A Kind of Home

by Lane Hayes

  Adam was a friend. Only a friend. A straight friend no less. Crushing on him in any respect was a bad idea.

  I shook my head and stepped inside. “Nothing. How do you feel about oatmeal in your chocolate chip cookies?”

  “I love oatmeal,” he answered, giving me an ear-to-ear grin that nearly stole my breath.

  Fuck. I needed to get laid.

  Chapter 3

  ADAM INSISTED on showering before he got to work. Twenty minutes later he set the ingredients on the kitchen island in two tidy groups: one with sugars and two eggs and the other with flour, baking soda, and salt. He made a production of washing his hands and gestured for me to do the same.

  “I was going to. Has anyone commented on your contradictory standards of cleanliness?” I scowled, bopping his hip to move him away from the faucet.

  “Contradictory? I don’t think so. You know the saying ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness.’ It’s my mother’s mantra. She still says it every damn day. Wash your hands, put your dirty dishes in the dishwasher… you know the drill.” He gave me a sardonic half grin and moved toward the pantry.

  “Where does picking up your shit fit in?” I asked, pointing toward the Converse shoes he’d stepped out of in the foyer.

  Adam gave me a sheepish look and shrugged. He pulled a handheld electric mixer from a shelf and returned to the island.

  “Fine. I’m not perfect. But in my defense, I’m not that big of a slob. I’ve certainly seen worse.”

  “Me too. I think I have a stationary mixer if you want to—”

  “You do, but I like this one better.” He clapped brusquely and inclined his head toward the ingredients. “Okay. I’m going to put you in charge of mixing the flour, baking soda, and salt.”

  “Do I have enough mixing bowls and measuring cups?”

  “Yes. You could use more, but… we’ll work with what we have.” Adam gave me a sharp sideways glance before turning to gather a couple of large white bowls from a cabinet in the island. “Here you go, happy homemaker. Get to it.”

  “How much should I use?”

  “We’re going to tweak the recipe on the back of the chocolate chips. Two and a half cups of flour—”

  “It says two and a quarter cups,” I corrected.

  “It’s wrong. Trust me. It needs the extra quarter cup.”

  “But—”

  “No arguing. I said we’re tweaking the recipe. I know what I’m doing. I’ve done this a million times.”

  “A million times?” I snickered at the exaggeration.

  “Okay. A thousand.” He measured sugar and then dumped it in the larger bowl. Then he opened the brown sugar and did the same with a practiced ease that frankly surprised me. Adam didn’t strike me as the type of guy who would know the first thing about how to use a measuring cup. I was wrong. His deliberate movements indicated a level of expertise I hadn’t witnessed outside of a cooking show. And he obviously knew his way around my kitchen much better than I did.

  “When did you learn how to bake? I would think I’d know this about you.”

  “Ah… so many layers to the onion, little Ize,” he teased. “There’s a lot we don’t know about each other.”

  His tone was light, but the sentiment rang true. “Hmm. I can’t argue with that. I haven’t seen much of you in the last few years.”

  “Well, you’ve been busy becoming a household name and—hey, you have to make sure you get a full cup. Hit it against the island so it falls like—” He grabbed the cup from my hand and did it himself. “There you go. Here’s a spoon. Fold the ingredients together. I’ll be ready for them soon.”

  I did as instructed but kept my gaze on Adam. He plugged in the mixer and bent his head to his task, managing to look like a damn chef instead of a dude making a batch of spur-of-the-moment cookies with an old friend.

  “So tell me about baking,” I prodded.

  “What about it?”

  “It doesn’t fit with high school football, construction, or—didn’t you play hockey on a rec team too?”

  Adam looked up from his chore with a sweet grin. He cracked an egg and turned on the mixer again. “Yeah. I’m surprised you know about that.”

  “Ned probably mentioned it. Just—what’s the deal with the cookies?” I asked, feeling oddly flustered.

  “There’s no mystery. I like cookies. I was at a barbeque a few years ago and someone—Terri Starfish. ’Member her?”

  I busted up laughing. “Terri Starlinger? Yeah, I remember her.”

  “She was a good friend of Deb’s and—well, she made these crazy-good cookies at a barbeque and went on about how easy they were to make.” His twinkling eyes told me there was more to his story. When I tilted my head expectantly, he continued. “Turned out that’s because they were the packaged crap you cut and bake. I found out one night when I was walking up and down the aisles killing time at the Giant Food Store. I was stalling. I didn’t want to go home to an empty house, I guess. Anyway, I spotted the packaged stuff Terri told me about in the refrigerator section. I was staring at the ingredients on the wrapper when a friendly worker, who’d probably been instructed by his manager to keep an eye on the idiot cruising the aisles, asked if I needed assistance. We had a short discussion about the merits of baking from scratch versus buying dough or store-bought goods. Eventually he led me to the Toll House chocolate chips and told me to follow the directions on the back. And that, my friend, was the day baking became my new hobby.”

  “Wow.” I set my spoon aside and crossed my arms, surprised by his admission. I hadn’t expected it. I leaned against the island and gently kicked at his shin until he looked at me. “So you do this often?”

  “Yes.” He held my stare for a moment, then inclined his head toward the bowl I’d been stirring. “Back to work, buddy.”

  I obeyed, but my curiosity was piqued. There had to be more to the story. No one baked that often for the fun of it. Did they?

  “I can’t stand the suspense. Why? How? Where? I don’t get it.”

  Adam chuckled. “You’re seriously overthinking this. We’re talking about cookies.”

  “Sure, but… you’re a health nut. Look at you.” I pointed at his muscular biceps as I made a valiant effort not to sniff him. He smelled clean and fresh and… fuck, I forgot what I was talking about. Cookies. Right. “I just can’t picture you doing all this work for a chocolate chip fix on a daily basis.”

  I figured this was where he’d crack up and tell me I was as gullible now as I was in high school. Knowing Adam, he’d pull out some cookies he’d bought earlier at a bakery and guffaw at me covered in flour while I ate up his ridiculous story about becoming a cookie connoisseur. I waited for the punch line.

  Silence.

  Adam gave me a wan smile that didn’t hit his eyes. “Believe it or not, baking is a science I get. It’s exact, but it allows for creativity and variables. When nothing in my life was going well, it was something I could control. Baking became a way to relax, shut my mind off, and make things that made people happy. Cookies, cakes, brownies, you name it. I’m pretty damn good in the kitchen now.”

  “I’m—uh… shocked.”

  His eyes sparked with familiar humor this time. “It doesn’t fit your idea of who you think I am. I get it. But luckily I’ve learned not to spin too hard over what other people think anymore. I was in an unhappy marriage that wore me out. If I did what everyone expected, I’d still be miserable.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize things were so bad.”

  “They weren’t good. And I had no fucking clue how to fix whatever was wrong.”

  I mixed the flour, baking soda, and salt over and over as I tried to think of something conciliatory that didn’t sound trite or downright lame.

  “She wasn’t right for you.”

  Adam cracked a second egg and threw the shells directly into the trash before glancing at me. “I thought she was. I loved her. The transition from love to anything less is intensely painful. I neve
r want to go through it again.”

  “You’ll meet someone who’ll change your mind,” I said, wincing at the greeting card–style platitude.

  “Whatever. Keep mixing, Dalton,” he commanded with a slight tilt of his head.

  “It’s as mixed as it can possibly be without turning into something else. Hey… at the risk of pissing you off, I never understood you and Deb. Sure, she’s beautiful, but you didn’t complement each other.”

  “Hmph. If you knew that, why didn’t you speak up? You might have saved me from a nowhere situation. I might have actually started… living sooner.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Frustration flitted across his face so quickly I thought I might have imagined it. Once again I sensed a bigger story than the one he was telling me. I felt like I was skimming a placid lake directly over its deepest point. I wanted to dive in, but I had a feeling I might not be equipped for what lay beneath the surface.

  “Nothing.” He huffed humorlessly as he reached for the flour mixture and poured half inside his bowl. “When I head home, I’m not going to work construction. Deb’s family will make it hard to get a job anyway. I’ve been thinking about a new direction and—”

  “Why go home at all?” I asked with a frown.

  Adam barked a quick laugh and turned to face me. “A couple weeks ago, you couldn’t wait to get rid of me.”

  “That’s not true,” I lied. “But I don’t get it. Why are you really here? Something doesn’t make sense to me. Isn’t Manhattan your new direction? You aren’t the kind of guy to back down from a fight. There’s no way Deb’s family scared you out of town. Ned said—”

  “You talked to Ned?”

  “Well… yeah.”

  “What’d he say?” He turned the mixer on and then scraped the sides of the bowl with a spoon. His gaze was locked intensely on the cookie dough.

  “You know Ned. He’s not a good gossip. He said you’d tell me yourself.”

  “I will.” Adam held my gaze for a long moment.

  The unwavering connection was significant somehow, but it made me nervous. I cleared my throat and took a step backward to watch him mix the last of the flour into the dough.

  “Want a drink?” I asked as I turned to pull a bottle of whiskey from a nearby cabinet. “Every good story needs a shot or two of something.”

  He smiled his acquiescence when I held the bottle of amber liquor for his inspection. “Cookies and Jack. Interesting combo.”

  “It’s the new peanut butter and jelly,” I declared as I reached for a couple of glasses. I poured a little more than intended into each, then set one near his elbow before skirting the island to take a seat on one of the barstools. “Cheers.”

  Adam smiled and raised his glass in a toast. “To freedom.”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  I took a small drink and immediately shivered as the liquid fire warmed my throat. I set my glass aside and held Adam’s gaze. One baby sip wasn’t likely to compromise my sensibilities, but apparently it was enough to heighten my awareness of him—of his twinkling eyes, square jaw, and muscled biceps straining the black T-shirt he’d changed into. My dick swelled against my zipper, making me glad I’d taken a seat behind the cover of the kitchen island.

  “Aren’t you going to talk?”

  “Uh….”

  “It’s okay. Keep drinking. You’ll talk eventually. In the meantime let’s go back to baking. I was thinking I need a new hobby too. Maybe I should try baking. We should have bought the carob chips too and done a bake-off.”

  “I doubt rock stars have much time to make cookies, but when I’m settled in my new place, we can try it from the safety of our own kitchens,” he suggested as he turned off the mixer and opened the package of chocolate chips.

  “New place?” I sat a little taller in my chair and gave him a sharp look.

  Adam glanced at me in surprise. “Yeah. I told you about the studio apartment in Queens. It’s affordable and they agreed to a short-term lease—why are you looking at me like that? What happened? Did you remember you actually like me?”

  When he reached out to pinch my cheek, I smacked his hand. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  He chuckled good-naturedly before turning to fuss with the oven setting and pull out a couple of cookie sheets. His muscles bunched and flexed, and fuck… I couldn’t seem to look away. I took another sip and acknowledged I was a head case. I was attracted to a straight man. Not really cause for concern. I’d been there, done that. The difference was this one was a friend. Having him around wasn’t a good idea. I should have been thrilled he was moving soon. But I wasn’t.

  Adam returned and began the painstaking task of arranging the dough on the cookie sheets. He was talking about the place in Queens. The landlord seemed cool. There were two other tenants. Blah, blah, blah. I listened, though the conversation irritated me.

  “Queens is too far.”

  Adam gave me a puzzled frown. He should have looked slightly ridiculous fussing over his chore of precisely forming meticulous balls of goodness and placing them on the cookie sheets, but no, he looked sexy. Very fucking sexy. If I were smart, I’d offer to help him pack.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll visit all the time. We can—” He stopped and cocked his head. His scrutiny took on a sudden fierce quality I didn’t understand. “Hey. Are you nervous about the bodyguard stuff?”

  “No. Maybe. I don’t know how I feel about anything at the moment. I’m exhausted… mentally and physically drained.” I made a funny face and took another drink, relishing the beginnings of a nice buzz. “The weird fan mail doesn’t help.”

  “I don’t mean to sound like a dick, but doesn’t fan mail come with the territory? You just became famous in the social media era, so you get yours online. Good, bad, or somewhere in between… it doesn’t seem overly alarming. Or am I missing something?”

  “This one is a little creepier than the others.” I gave Adam an in-depth account of my admirer’s ardent posts, including the last one’s macabre undertone. He listened intently while he worked. Then he turned to put the cookies in the oven and set a timer before grabbing his glass and moving to sit beside me. I refilled my glass, then shifted to face him.

  “I’m getting used to it. It’s more chaotic during the tour phase. But every day feels more intense this time. Like the momentum is escalating and it shows no sign of slowing. I can’t tell if I’m soaring into space or if I’m about to hit the ground with a catastrophic thud. One minute there are far too many people around me, and the next it’s lonely as hell. As far as the bodyguard is concerned… this is the first time I’ve had someone’s personal ‘protection.’”

  I sighed heavily, leaned forward, and cradled my chin on my hand. “It feels out of control. I love what I do… but I can honestly say I’m looking forward to taking a break. Freedom is a fleeting concept these days. I’d be happy with the illusion.”

  “You sound the way I felt before I came here. Maybe you need a change of scenery. When is the tour over?”

  “Mid-January. As soon as it ends, I’m going to find a remote tropical island with a hammock in the sand. I’ll order mai tais from hot guys in Speedos with French accents. I’m thinking St. Martin or the Seychelles or—”

  “How about Springville?” he suggested with a straight face.

  I burst out laughing. “Good one.”

  “I’m serious. You’re a hometown hero. Everyone would love to see the golden boy in person, and unlike everywhere else in the world, these people know you. They’d give you privacy when you need it and protect you from outsiders.”

  “Or they’ll feed me to the wolves. The reboot of the Leo and Mom story was a perfect example. That was a nightmare. I’m sure Dad did a couple spins in his grave.”

  Adam nodded sympathetically. “That sucked. But you know, no one in town leaked that story, Ize. Anyone who was looking for something would have found it.”

  “Maybe. I suppose I naively thought that was m
y parents’ mess and it couldn’t touch me after I left them behind. Fuck, was I wrong.” I took a big swig of my drink and almost choked on the burning sensation.

  “You can’t outrun all the unpleasant things life throws at you. If you can’t fight them outright, sometimes you have to hunker down and weather the storm until it passes.”

  “Says the man sleeping in my guest room,” I replied sarcastically.

  “Ouch.” Adam winced and motioned wildly like he was pulling an arrow from his chest.

  I chuckled in spite of my plummeting mood. “Sorry, but something drastic would have to happen for me to go back to Springville. The last place I’d go for a holiday is the first place that felt like a prison. You may not feel the same way, but you must understand. Hell, you left too.”

  “I didn’t leave to escape, Isaac. The short break from reality is a perk, but I came here for a reason. Well… two reasons.”

  My ears perked at the subtle change in his tone. “Ahh! I sense the secret is about to be revealed. Tell me, tell me! I’m beyond curious.”

  “Geez! Slow down,” he scolded, pulling the bottle out of reach after I topped off my drink again. “Did you eat anything?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Adam lifted his brow comically before grabbing a glass from a nearby cabinet. He filled it with water and pushed it toward me. “Drink this.”

  I rolled my eyes but didn’t argue. I didn’t want to lose the thread of our previous conversation, and I had a feeling he didn’t feel the same. His gaze was distant now, as though he was lost in thought.

  “Well?” I prodded.

  “Do you want a sandwich?”

  “No, thanks. I want your secrets.”

  Adam smirked. “You don’t forget much, do you?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’ll tell you one if you tell me one.”

  “I don’t have any secrets. Everyone knows everything about me,” I said irritably.

  “I doubt it. Everyone has something they’ve never told another soul.”

  His tone was deliberately playful, which I liked. It went well with a casual roomie-slash-old-friends vibe. My defenses slipped as I ignored the water and reached for my whiskey glass.