I gave the almost empty bag of popcorn a glance. “You like grilled cheese?”
His tail thudded against the cushions, and I could barely hold back a smile. Roscoe might have unintentionally saved the day with his junk food habit.
“Got any canned tomato soup?”
“I don’t know. Let me look.” I jumped off the couch and hurried into the kitchen. “Is that really what you want?”
“If we got any,” he responded, crinkling the empty bag into a ball. “You never had grilled cheese with tomato soup before?”
“I don’t like tomatoes,” I said, moving the canned goods around. “Bad news, there’s no soup.” I walked over to the fridge and pulled out a block of cheddar wrapped in cellophane.
“What are you doing with that?” Austin asked, creeping up behind me.
“I told you. I’m making grilled cheese.”
“That’s not the right cheese,” he snapped, looking at the loaf of multigrain bread I’d pulled out. “Where’s the white bread?”
“This is all we’ve got. Does it really matter?”
He flashed a disgusted look and turned away before heading back toward the garage. “Never mind. I’ll eat something later.”
“Wait…” I was going to lose him again. “Why don’t we go to the store and you can pick out what we need?”
He stopped, seeming to give my request some consideration.
“Nah,” he grunted before disappearing back into the garage.
This was going to be much harder than I’d thought, but at least we were getting somewhere.
The usual clanking and drilling from the garage was oddly absent as I walked up to the house carrying ingredients for Austin’s lunch—plus more of that white cheddar popcorn to lure him out again. If I was going to get Austin to tear down his walls, this seemed like a decent first step. After all, food worked great at gaining the trust of stray dogs.
I headed toward the kitchen and unloaded the groceries. Two packs of American cheese, a loaf of white bread, butter, and several cans of tomato soup lay before me on the counter. I setto work washing my hands, then placed the frying pan on the burner before turning the stove on high.
A stick of butter softened for a few seconds in the microwave, which I then slathered on the bread before putting the cheese on the other side. Everything was going much better than it usually did. Then again, who could mess up a fried sandwich?
While the pan heated, I mixed the condensed soup with some milk in a saucepan, then placed it on the back burner. A glint of light caught my eye next to the microwave, hidden behind the toaster. There sat that strange opal I’d forgotten to put back on my dresser the other day. I grabbed the gem, slipped it into my pocket, then plopped the buttery cheese sandwich onto the pan with an alarmingly harsh sizzle. The directions said to leave it on one side for about three minutes, then flip it over.
Simple enough…
“What the hell are you doing?” Austin shouted over the smoke alarm as he dashed into the kitchen.
“Everything’s fine,” I said calmly, trying not to cough as I poured a cup of water over the smoldering remains of lunch. More smoke and steam billowed to the ceiling and spread throughout the house. “It’s just a little well-done.”
Austin disappeared, running from room-to-room, opening windows while I chiseled the sandwich onto a plate before cooling the pan under running tap water. It hissed and made an odd pinging noise, and when I placed it back onto the burner, it wobbled, no longer able to make full contact.
“Damn it. I forgot to turn the burner back down,” I said, twisting the knob to five. I had destroyed Roscoe’s good frying pan and would have to use one of his smaller ones to try again.
Austin stomped back into the kitchen and picked up the plate to slide the solid black briquette that was once a sandwich into the trash. “A little well-done? Are you from Venus?” he asked, grabbing my wrist as I spread more butter on another slice of bread. “You’re not going to be satisfied until you burn the whole fucking house down, are you?”
“It was an accident. I let the frying pan get too hot and kind of wasn’t paying attention. I’ll have your lunch ready in a couple minutes,” I said, pointing to the pot. “I think the soup’s almost done.”
The werewolf gasped, turning the burner off before lifting the lid. The once watery mixture had gotten so thick that it splattered instead of boiled. He gave it a quick sniff. “How the hell did you burn soup? It’s SOUP!”
“I didn’t burn it,” I said, examining the pale red concoction. “Looks fine to me.”
Austin grabbed a spoon and dipped it into the pot before scooping something thick from the bottom. He pulled up the utensil to reveal a clump of char.
“How did that happen?”
