The Best Next Thing

“Okay, close your eyes,” he instructed her, and she blinked. Not certain she had heard him correctly.

“What?”

“Close your eyes.”

“You’re making quite the production out of this, aren’t you?”

“This used to be Hughie and Vicki’s favorite meal when they were kids. I’m the only one who could make it exactly how they liked it.”

She sighed and covered her face with both hands.

“No peeking.”

“Oh my God, I had no idea you had such a flair for the dramatic.”

She heard the faint metal on metal ping as he lifted the lid.

“Don’t look until I tell you to,” he said. And she sighed in fake vexation. Truthfully, she was enjoying every moment of this. There was a slosh of liquid, and she assumed he was filling up the wineglasses.

“Okay, three, two…two and a ha—”

“Miles!” Her voice was shaking with suppressed laughter as she tried, but failed, to sound exasperated. She was delighted by this unexpectedly whimsical side of him.

“Spoilsport! Fine. Open your eyes.”

She lowered her hands and opened her eyes and then stared, uncomprehendingly, at the…feast(?) in front of her.

A precarious pyramid of sandwiches, each a neatly sliced triangle, stacked one on top of the other.

“Sandwiches?” Her voice was faint, and she cleared her throat and looked up to meet his expectant gaze.

“Not just any old sandwiches,” he stated proudly. “These are peanut butter, strawberry jam, and banana sandwiches.”

“Oh.” She shifted her focus to the wineglasses, and her lips twitched. Each expensive, handcrafted crystal glass was filled to the brim with milk.

“Tuck in,” he invited, and stacked a few sandwiches onto his plate. Charity took a couple of slices and sat back, folding her legs crosswise before taking a hearty bite from the generously filled sandwich.

The flavors sang on her tongue, reminding her of her carefree childhood. So much nostalgia in just one bite.

She grinned at him, certain her delight must be plain to see.

“This is so good,” she enthused around a mouthful of bread. The peanut butter stuck to the roof of her mouth and teeth, and she didn’t even care. Instead, she washed it down with some milk and went in for another bite.

He grinned at her. She laughed and impulsively reached across the table to thumb a smudge of jam away from the corner of his mouth. He turned his head to flick the jam off her thumb with the tip of his tongue.

The casual intimacy of their actions astonished her. Even more astounding? The fact that she didn’t mind it at all. She withdrew her hand and, holding his gaze hostage, deliberately sucked the thumb he had just licked into her mouth. His breath caught, and his eyes sparked, then darkened to almost black.

“These are seriously amazing,” she said, her voice embarrassingly throaty after their sexy interplay. “Takes me back to my childhood. Although my mother never added banana. I don’t know why not. It adds so much flavor.”

“Like I said, I used to make these for Hughie and Vicki. I use a different knife for each spread, and they have to cover the entire surface of the slice. Corner to corner.” He grinned wryly, flashing her that adorable dimple. “You may have noticed that Hugh is a little particular.”

She raised her brows at that understatement.

“He has OCD, right?” She instantly regretted the question. Mrs. Cole’s reticence was so ingrained that it felt improper asking him such a personal question.

Miles didn’t seem to mind though. Instead, he nodded and took a swig of milk before talking again.

“Yes. It went untreated for much too long. None of his teachers picked up on it. Or maybe they just ignored it. He was ten before I dragged my mum and Hughie to a clinic and demanded to see a child psychiatrist. Mum had been working such long hours she was happy to just avoid the issue. He was healthy and happy for the most part, but she didn’t see the quirks and didn’t recognize how much they were holding him back. He was being bullied at school because of it and then later, because he was gay. I always knew he was gay, I think before Hugh knew. And it was confusing and distressing for him to be called names he barely understood. It pissed me the hell off that he wasn’t allowed to discover his sexuality in his own time. Kids can be fucking arseholes at times. Anyway, the lack of control at school fed his obsessive-compulsive tendencies.

“When he was younger—it’s not as bad now—he also suffered from something called brumotactillophobia. Which means he had aversion to his food touching. It took a long time to get him to accept a sandwich like this. With everything smooshed together so haphazardly. But money was tight, and we had to make do with what we had. These were a cheap, tasty meal so Hugh and I sat down one day and discussed how we could make this work for him. Different knives for each spread, no messy oozing on the sides—let me tell you, that’s fucking hard to avoid—the banana slices have to be perfectly uniform, nine on each sandwich and arranged in three rows of three. And of course, they have to be sliced into perfectly even triangles. With three whole and three perfectly halved banana slices on each side.