Recipe for Two Read online

  Justin smiled. “It was actually okay. She wanted the pasta, but when she was told they were out, she picked something else.”

  Lettie wasn’t always great at being flexible.

  “She’ll be fine,” Dad said, because he always thought that about his kids. Even Wyatt. “She’ll do great.”

  “How was your night?” Justin asked.

  Wyatt shoved a piece of toast into his mouth and chewed it to give himself time to come up with an answer. “Good,” he said. “I watched a movie.”

  Not a total lie.

  “Must’ve been a good one,” Justin said, and Wyatt realized he was smiling like an idiot.

  “It was,” he said, and then escaped to the kitchen to put his plate in the dishwasher before Justin had any follow-up questions. “Goodnight!”

  Chapter 12

  Izzy woke up on Monday morning feeling energized from the weekend for once. He’d gotten rest on Sunday and boy had he needed it after Wyatt’s visit the previous day.

  Izzy stretched in bed and smiled. They’d had sex—because Izzy thought anything including one’s genitals definitely counted as sex—and it had been so fucking good. Maybe he’d just never met a Wyatt before? Maybe that had been his problem with sex? All it seemed to take was meeting the right person, clichéd as it sounded.

  Maybe he needed to research that too, once he paid off his debt to Vinny and managed to save enough for a secondhand laptop. He really wanted to be able to browse the internet, because all the trailers had a joined wi-fi and that was a luxury for sure.

  Sam had come home late Sunday night and crashed immediately. Izzy wasn’t at all surprised that he could use the bathroom in peace and got the coffee running before Sam trudged to the bathroom, grunting something monosyllabic when he saw Izzy.

  Izzy got dressed and made a few sandwiches.

  “What’s with you?” Sam asked, peering at him over the rim of his coffee mug when he finally made it to the kitchen.

  “Why?”

  “You’re all, I don’t know…smiley.”

  Izzy pushed over one of his sandwiches and shrugged. “Had a nice weekend, I guess. How was yours?”

  “Family. My sister’s pregnant again. Third time in five years, I think. Uncle’s second wife got hammered at the party.”

  “What was the party about again?” Izzy asked, before biting into his sandwich.

  “Sister’s anniversary. They’ve been married for ten years now. Anyway, nothing too exciting, basically all sorts of small scale family drama you’d expect.”

  Izzy nodded, even though he didn’t really know. If people weren’t screaming at one another or someone wasn’t hitting someone else, Izzy didn’t have a clue, personally.

  “I’m gonna go help Patty with setting up the booth. Talk to you later,” Izzy said finally, once he felt caffeinated enough and Sam too was starting to seem cognizant.

  “Yeah, I’ll be at the hydroponic greenhouses today. Checking with Justin that everything is running smoothly.”

  * * * *

  Patty was cheerful as ever, especially when Izzy offered to do all the heavy lifting for her.

  “Thank you, my angel. How was your weekend?” she asked, making sure all the signs were put in the right spots for every crate Izzy lifted onto the sales table.

  “Really good, actually. I enjoy living here a lot.”

  “Mm, falling in love would do that to one,” she said in her usual tone, and he glanced at her quickly.

  Then, before he could prevent himself, he asked, “How do you know that?”

  She seemed about to answer, but then closed her mouth as though she was lost in thought for a moment. Part of him hoped that she’d take the easier way, that she’d answer the question how she knew he was falling in love. But sharp and shrewd as she was, she hummed thoughtfully instead.

  “They become the center of your universe, slowly but surely. Every time something nice happens or you experience one of those a-ha moments and feel happy, you want to tell them immediately.” She checked the cash box and counted the money in it as she continued. “Sometimes you know that person for years before you realize they’ve become something more. It can be a friend or a neighbor or a coworker. Someone you see a lot maybe, and then one day you look at them and go ‘oh wow’ and that’s it.”

  “That happen to you?” Izzy asked, then went to get the last box of peppers from the truck bed they used to lug stuff around the property.

  “Oh yes, twice in my life. Married one of those guys, actually.” She grinned. “But it can also happen another way. You can meet someone new, and it’s instant. In those cases I’d say it’s the essence of that person that calls to you somehow. As if your soul, or whatever you believe makes us who we are, recognizes something in them before your conscious brain gets on with the program.”

  “Has that happened to anyone you know?”

  “Several people, myself included. My second husband.” She winked and giggled with delight. “I felt like I belonged with him. Like he was home. And the sex, it was amazing.” She let out another girly giggle and wiggled her eyebrows.

  Izzy rolled his eyes and closed the tailgate of the truck. “But how do you know it’s real?”

  She looked at him with gentle expression and smiled like Izzy thought a real mother would. “You don’t. You hope and you dream and you leap.”

  * * * *

  Izzy blamed Patty for it when thoughts of his mom crowded his mind as he worked that day. He and his mom had never had the relationship he’d craved as a kid. She wasn’t like the moms he saw on TV who hugged their children and said they loved them. She never asked him how his day at school was or gave him advice when he didn’t know how to deal with a situation that was troubling him. She was always there for him, but not in an emotional way. Sometimes Izzy wondered if she was like that because he looked so much like his dad. Maybe she’d been different before she met him.

  He hadn’t talked to his mom in years, and his dad for even longer. He didn’t even know where his dad was these days, and he didn’t lose any sleep over it. Just, sometimes he looked at families like the Abbots and wondered how they were even real. And he worried that he’d never be able to love Wyatt in a way that Wyatt deserved, because nobody had ever shown him how.

  His mom and dad’s marriage had been contentious at best, violent at worst. And then his mom had met and married his step-dad, and there was no violence, but Izzy had also never seen any real warmth between them either. Maybe they saved it for when they were in private, but he couldn’t help thinking that they just didn’t have that depth of feeling for one another that he was starting to feel with Wyatt. That, whatever it was between his mom and his step-dad, it wasn’t love.

  He’d thought, when he was younger, that love like on TV didn’t exist, between family members, between partners, between parents and children. It had never been a part of his world, at least. But every day he saw the way that Wyatt and the Abbots were with each other, and every day he saw the way that Wyatt was with him, and it was as terrifying as it was beautiful. It was like looking out through a window at a world he couldn’t be a part of yet, his fingers pressed against the cold glass.

  Because nobody had ever shown Izzy what it meant to feel loved and to love someone in return, and yet here he was tumbling headfirst into it anyway, just like every other disaster.

  He’d crash and burn, he knew, because how else could it end? He only hoped he wouldn’t hurt Wyatt when he did.

  * * * *

  After lunch, Izzy was organizing the tools behind the greenhouse where the tomatoes were grown. He’d gotten annoyed when he hadn’t been able to find his favorite shovel, and instead of doing a task that didn’t need to be done right then, he’d gone to the spot where people dumped their tools and decided to fix that mess first, for everyone’s sake.

  Lou came out of the back door, calling over his shoulder something to—Wyatt?

  “Oh, hey,” Lou said when he turned around and saw Izzy�
��s project. “Well, that’s certainly a smart idea.”

  “Yeah, I thought I’d organize these and maybe even divide them to different places around here, just so not everything has to be fetched from here. It annoys me when I can’t find what I need at the greenhouse I’m working at,” he explained.

  “Good man. I’ll go check the bees at the sweet peppers next. The ones in there are good.” He pointed behind himself to where the tomatoes—and Wyatt, apparently—were.

  “Okay!”

  Once Lou was out of sight, Izzy left the tools where they were and sneaked into the greenhouse.

  He finally saw Wyatt at the other end of the space, examining tomatoes carefully. He was likely cooking something and wanted the best tomatoes for that. The plants were huge, and the top veggies or, as Wyatt had taught him, fruits, were still waiting to ripen. The ones Wyatt was looking at were cheerful red already.

  Izzy wondered if Wyatt was listening to something, because his hips were swaying in a rhythm, as if he were dancing to a mental jukebox.

  From here, he couldn’t see if Wyatt had headphones on, so he moved just out of Wyatt’s view onto the second aisle so he could sneak a bit closer behind the plants.

  Some of Wyatt’s hair had escaped his hair tie and now framed his face. Gods, how beautiful could one person be?

  A bee suddenly buzzed past Izzy’s head, and he jerked back instinctively. He’d been stung in his middle finger less than a week ago and while it had stung like crazy for ten minutes, the swelling had been gone the next morning. It certainly hadn’t prevented his weekend activities…

  Izzy grinned. A bead of sweat rolled down from his hair to the back of his neck, tickling him. Absently, he reached to brush it off.

  He felt something that wasn’t sweat touch his fingers, and then a sharp pain lanced through the back of his neck.

  Another fucking bee.

  This time, he gritted his teeth as he pulled his hand back to keep it from stinging him there. Fucking bees. They must’ve been aggressive because Lou had been poking at their nest box or something.

  Ugh.

  Izzy started towards Wyatt, feeling like he needed some sympathy right then. The pain throbbed with his heartbeat, and it was much, much worse than his finger had been.

  Wyatt looked up, through the tomato plants when he saw movement, and smiled at Izzy radiantly.

  “Hey, I’m making salad,” he explained, nodding at the basket he had on his arm.

  “Hi, I guessed you were—shit,” Izzy cut himself off. He felt a bit woozy suddenly. He knew better than to rub the sting spot.

  “What’s wrong? You look flushed?” Wyatt peered at him from the other side of the fucking plants.

  “Bee,” Izzy said and gestured at his neck. “Got stung again.” Then suddenly the world tilted on his axis and he went down, hard, gasping for breath.

  What the fuck?

  Chapter 13

  Wyatt was no stranger to being scared, but usually those fears were formless, nebulous things that swirled around in his subconscious and fed his anxiety. When Izzy’s eyes rolled back and he collapsed on the greenhouse floor, there was nothing imprecise about the fear that gripped Wyatt: it was sharp and cold and immediate.

  “Justin!” Wyatt yelled. He dropped his basket and tomatoes scattered everywhere. “Justin! Help!”

  It wasn’t Justin who made it there first. It was Lou, yelling into his radio, and then Sam, who must’ve been working farther down a row.

  “Izzy,” Wyatt said, dropping to his knees beside him. “Izzy?”

  Izzy’s eyes were open, but his gaze was distant. His face was swollen too, and his neck. Wyatt’s hands hovered over him. He was too afraid to touch in case he did something wrong and made it worse somehow.

  “Call 911,” Lou said to Sam, leaning over Izzy to check his breathing.

  He didn’t ask Wyatt to do it. Maybe because Wyatt was a total fucking wreck, or maybe he was so focused on Izzy that he didn’t even notice Wyatt was there too.

  And then Justin was there, and he had an EpiPen, and he was jabbing it hard against Izzy’s thigh and holding it there, and Izzy was pulling in a rasping breath that sounded like hell.

  “Okay, “Justin said. “Lou, can we get something under his feet? Izzy, I’m gonna loosen your belt, okay?”

  Izzy still looked out of it, confused and dozy. His bleary gaze sought out Wyatt. “Wha…?”

  He sounded like a drunk.

  “You got stung by a bee,” Wyatt told him, his voice shaking.

  Izzy frowned. “‘m’not ‘lergic.”

  “Oh yeah,” Justin said. “Yeah, I think you really are allergic, Izzy.”

  Izzy’s face was bright red. “Am I?”

  “Big time,” Justin told him.

  “Oh,” Izzy said, and he sounded so baffled that Wyatt couldn’t stop the hysterical laugh that bubbled out of him. It was relief, mostly, because Izzy was going to be okay.

  * * * *

  Izzy was still dozy when the paramedics arrived, and tried to push them away when they were trying to get him on the gurney, mumbling something about already owing people money.

  “Izzy,” Justin said. “Izzy, you have health insurance, okay? You remember all that stuff you signed when you started here?”

  Izzy slumped at that, and the paramedics got him on the gurney.

  “Where are you taking him?” Justin asked.

  “Redlands,” one of the paramedics said.

  “Okay,” Justin said. “I’ll meet you there, Izzy.”

  Wyatt hung back, unsure of what he wanted to do. No, not unsure. He wanted to go with Justin and meet Izzy at the hospital, but he also didn’t want Justin to guess that he and Izzy were together, and there was no way that Wyatt would be able to hide what he felt. So he hung back, like a coward, as the paramedics drove off with Izzy in the back of the ambulance, and Justin followed them in his truck.

  “You okay, Wyatt?” Sam asked him, his brow wrinkled with concern.

  A bee buzzed past, and Wyatt shivered. He bent down and began to pick up the tomatoes he’d dropped. They were bruised now, but he could use them to make a sauce instead of his salad. “Yeah.”

  He headed home soon after, the sun beating down on the back of his neck.

  “Hey, kiddo,” Dad said. “Justin said there was an incident with Izzy?”

  “You talked to him?” Wyatt asked, setting his basket on the kitchen counter.

  “Yeah.” Dad was chopping chicken. “He called me. He’s at the hospital now. Izzy’s getting seen to.”

  “Maybe he shouldn’t have bees,” Wyatt said. “Not if they’re dangerous.”

  “They’re not dangerous for most people,” Dad pointed out, the blade of his knife hitting the chopping board rapidly. “Justin’s not reckless, but there are risks in any job. Well, in any part of life. When I was a kitchen hand, I once saw a guy sever his thumb when he was cutting potatoes.”

  Thock. His knife hit the board again, and Wyatt winced.

  “Accidents happen,” Dad said.

  Wyatt thought of the way that Izzy had slumped to the ground. He thought of the way that he’d been too scared to touch him, too scared to act. Not like Lou or Sam or Justin. Accidents happened, but how people reacted to them counted as well, and Wyatt hated how he’d hadn’t known what to do. He hated how he’d frozen.

  He needed his Ativan.

  He slipped away upstairs to the sanctuary of his bedroom. He took an Ativan and lay on his bed for a moment with his laptop open on his stomach. He went through Harper’s Facebook, liking her newest photos, and then, on a whim, looked up Izzy. He didn’t have a Facebook or, if he did, Wyatt couldn’t find it.

  Wyatt fell asleep eventually and only woke up a few hours later when Justin got home. Justin and Dad were in the living room when he went downstairs again.

  “How’s Izzy?” Wyatt asked.

  “He’s fine,” Justin said. “He’s sleeping it off in his trailer right now, and I’ve given him the d
ay off tomorrow while I figure out what the hell to do with him.”

  “What to do with him?”

  “Yeah, I don’t want him working near the bees,” Justin said. “If he’s stung again, his next reaction might be even more serious. I can keep him away from the tomatoes for a while, I guess, but the plan was to eventually move away from manual pollination entirely, which means more bees.”

  Wyatt looked between Justin and Dad worriedly.

  “Maybe he can be a driver,” Justin said. “I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.”

  “You will,” Dad agreed and squeezed Justin’s hand.

  “You know who’s listed as his emergency contact?” Justin asked. “Wanda Rossi, his parole officer. I asked him if he wanted me to call someone else, and he said there’s nobody.”

  Wyatt’s chest ached.

  Justin pressed his mouth into a thin line and then shook his head. “Meanwhile, Jesus, do you know how much EpiPens cost? It’s ridiculous! It’s worse than insulin. How is anyone supposed to afford to live these days?”

  “You can afford it though, right?” Wyatt asked, worry gripping him. “The insulin and the EpiPens?”

  Justin’s expression softened. “Of course, Wy. We can afford that stuff. It just makes me angry when so many other people can’t.”

  Wyatt couldn’t really remember much about Oregon. He couldn’t really remember going hungry, though he’d been told it had happened, or going cold, or not having shoes that fit. He couldn’t remember ever really wanting for much, and he thought that maybe that was because he’d been so small that he didn’t know any better and that having enough, when it came, had felt like unimaginable riches instead.

  He’d been lucky, he knew that.

  Once, when Wyatt was about eight, one of the kids in his class had called him a spoiled rich kid, and Wyatt had been embarrassed because he hadn’t known his family was rich just like he hadn’t known, once upon a time, that they’d been poor either.