Neil turned back to the hob because if he did not turn back to the hob he was going to have to address Rory calling him love in his own kitchen before the risotto had even started.
He had the stock on already. Low, not simmering. He had the onion diced into pieces that were almost exactly the same size because that was how he liked them and there was no one here to tell him it didn’t matter.
‘Sit,’ he said, and tipped his head towards the stool on the far side of the counter.
Rory sat. He did not pick up his wine. He put both forearms on the counter and watched Neil the way Neil watched him, that first night, unloading the van in the rain. He decided this was worth getting right.
‘Are you going to talk me through it,’ Rory said, ‘or am I just meant to be impressed?’
‘You can be impressed.’
‘All right.’
‘The onion goes in with the butter first. Not oil.’
‘Why not oil.’
‘Because my grandmother used butter.’
‘Fair.’
He put the butter in. The butter hissed. He put the onion in after it and lowered the heat and stirred it with a wooden spoon that had been his grandmother’s too,.
‘Rice next,’ he said.
‘What kind.’
‘Carnaroli. Arborio’s fine but carnaroli holds better.’
‘Holds better at what.’
‘Being risotto.’
Rory made the small silent noise again.
The rice went in. It caught the butter and went translucent at the edges and Neil poured Rory’s wine without asking.
‘You’re showing off,’ Rory said.
‘A bit.’
‘Good.’
Neil ladled the first of the stock in. Stirred. Waited. Ladled the next. The rhythm of it was the thing. You could not hurry risotto and you could not walk away from it and this was why he had offered it.
‘It smells like someone’s mum’s house,’ Rory said.
‘Whose mum.’
‘A better one. Better than mine.’
Neil laughed. He hadn’t been planning to. It came out of him as it had been coming out for weeks, not asking permission, and he stirred the rice and felt it happen and did not try to put it back.
‘Get the parmesan out of the fridge,’ he said. ‘Top shelf. On the left.’
Rory slid off the stool and crossed to the fridge and opened it and stopped.
Neil did not turn round. The fridge. The card beside Freddie's whale. He'd looked at it himself, every morning since the twenty-third, and forgotten to move it.
