Dishing Up Love

“Yeah, my bad. It was my first response to something being in my face,” I reply, grimacing a little in apology.

He lifts a brow. “So, note to self….”

My lips pooch out at that as I lift my own brow. But before I can comment, he inserts, “We need to prep all your meals. You wouldn’t happen to have a food scale, do you?”

I tilt my head to the side, my expression clearly stating “Really?”

“That’s a no. Okay, well, we need to get you one of those in order to do this properly in the future, but for now, we can just guess. If I were Tupperware, where would I be?” he asks, and I try to ignore the bit about the future. He said it so casually, as if he knows for a fact he’ll be around past tonight.

I look him up and down for a moment, deciding he might be right. I may let him stay until the morning.

“Cabinet down there.” I point to the one beside the stove and watch as he turns to squat in front of the open cupboard. When he stands and turns back around to face me, he’s holding an unopened package of small containers, his expression full of unasked but unsurprised questions. “I got them one year to make cookies as Christmas presents, but then ended up just getting everyone boxes of chocolates. And I don’t cook enough to ever have leftovers.”

He shakes his head but there’s a lift at each corner of his lips. “Why didn’t you bake the cookies?” he asks as he opens the package and begins washing and drying each of the containers.

“That would’ve required a grocery run.” I shrug.

“Didn’t the boxes of candy require a grocery run?”

“Costco. My weakness. I had to go grab my economy size batch of K-cups and saw the pretty boxes of different Belgian chocolates. They were even already wrapped up for Christmas. All I had to do was write names on the already provided tags,” I explain, flipping my ponytail over my shoulder.

“How… personal of you,” he teases.

I pout my bottom lip. “Hey. Those chocolates were freaking delicious.” At his raised brow, I mumble, “I might’ve gotten myself a couple boxes for Christmas too.”

“Have you ever made it past the coffee section of Costco? They have an amazing grocery section.”

“No. I figured it was all like… family sized, giant portions of food, like everything else there,” I admit.

“Negative,” he tells me, bringing the containers over to the Instant Pot before grabbing a ladle out of the drawer of kitchen utensils. “They may give you a shitload of food, but most of it is separated into individual portions. And a ton of it is already prepared. You just have to either stick it in the oven or heat it up in the microwave.”

“I thought you frowned upon heat-up meals.” I cross my legs, leaning onto my right butt cheek to watch what he’s doing more closely.

“I frown upon frozen meals. A lot of their stuff is made from scratch and never frozen. Their hand-pulled rotisserie chicken is da bomb.” He pulls the lid back off the Instant Pot and explains, “Okay, so this—” He holds up the silver ladle that’s been here since Emmy’s granny was alive. “—is an eight-ounce ladle. Eight ounces equals one cup, which is a serving size of the red beans. So you need to fill the ladle only halfway for the right amount of rice.”

He does just that, scooping out enough rice to fill just half the oversized silver spoon before dumping it into the freshly washed plastic container. He does this several more times until all six have rice in the bottom of them. He then takes a whole ladleful of the red beans and meat concoction and pours it on top of the rice, lining them up next to each other once more before putting the ladle in the sink.

He makes quick work of snapping the lids on all the Tupperware, looking like he’s done this a few times in his day. He stacks them all up then slides them toward himself and off the ledge of the counter, balancing them by placing his chin on the top one as he moves toward my fridge.

“Wherever will I find the room to put these?” he asks in a dramatic tone as he looks inside the mostly empty space, making me giggle.

“Asshooole,” I sing, and he closes the fridge, grinning when he turns back to me.

He winks as he passes by, picking up the Instant Pot that’s had enough time to cool, since he unplugged it after he served us while everyone was still here. Moving over to my sink, he starts washing everything left after his crewmember did everything else.

I brace my palms on the countertop, ready to hop down, but he stops me with a simple “Nope,” and I freeze in place.