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I point to the hoodie he’s wearing. “Made that one last year.”
“You make … clothes.” He forgets cooking completely as he turns to look up at me. There’s flour all through his hair and across his face as well. “How?”
“Material. Thread. Sewing machine.” I don’t understand his question. “It’s very basic.”
“Can you teach me?”
I hesitate because, theoretically, I easily can, but we’re already going over cooking, and I’m beginning to get worried that I don’t have the capability to say no to Sasha. “Let’s get these cookies finished first.”
He moves on to spooning out the mixture the way I show him, but he keeps sneaking glances at me the whole time. It’s something he does a lot, and I hate the way I’m getting used to the things his eyes do to my body. The way his gaze will deregulate me. Normally, I enjoy being in control and knowing that everything I’ve committed my life to is working, but there’s something addictive about the quickened beat of my heart and the way my gut squirms with his closeness.
“And what? Now we just cook them?” he asks, staring at the tray.
“That’s right.”
The vegetables we put in to bake earlier are already happily cooking in the oven, and the fact that one of Sasha’s fingers didn’t end up joining them was a very near miss. Between almost slicing off his pointer finger and crushing his thumb as he tenderized the venison, I was hesitant to do more, but Sasha wanted cookies.
So here we are.
Food in the oven, house a disaster zone, and Sasha smiling up at me with bright eyes and the kind of smile that makes the rest of the room disappear.
I don’t like the way curiosity finds me. “If you can’t cook, how have you survived so long?”
“I can microwave things.”
I have vague memories of a big metal box that my aunt used to have to warm things up. “But how did you make food to put in there in the first place?”
“I bought it. Microwave meals and ramen. I can make sandwiches. There’s plenty of packaged food that doesn’t need to be cooked, like cookies and chips and …” He trails off, and I don’t know what look I’m wearing, but it dims his smile. “Surviving, not thriving. That’s me.”
I’m not even sure he can claim he was doing that. “Okay.”
That makes him laugh. “You’re not very good at conversations, are you?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because usually when someone says something, the other person contributes and then adds to that comment. Like, I say that I’m surviving but not thriving, and you could say, Well, after these cookies, Sasha, you’ll be beyond thriving!”
I frown at the low voice he puts on. “Is that supposed to be me?”
“Yes. And you’re deflecting where the conversation was going. Again.”
“Maybe I didn’t like where it was going.”
“Do you ever?”
“Nope.” I cross my arms and lean my hip into the counter. “I try to avoid talking to people at all.”
He mirrors me. “You talk to me all the time.”
“You don’t give me a choice.”
“If you had a choice, would you just not talk to me?”
The answer to that is obviously yes, so why won’t the word come out? My lack of response pleases him.
“Are you ever lonely?”
The question takes me by surprise. “Are you?”
