t know your name. When you were the sexy pair of legs hiding under the sink.”
What am I now?But I swallow the words. Reach for the calm he gifted me at the front door and ruffle his crazy hair instead. “It’s nice that you think I have a big enough trunk to call me a tree.”
“Kai Fletcher, was that a dick joke?”
“Nah. It’s an affirmation.”
I force myself to turn back to the pasta pot. My pulse is galloping, and my chest is so tight I wanna rip my shirt off and throw it out of the nearest window. But the fact remains that everything about this moment still feels good. Even the doubt and confusion. Because it’s normal. I understand it.
It’s human.
Joss slips away. In the bathroom, I hear him open the cabinet and pop a pill. Sometimes I forget he has to medicate twice a day.
I drain the noodles and dump them in my mom’s sauce. We do have black pepper. I find it and put it on the counter with the shredded cheddar Joss likes to make weird-ass sandwiches with.
The spaghetti is in bowls by the time Joss comes back and his face lights up with the kind of smile I know I’ll dream about when he’s gone.
I push a bowl across the counter and pass over a fork. “It’s not restaurant food, but it won’t kill ya, I promise.”
Joss shakes his head a little. “You have no idea how far I was from restaurant food until I got a pot-wash job at a burger bar.”
“Tell me?”
“What? My life story?”
I nod, as eager for whatever he gives as I am for the trip down memory lane in my spaghetti bowl. “I wanna know how you got from there to here.”
“Peckham to Burlington?”
“It’s not a direct flight, right?”
Joss laughs. “Not the way I fly the plane.”
“Come sit.” I jerk my head at the living room. “Tell me all about it.”
“All right.”
Joss precedes me to the living room and folds himself onto the couch. He digs into his supper while I claim the seat beside him and gives me a thumbs up. “This shit is good.”
There’s something genuinely hot about him talking with his mouth full. I want to lick the spaghetti sauce from his lips.
I contain myself.
Just. “My mom cooked this a lot when I was a kid. We couldn’t afford much else.”
“I feel that. It was jam sandwiches and spaghetti hoops in my house. Took me a long time to lose my sweet tooth.”
“How did it happen?”
Joss eats more while he contemplates his answer. Then he notices I’m not eating and scowls at me until I do. “It’s not going to surprise you to know that I was terrible at school, right?”
“I haven’t thought about you at school.”
He winces. “Don’t. I was a nightmare. They didn’t give me the labels I needed to thrive until it was too late. By then, I was settled in my role as the crazy class clown and there was no getting me back.”
“How old were you?”
