Food for Thought (5 page)

“I’m… I mean… okay… oh God.”

“Emmett…,” Keegan sang, and Emmett swallowed, still concentrating on where his shirt was dragging up Keegan’s thighs. “Oh Em-mettt….”

“Oh, uhm, yeah?” Emmett managed to pull his eyes up to meet Keegan’s very knowing stare.

“Eyes up here for the moment, boyfriend. If you’re going to be using the food processor, I’d rather you weren’t staring at my ass.”

“Yeah, oh, of course. Yeah.” Oh God. Keegan was half-naked in his kitchen, and suddenly Emmett couldn’t remember why they were even cooking.

“So, looks like all we need is chicken. Do you have any?”

“Frozen—I was going to start it in the broth and let it cook while I caramelized the onions and veggies and processed the beets.”

Keegan squinted at the book and held it far out from his face, looking charmingly middle-aged.

“Did you remember your contacts?” Emmett asked with concern.

Keegan flashed a rather abashed smile. “The eyes were a little itchy this morning,” he said with a shrug. “So no. No contacts.”

And Emmett, looking into his eyes, realized that they were a little red, but it didn’t look like allergies. Had Keegan been crying?

“Are you okay?” Emmett asked, stunned. Keegan? Crying? Keegan was his
rock
!

“I will be if we start cooking,” Keegan murmured. “Now move your ass.”

Emmett nodded, but his world felt a little wobbly. Keegan was sexier than chocolate and butter, and he’d been
crying
and suddenly Emmett’s clarity was second only to fixing Keegan.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll start the chipotle chicken broth. Come talk to me while I chop everything else up.”

Keegan didn’t argue with him, instead putting his hands behind him and boosting himself up so his ass hung off the counter into the sink.

“Be careful with that chef’s knife,” he said playfully. “I got my best stuff up here, you know?”

Emmett paused with the knife edge against the plastic cutting board, and smiled at him. “Your eyes? I agree. I’ll try not to poke them out.”

“Ha-ha,” Keegan rolled the aforementioned eyes and shook his head. “I’ll have you know I have had
many
compliments on what’s tucked under my briefs.” He batted his eyes flirtatiously and crossed his legs in a perfect pinup pose, and Emmett couldn’t fight that much sex appeal.

“I’m sure you have,” he agreed with quiet sincerity.

“What, you’re not going to try to talk about my eyes again?”

“Someone made you cry,” Emmett said, feeling growly. “I’m mad about that.”

“How do you know it wasn’t you?” Keegan asked, suddenly intent.

Emmett felt a sudden ache in his stomach, and he put the knife down. “Want a breakfast bar?”

“You haven’t eaten?”

Emmett shook his head, grabbed a breakfast bar from the cupboard, and tore off the wrapper before being brave.

“Was it? Because I’d be… I’d be really mad at myself if it was me.”

“No,” Keegan said, that surprising thoughtfulness still in place. “No, it wasn’t you. Not yet. I was actually on the phone with my aunt. She wanted to ask me
not
to attend my cousin’s wedding, if you must know the truth. Something about my presence diminishing the meaning of the day.”

Emmett put the breakfast bar down. “I’m sorry,” he said, voice rough. “That’s awful.”

Keegan shrugged. “Well, the roommates were there, being dicks, and I told her whatever and bailed. You know. Your pad is always better.”

Keegan rarely talked about his roommates—Emmett knew their names, which two were straight, and that they never cleaned the refrigerator. Other than that, Kee didn’t like to bitch.

“I’m sorry they weren’t very nice about it,” Emmett said, feeling lame. He conveniently put aside the knowledge that Keegan was dressed in nothing but a button-down shirt and remembered the knowledge that Keegan liked to touch. “You want a hug, Kee?”

Keegan shook his head, and Emmett recognized a man trying to keep his shit together. Well, Emmett could identify. “I’ll take a rain check,” he said with a limp smile. “Sometime when I can wiggle a little and take total advantage of you.”

“You do that.”

Keegan nodded and then, still with that surprising seriousness, asked, “Why is family so important to you?”

Emmett forgot about the breakfast bar and turned to the onion chopping, while he thought. With a few deft movements, he’d skinned the onion and cut it into quarters so he could throw it in the food processor. He paused there, with his finger on the button, so he could answer.

“My mom left when I was little,” he said, not sure if he’d told Keegan what happened to her. “It was just me and my dad. And Dad… he was a good guy, but he wasn’t much of a talker. Until Vinnie came over and asked me to play, I think we used to go for days without saying anything.”

“Sounds lonely.”

Emmett nodded, and it occurred to him that, until Keegan had come over with cookies, he’d felt
exactly
like the little boy in the silent house, all over again as an adult. He hit the button on the processor, and then stopped, added the baby carrots, and then added the fennel, which burst pungently as he fed it in. He started to talk again while he dumped the veggies in the pan with the butter and turned on the heat.

“It was,” he said. “Vinnie’s family saved my life. I always had this vision, you know? That someday I’d bring someone home to them, and they wouldn’t have to worry about me anymore. I wouldn’t be the lost kid on the porch.”

Keegan reached over and snagged a carrot from the side of the processing bowl, and tossed it in his mouth. He chewed and swallowed before asking carefully, “Were you the lost kid on the porch?”

Emmett shrugged. “My Dad wouldn’t talk for
days,
Kee. I mean, there was probably, ‘You okay?’ or ‘Did you have lunch?’ but beyond that, I’m not remembering any real contact until I learned how to play chess. He’d feed me and tie my shoes and buy me groceries—he’d even kiss me good night. But he just… just didn’t have anything to say. Some days I’d just wander out of the house in the middle of all that quiet and end up on their porch. Flora would feed me—usually cookies—and Vinnie would do his homework with me, and sometimes she’d call my dad and I’d stay over. But… you know. I want noise in my house. Adventure.”

“Psychotic cats,” Keegan supplied, his smile sympathetic.

“Really good friends,” Emmett emphasized, nodding so Keegan would understand.

“Kind lovers,” Keegan said, and Emmett flushed.

“I’m not sure there’s any such thing.” With that, he grabbed the pile of giant beets from the counter and looked apologetically at Keegan. “I’m going to have to peel these into the sink. This is the messy part. You can start on the shortbread if you want.”

“Yeah, yeah. Shortbread is easy—butter, sugar, flour—it’s like the lazy man’s cookie.”

“But this recipe calls for almond paste and almond extract and almonds on top,” Emmett said excitedly. “It sounds… like,
amazing
. I even bought some dark chocolate, figured we could heat it in the double boiler and do dessert fondue.”

Keegan hopped down, landing a little too close to Emmett for comfort, and let out a carnal moan from deep in the pit of his stomach. “Oh my
God
. It’s like you’re
trying
to put fat on my ass!”

“Your ass could use a little fat,” Emmett said playfully, getting into the rhythm of peeling the beets now that Keegan was out of the way. “Too bony now. No fun in bed.”

“And you would know this how?” Keegan had danced to the mixing bowl where Emmett had the recipe propped up. “Okay, how soft should the butter be?”

“There’s a notation in there—when the beater just sinks into it, it’s soft enough.”

“Oh my God—could that sound any dirtier?”

Emmett almost peeled the skin off his knuckle. “Beaters sinking? How could that be…?”

“Just keep peeling, Em. Don’t want to blow your tiny little mind.”

And of all things,
that
pricked Emmett’s pride. “Gay sex doesn’t blow my mind,” he said, trying to sound worldly and wise. “I know a surprising amount about it.”

“Yeah? Shock me!”

“How am I supposed to shock you? What do you want, random factoids?”

Keegan cast a dirty look over his shoulder while he was measuring sugar into the bowl. “Okay, pop quiz, then!”

“How about pop-
up
quiz,” Emmett smirked, moving on to the next beet. Damned things were tough, which was good, because he’d accidentally steered this whole conversation into very dangerous territory, and the beets would distract him enough to not give himself away.

“Very clever, baby boy. Pop-
up
quiz. What’s a top?”

“Traditionally the guy who penetrates in anal sex, but that’s sort of archaic now, isn’t it?” Jordyn said it was, anyway. “That was easy.”

“Okay, then, what’s a sound?”

Emmett
did
slip with the peeler now, and he glared at Keegan. “Pee-pee fucker. Ouch. Ouch ouch ouch. I can’t even
look
at pictures on the net. Jesus, Kee—find something between the basic and the hardcore, can you?”

“O-kay,” Keegan drew out the syllable and spoke over the beater, which was mixing the butter, sugar, and almond extract. “What do you call it when the two people take turns topping? In the same session?”

Emmett was suddenly sweating, visions cyberstreaming through his head of a quiet day in the dorms, a locked door, skin sticking to skin, Jordyn’s somber blue eyes… and the most ludicrous phrase for the universe opening at your feet. “A flip-flop fuck,” Emmett said, trying to sound cutesy when his chest had tightened and he almost couldn’t breathe. “So there. I’m not a prude—you don’t have to bait me any….”

He turned his head. Keegan had turned off the beaters as he spoke and was now standing right next to him, so close Emmett could smell his bathing products, and the faint sweat coming from Emmett’s own shirt.

“Here,” Keegan said, smearing butter and sugar across his cheek and into his mouth. “Taste this.”

Emmett sucked on his thumb, making nummy, porny nom-nom sounds because the almond paste turned ordinary butter and sugar into magic.

And because the taste of Keegan’s skin ignited every nerve ending in his body, all of them waking up and screaming
Fire!
In concert. Emmett’s skin tightened across his entire body, and the ache that had been in his stomach and traveled to his chest, suddenly awoke in his groin. Keegan scooped another fingerful of cookie dough out of the bowl and fed it to him.

“I’m gonna get sick without flour in that,” Emmett whispered, and Keegan nodded firmly.

“I’ll add some,” he said. But he didn’t move.

Emmett finished peeling the beet and gave the sautéing veggies another stir, taking the opportunity to step away from Keegan’s suddenly disturbing body.

Then he took the beets to the cutting board and put his back into chopping them into pieces for the food processor.

“That looks really disgusting,” Keegan muttered, and for a moment, it was like the intense moment of his fingers in Emmett’s mouth never existed. Except for Emmett’s hard-on under his thin gym shorts, that is.

“Yeah, that’s why the old clothes. And they’re
tough
to cut, too!” Emmett concentrated on them for a moment, because the knife work here was dangerous, and when he was done, he threw all of the cubes into the food processor. “The instructions in the book say to chop fine—man, this shit must have taken all
day
to make!”

Keegan looked narrowly up at him through the whir of the mixer, scraping the bowl with a calculating look on his face. Emmett smiled gamely and then turned back to the beets. It took more than one push of the button this time—he had to leave that thing on for
ever
before the beets were crushed into a fine enough meal to ladle into the veggie sauté. When he was done scraping the bowl, he put the food processor in the sink and looked up to where Keegan was scraping the shortbread dough into a round cake pan, which was the closest thing Emmett had to the right size.

“Did you preheat the oven?” Keegan asked, and Emmett shook his head.

“No, you were done really fast.”

“That’s not always a compliment,” he smirked, and Emmett turned on the oven for 325.

“Well, no,” Emmett admitted frankly. “Can I have another spoonful of dough? That was really—mmf….”

Keegan thrust his thumb and forefinger into Emmett’s mouth with a big blob of the stuff. He kept his fingers in Emmett’s mouth, and Emmett, taking his cue, licked avidly around his thumb, then his finger, while Keegan looked into his eyes the entire time.

When Emmett was done, he tried to grin, to make it playful, but Keegan stroked his cheek again, leaving big streaks of flour-schmear all over his face.

“Emmett?” Keegan whispered.

“Yeah?”

“Who taught you about gay sex?” Emmett tried to back up. In one careless step, he knocked the pan handle with the veggie mixture down, catapulting the mixture all over the kitchen. Some of it landed on Emmett’s calf and on his ass, where it stung for a moment but didn’t really burn, and the bloodred beets fanned over the wooden cabinets, the white tile, and the stainless steel refrigerator.

And Keegan didn’t move. He didn’t even bat an eyelash. Instead, he reached back behind Emmett and turned the heat off the now empty burner, and then put both his doughy hands on Emmett’s hips and turned him so they were both farther away from the stove.

And both close enough to touch with every breath.

Emmett couldn’t look away.

“Uhm….”

“That’s not an answer,” Keegan said grimly. “Answer the question.”

“Jordyn,” Emmett whispered. “Jordyn did.”

Keegan locked his jaw stubbornly, and asked the world’s most obvious question. “Emmett, was Jordyn a boy or a girl?”

Emmett closed his eyes, and thought of Keegan’s tight little body, so close to his, and the words “flip-flop fuck” and the lubricant he had in his drawer, because Emmett and Mr. Happy had been going it alone for the past three years.