After our third movie, Roxy had demanded to be let outside, huffing by the door and uncurling her tail in a pitiful way. While he got up to let her out, my stomach rumbled loud enough to make Alex laugh.
“Our sandwiches weren’t enough for you?” he teased.
“That was like six hours ago!” I exclaimed, pressing the footrest down so I could get up with him.
He chuckled and made his way into the kitchen. “Do you have any sausage?” he asked.
I snorted. “Pretty sure you know the answer to that.”
He looked over the door, then laughed when he caught the innuendo. I stepped around him and pulled out a half pound of ground Italian sausage from the freezer. “Here.”
He placed it in the microwave to thaw and dug around in the pantry. “How about rosemary?”
“If I do, it wouldn’t be fresh,” I said.
“That’s okay.”
“Up there,” I said, gesturing to the cupboards with my embarrassingly small spice collection.
He placed the ingredients on the counter and reached for the bell pepper in a basket on the counter and handed it to me. “Dice that, and maybe an onion if you have it.”
“Yes, sir,” I teased, earning another smile from him. I returned the smile and let my gaze linger on his for a moment, trying to convey just how much I liked it when he smiled.
While I diced and he mixed who knew what else in the saucepan, we listened to the rain continuing to come down. The second wave of the storm had started about an hour ago, and I worried that Melanie would still be stranded in her neighborhood another day.
“You guys are welcome to stay again tonight,” I offered, tipping my head at the window.
Alex gave me a shy smile. “I was kinda hoping you’d say that. Plus, I think Roxy would drag me through the mud, just to get back to Noel.”
I laughed and looked at the dogs, who were rolling around on the floor. Roxy was on her back again, holding a rope between her paws while Noel carefully pulled her around. I loved that they had found a way to play, even while being careful of Roxy’s leg.
“I think you’re right.”
Alex stirred the sauce before pouring a couple of cups of elbow macaroni into the boiling water in the other pan.
“What on earth are you making?” I finally asked.
“Just tossing some stuff together.”
I gave a halfhearted snort and mimicked in a funny voice. “Tossing some stuff together.”
Alex laughed, throwing a piece of cooked sausage at me. “It’ll be good. Trust me.”
“Oh, I trust you. I think we’ve already established you’re better in the kitchen than I am.”
Alex’s eyes crinkled at the edges when he smiled, and he gave a small shrug.
“Where’d you learn to cook anyway?”
He paused, stirring the meat for a minute in silence. “I used to cook for my dad.” There was a note of melancholy in his voice that caught my attention. No. Not just melancholy but heartache. Bone-deep heartache that had stretched over time.
“Your dad?” I asked gently, praying he would trust me enough to open up.
Alex nodded. “Yeah. He died five years ago after a long, hard battle with cancer.”
My heart sank. I hadn’t been expecting that. “Oh, Alex,” I whispered. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Started as just a lump he found on his thigh, back when I was still in middle school. They removed it, but it came back a few years later and spread to his kidneys. Treatment helped slow it down enough that I was able to finish high school and go to college for a couple of years. But then one day, he just… started to get sick again. We both knew it was bad before we had a chance to meet with his doctor. They gave him a year at that point.”
