This year was going to be a test of my patience.
Notes
Pro-tip: do not use lemon juice in place of lemon zest. I learned that this ends in disaster the hard way. At least I can now call that baking disaster research. Pro-tip #2: Any recipes I use in this story should not be replicated. I’m pretty sure the story above is evidence enough that I should not be trusted in the kitchen.
2
Notes
Don’t get used to two chapters in one week. I never do this. But I mean, I didn’t have a lot going on because SOMEONE (my boyfriend, it’s always my boyfriend) decided not to show up tonight when he was supposed to. Don’t ask me where he is because I don’t know. I’m sure he’s not dead in a ditch or something.
He’s probably playing video games.
Milo
I had a love-hate relationship with mornings.
My condo was always a little too cold, and that meant I never quite felt motivated to get out of my bed. I’d had this ex-boyfriend once, Andrew, terrible guy, who suggested I turn down the air conditioner before bed, but when I did that, I couldn’t sleep. I woke up drenched in sweat. It really was a lose-lose kind of situation. So, getting out of bed was the hate part of my relationship with mornings, but the love part? It was starting a brand-new day.
Every day was a new beginning, and I loved a new beginning.
After I scrolled on my phone and whined a little to my empty apartment about the fact that my bed was warm and comfortable and my bedroom decidedly was not, I forced myself out of bed and straight into the shower. The warm water woke me up and warmed me straight to the core. By the time I was out of the shower, I had two texts on my phone. They were both from my aunt Ethel, asking me to come over for breakfast. We ate breakfast at her place at least three times a week, more when we could manage it. I checked my schedule for the day, and I still hadhoursbefore practice.
I could fit breakfast in with Aunt Ethel.
Besides, I might get a chance to peep my new roommate-slash-teammate. I never said no to a little eye candy, and Rowan Rangecroft was major eye candy.
Unfortunately, I did not see him on the way to see my aunt. She stuffed me with bacon, eggs, pancakes, and fried potatoes. I wasn’t sure if this was on my team approved meal plan, but it tasted good. Aunt Ethel didn’t feed me like this all the time, and I was wondering if there was something that caused her to get a full breakfast hair up her butt. I didn’t ask though. I didn’t like pointing out the times that she felt well enough to cook like this, because it was just a reminder of all the times she didn’t.
“Want me to help with the dishes?” I asked after we finished eating.
“No, I’m gonna make Clara do it when she comes by later. Make her earn her keep,” Aunt Ethel declared with a wrinkly smile.
Clara was the woman I’d hired to come by a few times a week to straighten the house and prepare her some meals. At this stage in Aunt Ethel’s life, she had a whole team caring for her, financed by me. She had Clara for the domestic tasks. She had two home care workers that came by a few times a week too, mostly to make sure that she stayed healthy and that she took all her meds properly.
Keeping an old lady alive was a lot of work.
“Can I at least take them to the kitchen for you?”
Aunt Ethel let out a heavy sigh and finally nodded, giving me permission to clear the table. I’d learned at a young age not to mess with anything in Aunt Ethel’s kitchen without her permission. She liked things just so, and I was pretty sure she’d gotten more stubborn about it with age. But the more respect I showed her little quirks, the happier she was. And the happier she was, the more she shared family recipes with me and helpedme come up with ideas for baked goods. Like the protein powder cookies I’d made the day before.
They weren’t nearly as bad as Rowan claimed. I’d eaten several of them, and they might have been a bit too sour and a little burned, but I’d made worse.
Aunt Ethel made her way to the couch while I cleared the table. I rinsed the dishes and made sure that the stove and oven were both off. I spent another fifteen minutes with Aunt Ethel, talking to her about her plans for the day. After Clara came by, she was getting a ride to a bingo game with some of her friends. Somehow, my eighty-year-old aunt had a better social life than I did, and I was a professional athlete. I’d been on a billboard and in commercials.
Funny how the world worked, wasn’t it?
I had time to kill between practice and Aunt Ethel’s. I knew our practice that day wasn’t going to be anything physical. It was going to be videos and meetings and talking about the game plan for our final preseason game that week. Which meant that I was going to have the world’s hardest time focusing. I always did during those, but I’d learned things that helped. Like getting some of my energy out before I showed up at the practice facility.
The best way to do that was the state-of-the-art gym in my condo building. It was one of the reasons I’d chosen it when I was looking for a place to call my own. (The other reason was that I didn’t have to do any kind of maintenance or lawn work. I hated mowing the lawn and weeding and all those other menial landscaping tasks.)
Usually, when I went to the building’s gym in the day, it was empty. Most of the residents worked day shift hours, and they were in their offices or meetings or whatever it was that someone with a standard nine-to-five did. It meant that I didn’t have to worry about people looking at me while I worked out. I didn’t mind, but I always felt like they were judging the way I workedout. I didn’t follow a set routine most of the time, and I had a tendency to dart from one activity to another as the mood struck me.
That day, the room wasn’t empty.
I noticed the newcomer immediately. It wasn’t like I could have missed him. He was basically a giant, and he had bright red hair that stood out like a beacon against the plain white walls of the gym. His face was flushed as he ran on the treadmill, his feet thudding rhythmically. My eyes lingered on the lines of his muscular arms as he pumped them before moving down to his very shapely legs. I pulled my bottom lip in between my teeth and just enjoyed the view for a moment.
Then I realized that I was being a creeper. Not only was this just someone working out at the gym, this was my teammate. I was pretty sure Rowan Rangecroft hadn’t come to the building’s gym for me to drool over. I could do that in the privacy of my own home because I was pretty sure the sight was burned onto the back of my eyelids forever now. I forced myself to look away.
