If only. Dylan glanced at Apollo who frowned as he handed one girl to his mother. Yeah, Dylan had definitely overstayed his welcome.
“I’ll head out after I get the food packed away for you.” Dylan spoke to Apollo’s mother because she was infinitely less intimidating than the stony-faced Apollo.
“Stay.” Apollo’s tone was better suited for an unruly Labrador. “I want to go over a few things with you. Let me get the girls down, then I’ll come down.”
Apollo made it sound ominous, but Dylan nodded. “Sure thing.”
He grabbed the remaining food dishes from the picnic table and followed them into the house. The patio led to an eating nook off a truly impressive kitchen. The rest of the house wasn’t particularly huge, but the kitchen was dominated by a massive granite island and wall of stainless-steel appliances, including a giant fridge that was bigger than Dylan’s closet back at the dorms. Instead of the kid drawings Dylan had expected, the front of the fridge had a whiteboard with the days of the week on it, and a menu plan as well as reminders about things like doctor’s appointments. No drawings, nothing personal—
Wait. A small photo in a magnet. Dylan pulled it up so he could look at it closer. Apollo and a guy with dark brown hair and two tiny babies. Huge smiles on all of them. Neal. Dylan had seen other pictures of him and Apollo over the years, including wedding pictures, but something about this one made his throat burn.
He couldn’t fix that, couldn’t bring him back, but maybe, just maybe, he could make that smile reappear, do something to ease Apollo’s heavy load.
He was about to shove the food in the fridge, same as he would at home, but when he opened the doors, he had to do a double-take. The condiments in the door were arranged by size, something Dylan had never seen before, and the interior of the fridge was full of neat—like freaky neat—stacks of labeled plastic and glass containers, all done in blocky, masculine handwriting. The leftover meat had already been labeled and flat-packed into storage bags.
Trying not to upset whatever organization system Apollo had going on, Dylan carefully slid the leftover vegetable tray in, and put the ketchup and mustard back in the height-appropriate spots. A little hunting revealed a pantry that made the fridge look disorganized in comparison, what with labels on shelves and jars and stacks of plastic bins. However, the labels made it easy to put the leftover chips where they went, grabbing bag clips for them from the tidy row of clips on the inside of the pantry door. Yeah, Dylan could totally get used to this level of neatness—his mother’s pleasantly cluttered kitchen always drove him crazy with nothing in the same spot twice.
He slid the empty platters into a space-age-looking dishwasher, then started wiping down the counters, which honestly were already in pretty good shape, but Dylan was pretty sure that “pretty good” was never enough for Apollo.
“You didn’t have to do that. But thanks.” The man himself walked back into the kitchen, idly rubbing his shoulder. Dylan wished he knew him well enough to offer to rub it for him, but he wasn’t stupid enough to try to touch Apollo now and risk this whole arrangement before it even started.
Someday though... Dylan pushed that thought aside before it could take hold. He knew full well how dangerous crushing on Apollo could be. And he wasn’t the same kid he’d once been. He was smarter now.
“No problem.” Dylan replaced the sponge in the sink.
“You probably already saw the meal plan.” Apollo gestured at the fridge. “I cook in big batches on my days off, then we eat according to the schedule.”
“You cook? Not your mom?”
Apollo laughed, a deep, welcome sound. “No. She’s terrific with the kids and makes a decent sous chef, but I do most of it. My own grandmother lived with us when I was growing up, and she used to joke that the cooking gene skipped a generation.”
“I hear you there. I had to learn a lot of kitchen stuff out of self-defense. And I can help you while I’m here—”
“Oh it’s mainly just reheating.” Apollo waved the offer away before gesturing at a big binder on the counter. “Now this is the master plan—it has the bedtime and morning routines, emergency contacts, monthly shopping lists, all in one place.”
“Impressive.” Dylan opened it to reveal page after laminated page of routines and schedules. He wasn’t sure where, exactly, the family had spontaneous fun, but it wasn’t his place to question. I’ll just have to bring the fun myself. “So when do you need me here by? I’ve got the start date for the day camp, but I can come a few days earlier to coincide with your mom’s leaving.”