The Deal(92)

“Come on, stay,” he begs. “I’m sure Tucker will be cooking up something good for dinner, so you can stick around and I’ll drive you home afterward.”

The idea of being alone in his house is…weird. But the idea of eating a home-cooked dinner instead of hitting up the dining hall sounds pretty damn tempting. “Okay,” I finally relent. “I guess I can do that. I’ll put on a movie or something while you’re gone. Or maybe take a nap.”

“I will allow either of those options.” He glares at me. “But you are not, under any circumstances, allowed to watch Breaking Bad without me.”

“Fine, I won’t.”

“Promise…”

I roll my eyes. “I promise.”

“G! Move your ass!”

In the blink of an eye, Garrett walks over and plants a quick kiss on my lips. “I’ve gotta go. See you later.”

Then he’s gone, and I’m alone in Garrett Graham’s bedroom, which is, well, I’ll just say it—it’s surreal as hell. I never even spoke to the guy before midterms, and now I’m sitting naked on his bed. Figure that one out.

I’m surprised he’s not worried about me snooping around and finding his porn stash, but when I stop to think about it, I realize it’s not that surprising at all. Garrett is the most honest, straightforward person I’ve ever met. If he has porn, he probably doesn’t bother hiding it. I bet it’s all neatly organized in a clearly labeled folder right on his computer desktop.

I hear voices and footsteps downstairs, and then the front door creaks open and slams shut. After a few seconds, I get up and put my clothes back on, because I’m not comfortable walking around naked in a room that’s not my own.

I opt against taking a nap, because I feel oddly energized after that orgasm. And that’s more surreal than everything else, the knowledge that I actually had an orgasm with a guy.

Devon and I tried to make that happen for eight long months.

Garrett did it after two hookup sessions.

Does this mean I’m fixed?

That question is way too philosophical to be pondering in the middle of the afternoon, so I push it aside and go downstairs to get a drink. But once I enter the kitchen, inspiration strikes. Garrett and his teammates are probably going to be exhausted when they get home. Why let Tucker slave over the stove when I’m already in the kitchen with nothing but time on my hands?

A quick exploration of the fridge, pantry and cupboards reveals that Garrett wasn’t kidding—cooking does happen here, because the kitchen is stocked with ingredients. The only recipe I know off the top of my head is my grandmother’s three-cheese lasagna, so I gather up all the necessary items and pile them on the granite counter. I’m about to get cooking when something else occurs to me.

Pursing my lips, I fish my phone out of my back pocket and pull up my mother’s number. It’s only four o’clock, so I’m hoping she hasn’t left for work yet.

Luckily, she picks up on the first ring. “Hey, sweetie! This is a lovely surprise.”

“Hey. Got a sec?”

“I’ve got five whole minutes actually,” she replies with a laugh. “Your father’s driving me to work tonight, so he has the honor of cleaning all the snow off the car.”

“You guys are already getting that much snow?” I say in horror.

“Of course we are. It’s gl—”

“I swear to God, Mom, if you say global warming, I’m hanging up,” I warn her, because as much as I love my parents, their global warming lectures drive me up the wall. “And why is Dad driving you? What happened to your car?”

“It’s in the shop. The brake pads needed to be replaced.”

“Oh.” I absently open a box of lasagna sheets. “Anyway, I wanted to ask you about Nana’s lasagna recipe. It serves eight, right?”

“Ten,” she corrects.

Frowning, I think about all the food Garrett shoveled into his pie hole when he came to the diner last week, then multiply that by four hockey players and…

“Crap,” I mutter. “I still don’t think that’s enough. If I wanted to serve twenty, do I just double the ingredients, or is there a different way to calculate it?”

Mom pauses. “Why exactly are you cooking lasagna for twenty people?”

“I’m not. But I am feeding four hockey players who I imagine have the appetites of twenty people.”