Otterly Scorched

by Tara Sivec

  Figuring there’s only one explanation, since the last time my dad or brother attempted to cook bacon, it no longer smelled or looked like bacon when they were done, I quickly bend down and grab the baseball bat out from under my bed. No matter how much my mouth is watering at that delicious smell wafting down my hallway and into my bedroom, there is clearly a burglar in my home who took a break from robbing me to cook himself some breakfast.

  Sure, this is going to sound stupid when I’m fully awake, but right now, with my hands wrapped tightly around the grip of the bat and the barrel resting on my shoulder as I tiptoe out of my room and down the hallway, this all makes perfect sense.

  Kicking the bra and a random black Converse out of the way as I go, I hear whistling the closer I get to the opening of my hallway that leads into the kitchen area. Pausing in the doorway when I get a view of my kitchen table, I forget all about the hungry burglar who brought his own breakfast meat.

  At least, I think it’s my kitchen table.

  My feet automatically move me right out from the hallway, stopping in front of the table as I stare down at it in confusion. Before I passed out last night, I had a card table that served as sort of a kitchen table, which sat a few feet away from the island. It was basically used as a place to store mail and case paperwork for Claws and Effect, and I sometimes used it to rest my hip on while I went through the paperwork and scarfed down some takeout. Now?

  “When the hell did I get kitchen chairs? And a table that doesn’t fold?” I mutter.

  “The same time you got groceries.”

  “AAAHHH!”

  The ear-piercing shriek I let out at the sound of a deep, male voice from behind me is almost as embarrassing as jumping and whirling around so fast I forgot I was holding a baseball bat. It goes flying out of my hands, clamoring across my tiled kitchen floor until it smacks into the base of the fridge and comes to a stop.

  “Were you seriously going to hit me with a bat?” Dax complains, moving forward to set a plate down on the rustic, farmhouse kitchen table next to me with four matching chairs, the plate piled high with the crispy bacon that woke me up. “Good thing I rethought my earlier decision of serving you breakfast in bed. You probably would have shot me. There’s water and aspirin there on the table for you.”

  It’s too early, and I am too hungover and undercaffeinated to deal with this right now.

  “What the hell are you doing in my house? How did you even get in? Why do I have kitchen chairs and placemats? Is… is that… is that a fucking omelet?” I shout, leaning closer to the table to get a better look at the egg dish that looks like it was ripped right out of the pages of a cookbook.

  “It’s a fucking frittata with spinach, tomatoes, and feta cheese, thank you very much,” Dax informs me, sliding a blue oven mitt on his hand as he walks over to the oven, pulls out a sheet pan, then sets it on a cooling rack in the middle of the island. “And these are sheet pan s’mores.”

  “I own a sheet pan?” I mumble, still looking back and forth between my kitchen table and Dax in bewilderment.

  “Shockingly, yes. It was dusty and still had the barcode sticker on it from the store, but I found it,” he replies, pulling off the oven mitt and tossing it on the counter. “I also found your tampons in the silverware drawer. I moved them to the cabinet under the bathroom sink, which coincidentally is where I found the sheet pan. It was like a fun yet weird scavenger hunt with no treasure at the end.”

  I try to come up with a sarcastic reply, but my brain is still full of stale beer, and I’m annoyed that I’m not at all annoyed I no longer have to waddle out to the kitchen with my pants and underwear around my ankles for five days every month.

  “What do you even eat on a daily basis?” Dax uses a spatula to scoop a few s’mores onto a plate before walking around the counter to set them down on the table with the rest of the food. “Your fridge only had ketchup packets, ten different flavors of coffee creamer, and the entire brewery you drank last night, and your pantry only had a bag of stale pretzels and ten boxes of Lucky Charms with no marshmallows in them.”

  “I eat takeout mostly,” I respond, ignoring the brewery comment, since my head tells me he’s right. “If I do have time to throw something together, I do it at my dad’s house. Otherwise, neither one of those overgrown children will eat anything good for them. Or they’ll burn the house down trying to make something.”

  Now would be a good time for my brain to wake up and remember I’m pissed that this man broke into my house this morning and redecorated.

  “Well, there’s plenty of good things for you to eat now. Except for the s’mores. They’re good, but they’re definitely not good for you. I made those with Nutella and Hershey bars. Sit. Eat,” Dax orders, pointing at the table.

  I actually whimper when I look down at the plate of graham cracker sandwiches with chocolate and perfectly toasted marshmallows oozing out of the sides. But then I look up at Dax, and I remember this is not normal to have him in my kitchen, cooking me food that definitely was not in my fridge when I passed out last night, serving it to me on a real, adult kitchen table I sure as shit do not own. It doesn’t matter that he looks so right standing in my kitchen, still wearing the yellow I’m a Ray of Fucking Sunshine T-shirt, while he sternly points at the table. It doesn’t matter he must have spent hours doing all of these nice things for me while I slept, and it’s making me feel unnaturally warm and gooey inside.

  He broke into my house to use my kitchen as an actual kitchen while I was sleeping. If that’s not the beginning of a true crime documentary, I don’t know what is.

  “I’m not doing anything until you tell me why you’re in my house and where all this shit came from,” I reply petulantly, crossing my arms in front of me and refusing to look at the table or sit down.

  Looking at Dax isn’t any easier on my self-control. His T-shirt is wrinkled, and it makes me wonder if he slept in yesterday’s clothes like I did. His eyes have that familiar sparkle back in them as he moved around my kitchen with ease, and for the first time in my life, I have the urge to… hug someone. He looks so warm and comfortable while he stands barefooted in front of me. I want to slide my arms around his waist and press my cheek against his chest. I want to close my eyes and breathe, stand still for a minute, not be dragged in a million different directions, and just let someone take care of me for once.

  But that’s not me, that’s not my life, and this is all just too fucking confusing.

  “You better start talking before I really do shoot you,” I reiterate, all of this hot guy, Susie Homemaker stuff messing with my head.

  Dax sighs, dropping his arm to go back and grab a bowl of cut-up fruit from the counter, walking it over and setting it down next to the bacon. My stomach growls so loudly I’m sure the neighbors can hear it. Dax definitely hears it, and of course it makes him smirk. Lucky for him, he starts talking before I start walking toward the gun safe in my room.

  “I’m in your house this morning, because I never left your house last night,” he begins, my mouth dropping open in shock. “You were dead to the world on the floor, so I carried you to bed and tucked you in, figuring I’d have your dad give me a lift back to The Backyard. Made a pit stop in the bathroom, did a quiz from an old magazine to find out if my shoe choices match my sexual appetite, and by the time I came back out to the living room, your dad and brother had already left.”

  “And you didn’t think maybe calling an Uber or a taxi was a good idea?” I fire back, pushing away the mental image of Dax carrying me in his arms and carefully removing my flannel shirt and boots without waking me, before I do something stupid like make out with him as a thank you.

  I don’t even know why I’m so annoyed. It’s not like Dax is a stranger. I might not know exactly what’s gone on with him the last few years, but I know he’s not a psycho serial killer. It’s not like I woke up chained to my bed and covered in chicken blood while Dax jerked off in the corner of the room, holding a picture of Ralph M
acchio in his hand. I woke up to a new kitchen table and a fucking frittata.

  I like it. That’s why I’m so annoyed.

  “I did call for an Uber. And then I started to head out the front door to wait for it and realized you have a deadbolt that only locks from the inside. There is no way in hell I was going to leave you here alone all night with your front door unlocked,” he explains, pulling out one of the chairs and gesturing for me to sit down. “So, I came back inside, locked the door, cancelled the Uber, and slept on the couch.”

  “Did you go through my underwear drawer, watch me while I slept, or do any other pervy things I should know about?”

  “Before or after I jerked off in your closet with one of your kitchen towels?” Dax humors me.

  “It was in my corner with a picture of the Karate Kid, thank you very much.”

  “What?” he chuckles.

  “Nothing.” I wave my hand at him and shake my head, wondering why I can never stay mad at this man.

  “Will it make you feel better if I make a pervy comment about the fancy lace bra I had to step over out in your hallway last night?”

  “No.” I glare at him, pretending like my cheeks aren’t heating in embarrassment.

  “All righty then. Any more questions, or can we finally eat now?”

  I try really hard to come up with another argument about why he absolutely should not have spent the night at my house, but I can’t. That damn warm and gooey feeling is back, and it won’t go away. The man slept on my old, uncomfortable futon without a pillow or blanket all night, just because he didn’t want to leave me, a former police detective who owns multiple handguns, alone in my unlocked house all night. I should be pissed and indignant that he just assumed I needed a man to take care of me, but my stupid warm and gooey ass just plops right down into the chair he’s still holding out for me to take, because… food.

  “I’m always up before the sun to check on the animals anyway, so after I made some calls to The Backyard for updates earlier, I asked Ryan, the employee scheduled for an interview with us later this morning, to run to the store and bring some stuff here,” Dax continues as he starts filling my plate up with food before doing the same with his own plate. “I was just gonna have him stick around until you woke up to do the interview, but one of the alpacas he’s been working with went into labor, so he needed to go back. And before you get all bent out of shape thinking I bought you a kitchen table, it was an extra that’s been down in the basement in storage at the sanctuary. I had Ryan throw it in the back of his truck, because I’m almost forty. I’m too old and too classy to eat frittata on the fucking floor. Now, can we eat, or do you want to continue starving just because you’re mad?”

  I’m not a complete idiot, so I quickly swallow two aspirins from the bottle he put on the table for me then dig into my food, giving up on being pissed at him for the time being. When I get my first taste of the frittata, I don’t even remember what I was mad about to begin with. And when Dax grabs a sheet pan s’more, leans over, and forces me to take a bite, I consider asking him to live on my futon forever.

  “Where in the hell did you learn to cook like this?” I question around a mouthful of graham cracker, nutty chocolate, and toasted marshmallow, not even a little ashamed I grabbed the s’more out of his hand, another one from the plate, and am currently double-fisting them.

  Dax picks up a slice of buttered toast from the pile stacked neatly on a small plate in front of him, taking a bite before answering me.

  “I was alone a lot growing up, since my dad worked so much. We had a chef. Her name was Alice, and she was from France,” he says, pausing to stab his fork into a piece of watermelon from the fruit salad and pop it into his mouth. “I never understood a word she said to me most of the time, but she was nice, and she let me hang out in the kitchen with her and do my homework. She taught me how to cook and bake in between my work, and by the time I started high school French, I was fluent.”

  We’re quiet for a few minutes while we eat until he speaks again.

  “Does it make me sound like a douchebag when I say I had a French chef growing up?”

  “Absolutely, 100 percent,” I reply without missing a beat, which makes him laugh.

  “And that’s exactly why I don’t want to tell the employees I own The Backyard now. Because I’d also have to tell them my daddy bought it for me,” he mutters, showing the first sign of annoyance since I walked in here with a baseball bat over my shoulder.

  Setting my fork down, I finish chewing my food like a lady for once before I talk. “Okay, so maybe he was a shitty father, and he was never there for you, and he sucks at communicating, but he bought you an animal sanctuary. It would have been great if he supported your dreams and did this for you when you were younger, but he didn’t. And you can’t change that. He’s doing it now, and that’s all that matters. For your mental well-being, and for your employees, so they stop peeing themselves every time you speak to them, I think you need to just say thank you, let it go, and move on.”

  Dax sighs, resting his elbows on the table and his head in his hands for a second before looking at me.

  “An animal sanctuary, man,” I complain, shaking my head at him.

  “I know. I get it.”

  “Like, he bought you a literal fucking zoo.”

  “I said I get it,” Dax mumbles again, the corner of his mouth starting to twitch with the attitude I’m giving him.

  “My dad bought me a vacuum for Christmas when I told him his house was a mess. I’m just saying, some people have it worse.”

  Dax chuckles, and I mentally pat myself on the back when his tense shoulders relax and the sparkle is back in his eyes. Unfortunately, I know it won’t last for long. The next time his dad—or whatever other personal issues he’s been dealing with since the last time I saw him—pop into his head, it’s going to happen again.

  That thought makes all the delicious food I’ve been eating start churning in my stomach. I don’t want that for him. I don’t want to keep seeing that happiness disappear from his eyes, and the stress make him tense and lash out at people. I want to make everything better, and it’s such a foreign feeling that it scares the crap out of me. I’m suddenly on edge again, and the sound of my cell phone ringing from back in my bedroom makes me jump up from the table so fast I send one of the new chairs flying backward.

  “The phone! My phone! I mean… my phone’s ringing. So, I need to go and answer my phone that is ringing,” I ramble, quickly turning away from a confused-looking Dax to run to my bedroom like a chicken.

  Or a woman who is suddenly developing supportive, caring feelings and shit for the first time in her adult life.

  Racing down the hall and into my bedroom, I dive across my bed and snatch my phone off my nightstand where it was charging, quickly answering it before the call goes to voicemail.

  “Why are you out of breath? Are you chasing someone? I told you that you need to start doing more cardio,” my mom scolds in greeting. “A thirty-eight-year-old woman needs to pay attention to her heart health.”

  Flopping over onto my back in the middle of my bed, I stare up at my ceiling, listening to the faint sounds of Dax cleaning up the breakfast dishes.

  “I’m not chasing anyone. But I guess I just let a man buy me groceries, get me a kitchen table, and make me breakfast,” I tell her.

  “I knew this would happen eventually.” My mom sighs through the phone. “Who do you currently have your gun pointed at, forcing them to do these things? Your father or your brother? Wait, neither one of them can cook. Or even know where the grocery store is. I told your father if he didn’t stop depending on you for everything, one of these days you would snap, and look at that. I was right. Casey! It happened! Charlie and Davidson finally pushed Harley over the edge! Get your keys!”

  I roll my eyes when my mom stops talking to me to pull the phone away from her mouth and yell to my stepdad.

  “It’s not dad or Davidson, and I don’t hav
e a gun on anyone.” I sigh. “And you live over an hour away. Tell Casey to put his keys back.”

  My mom yells to my stepdad again, telling him it’s a false alarm before coming back to me.

  “It’s that guy you used to work with, isn’t it? The one who lost his otters? Oh, this is very exciting!” she gushes.

  “How in the hell do you even know about him? I haven’t talked to you since I took this case.”

  “Your dad called me yesterday, told me all about it. Actually, he called to ask if Casey had a ten-inch circular saw blade and then wanted to know how to get blood stains off cement, for some ungodly reason,” she explains. “Your dad says he’s a crier. I like a man who’s in touch with his feminine side, Harley, but a little can go a long way. Did you say he got you a kitchen table?”

  “Yes.”

  “With chairs?” she asks in shock.

  She knows what a big deal this is. She’s been bringing a folding chair with her whenever she visits, since I moved in a few years ago. I’m too busy to buy adult furniture. I’ve never really given a shit about having adult furniture before now, and I’ve always refused to let anyone give me any adult furniture.

  Before now. Dammit.

  “And light-blue placemats with little dark-blue flowers on them, with matching blue napkins.”

  “Your favorite color is blue,” my mom whispers in awe.

  “I know! And he knows how to bake. This is weird. This is all weird, right? Guys don’t cook for me. Or stock my fridge. Or get me fucking furniture.”

  “Because you don’t let them,” Mom reminds me.

  “Whatever,” I scoff, knowing she’s right.

  “Did you kick the man out of your house when you found out he did all these wonderful things for you?”

  I hear my kitchen sink running and pots and pans clanging together.

  “Uh, no. He’s in the kitchen now, doing the breakfast dishes,” I admit.