Twenty

Garrett

It took even longer to get home than I thought it would. Traffic was fucked and Greenback was even worse than the freeway. But finally, I pulled up to my house to see Steve’s car already there. I parked and as soon as I opened my door he was there and kissing me. “Sorry, I’ve wanted to do that all day,” he said.

“Don’t you ever apologize for kissing me,” I whispered before pulling him closer for another kiss. “Let me just make sure Teddy’s okay and we can go.” I took his hand and dragged him into the house while Teddy danced around our feet. “Hello, sweet boy.” Scooping him up, I took him outside and when I went to turn back there was Steve.

“Go ahead and do what you need to do, I’ll take care of him,” he said.

“Are you sure?” I mean it wasn’t like he needed to do much other than let him back in, but I would never ask someone else to take care of my boy.

“Of course, go on,” he said and stepped around me.

I hurried off to my room and was changed and ready to go within a few minutes. When I walked out, Teddy was sitting on Steve’s lap while he spoke to him like he was having a conversation with a person. Teddy was so into it he didn’t even look up when I walked in. “You two look like you’re having a serious discussion,” I said.

“We were, I was apologizing for not being very nice to him when I first met him. I explained to him I didn’t realize he was a very sweet dog, and I promised him that I’ll try to be better in the future.” He looked up to me and I saw no humor in his eyes. He meant every word. Teddy stood from his lap and after a quick lick to his cheek, he jumped down and trotted over to eat his dinner.

“Looks like everything is forgiven,” I said, making Steve laugh. “Are you ready?”

“Yep,” he said and patted Teddy one more time.

“Did you make a list?” I asked as we walked out to the cars. I was glad when he led us to his because if I had to drive one more mile, I’d probably lose my shit.

“I did, and please let me drive, you have to be tired of it after dealing with traffic all day,” Steve said, making me smile.

“Thank you, that would be great. I think I’ve used all my patience up for one day.”

“You might need a little more while we’re at the store. Where did you want to go?”

“Let’s go to Safeway, they have a better variety of cheese, and I want to make a little cheese tray to take to my family’s house. I was thinking I could make enchiladas for your family. Would they like that?”

“They’d love that, but you don’t have to go to that much trouble,” he said and pulled into the parking lot.

“It’s no trouble at all, it’s actually really easy. Do you think they’d prefer beef or chicken?”

He parked in the last parking space available and turned to face me after turning off the car. “You choose, honestly they’ll be happy with anything you bring.”

“Okay, let’s do this,” I said and got out of the car. Since I knew there would be no carts left inside, I grabbed one that someone had just left on the side of their car and the two of us walked inside. I could feel the energy as soon as I walked in. Everyone was running around looking for whatever last-minute thing they needed. Carts were full and kids were crying. Steve looked like he wanted to crawl out of his skin, so I grabbed the front of the cart and took him to the one aisle I knew no one would be the night before Thanksgiving: the household items aisle. “How are you doing? I know how much you hate crowds.”

He took a deep breath, leaned heavily on the cart, and met my eyes. Then he smiled. “I’m—good. I think maybe working with all those people has given me some kind of weird immunity to dealing with crowds. Like this is nothing compared to a line full of parents and screaming kids. Come on, let’s get what we need. I wanted to make cheese sauce so let’s go to the deli and see what they have.”

I tried to hold back my own smile but failed. After kissing the corner of his mouth, we dodged about fifty other carts on the way to the deli. They had so many cheeses to choose from it took me a few minutes to decide. While I was standing there Steve wandered the area and grabbed whatever he needed then put it in the cart.

Finally, I chose three cheeses and two different meats. “Are you sure that’s enough?” Steve asked with a grin.

“Hey, my family loves cheese,” I said with a shrug and dropped it all in the cart.

“I’ll make extra cheese sauce later, and you can take that too. It’s easy.” He shrugged back.

“Sounds good.” We walked around a while longer and I bought a rotisserie chicken for the enchiladas to save time while he bought enough tortilla chips for a bigger party than I knew he was going to. “Okay, I think I have everything I needed, how about you?” He checked his phone where he had his list and looked at what he’d gathered before nodding his head.

“I think I have it all.”

“Now we just need to go home and cook it,” I said. “Oh, what did you want to do for dinner?”

“Pizza?”

“That sounds perfect, I’ll order it on the way, so it’s delivered as soon as we get there. I don’t want to wait, but I don’t want to have to cook it either.”

“Let’s go, the lines are getting long,” Steve said as he glanced toward the front of the store. The two of us found the shortest line, that turned out to be the slowest line, but neither of us cared. We chatted and shared funny videos on our phones and I actually enjoyed it more than I should have, but what made it even better was knowing that he was okay. He wasn’t panicking and he wasn’t angry or annoyed. He was just Steve.