“And my sister was a vegetarian for years and years, until she met a guy who thought that was stupid and he introduced her to cheeseburgers.” I shrugged. “The rest is history. I had long since been a lost cause, but my mother never got over that.”
I was blathering and doing it mostly because I was beside myself with relief that he asked me if I liked bacon and eggs, which meant whatever strangeness I felt after we finished didn’t mean he was going to ask me to take off his shirt and put on my clothes so he could take me back to town and be rid of me.
“Not sure there’s a vegetable in this house, unless you count a bag of frozen corn,” he said.
I couldn’t stop myself from looking alarmed.
Johnny of course didn’t miss it and any of the cold I had left at the strangeness of how he left me in bed melted away when he burst out laughing.
I’d heard him chuckle. It was throaty and rich and lovely.
His laughter was that times a thousand.
But still, there was something about it that sounded . . .
Rusty.
“I’ll get the mugs,” I said in order not to do something stupid, like watch him laugh like a besotted teenager seeing her first boyband crush in concert.
I turned to the doors but turned back when he called, “Iz.”
My eyes met his.
“You eat a lot of vegetables?” he asked.
“Three quarters of your plate should be vegetables,” I answered.
“She eats a lot of vegetables,” he murmured through a white smile.
“I really need coffee,” I blurted.
“Then get our mugs, babe. I’ll get cracking on breakfast.”
He moved toward the kitchen.
I moved toward the deck.
I came back with the mugs and he was at the stove, but I knew he heard me enter when he ordered toward the stove, “Dump that out, we’ll get fresh.”
His cup maybe only had one last mouthful in it. I hadn’t even taken a sip.
“I’ll nuke mine,” I told him.
“Dump it out,” he returned.
“It’s okay. I nuke coffee all the time.”
And I did. I nuked coffee. I found creative ways to use leftovers. I slammed my lotion bottles on countertops to force down the last dregs.
What I didn’t do was waste, and I didn’t waste partially because I was an environmentalist but mostly because I grew up with government cheese in the refrigerator. When you didn’t have a lot, you not ever wasted what you had.
“It’s been sitting outside for almost an hour,” he stated.
“It’s still good,” I replied.
I made it to the kitchen, seeing he had a fancy drawer microwave in his island.
I was heading there when I stopped because I was divested of the mugs in my hands.
I watched Johnny go to the sink and dump both cups. He rinsed them, shook them out and then went to the coffeemaker.
“How do you take yours?” he asked.
“Just cream.”
“Little, lots or in between?” he asked.
“Little,” I answered.
He poured coffee while I watched. He then turned and put both cups by the stove. After that, he turned again, came to me, put his hands to my waist and shifted me around, then backward. Finally, I had to bite back a surprised cry when he lifted me up (without even a grunt of effort) and planted my behind on the counter next to the mugs, but removed from the stove where there was already a clump of strips of bacon cooking in a skillet.
Once he had me settled, he nabbed my cup and handed it to me.
He then grabbed his, took a sip and set it back down on the countertop. He went to a drawer, took out a fork and moved to the skillet in order to separate and straighten the bacon.
I guessed I was drinking fresh coffee.
And I guessed I was doing it sitting on the counter while he cooked, keeping him company.
“You put your panties back on,” he noted while I was swallowing my first sip.
“Uh . . .” I mumbled, not saying anything more.
His mouth hitched in the direction of the skillet before he put the fork down and went to the fridge.
I took another sip of coffee and looked around his room.
It was then I noticed that the massive TV hanging on the wall hung on the wall opposite the bed, but the couch, oblong coffee table and two flanking armchairs had their backs to the TV.
I guessed he watched TV in bed.
Or not much at all, considering the number of books practically falling out the many bookshelves and covering the table by the chair in the corner with the fabulous tripod floor lamp beside it.
“How long have you lived here?” I asked.
The utter silence this question received made my shoulders instantly tense and my gaze move directly to Johnny.
He had eggs out and was taking down a bowl from some shelves over where he was working.
What it appeared he wasn’t going to do was answer what I thought was a non-intrusive question.
It then came to mind our conversation last night at the bar.
A conversation that I hadn’t noticed until right then, thinking back on it, was one-sided.
I was new to town. I had to move there for reasons I didn’t like to think about. But I’d moved there because Deanna was there, she’d moved there years before, right after she married Charlie, and she was always talking about how fabulous it was. How friendly. How community minded. Added to that, property values were way cheaper than in the city. You could get so much more for so much less.
The one downside was that the commute was long and could be horrific if traffic got backed up. But I’d learned in the two months I’d been there that it was worth an hour’s (and often longer) commute every day.
That said, Deanna and Charlie were the only people I knew in town and I’d decided, with spring turning to summer, it was time to be more social, get to know my neighbors.
So I went to the one and only local bar, On My Way Home, known as Home. It was a drinking establishment like any other, with a rectangular bar in the middle, tables around, TVs all over the place. I’d heard they sometimes had bands but most times it was just a quiet place to catch a game or meet up with friends, have a chat and throw some back.
I’d actually seen Johnny pulling into the lot at the back when I’d finished parking. I’d glimpsed his magnificence through the cab of his truck. I’d even heard his car door close as I was walking in the back door of the bar.
And I’d barely sat down when Johnny had come up beside me.
He didn’t look at me, just slid into the space between me and the stool beside me.
He’d received instant attention from the female bartender whereupon he’d said, “Usual, Sally, and whatever she’s having.”
It was not the most original pick up line ever.
But it was the best one ever used on me, only because Johnny used it.
Thus ensued him sitting next to me and asking my name.
“Eliza. I’m Eliza Forrester. But everyone calls me Iz or Izzy.”
Sharing that got me my first grin.
And for the next couple of hours, I shared a lot.
Johnny had asked questions as I did. But when I’d done the same with him, he deflected them, bringing the conversation back to me.