Free Coda Books 04 - Strawberries for Dessert (MM) by Marie Sexton Page B

embarrassed as well as uncomfortable. I could tell my dad was tempted to laugh at Cole, and I didn’t want that to happen either. I wanted him to take Cole seriously. I wanted them to respect each other.
    “Stop!” I snapped, and they both turned to look at me. My dad looked nervous and apologetic. Cole looked baffled and a little bit annoyed. “Can we just eat, please?” I asked, knowing even as I said that it sounded childish.
    “Anything you want, love,” Cole said with obvious amusement, and the rest of the meal was passed in awkward silence. But the reprieve was brief. Before long we had finished eating. The empty table seemed way too big once I had taken the dirty dishes back into the kitchen.
    Despite my assertion that my dad hated red, we had finished the first bottle of wine, and Cole came out with a second bottle. “That was fantastic,” my dad said to him as he refilled his glass, and Cole beamed at him. “What’s for dessert?”
    He was partially joking, but it annoyed me that he would assume Cole had made dessert too, and I snapped, “Dad!”
    “No dessert, I’m afraid,” Cole said. “I cook, but I don’t bake.”
    “Is there a difference?”
    “Honey, they’re like night and day. Cooking is an art—you can substitute, improvise, experiment. But baking is a science. Everything has to be exactly right or it all falls apart. So many rules. It’s terribly boring.” I was thinking how that statement illustrated a great deal about Cole’s character when he turned to me. “You should try it, sweetie,” he said, with a hint of venom in his voice. It was subtle enough that my
    dad probably couldn’t hear it, but I could. “Me?” I asked, wondering what I had done to irritate him.
    “Yes. It seems like a perfect hobby for an uptight accountant.” I tried not to be offended at that character analysis.
    “What do you do?” my dad asked Cole, and I managed not to groan audibly.
    Cole got that mocking, amused look on his face that I sometimes found cute, but tonight only found annoying. “Exactly like Jonny, aren’t you? What do you think I do?”
    “Are you a chef?”
    Cole smiled. “Yes. I’m a chef.”
    “Cole!”
    “That explains the cooking then,” my dad said, and I wondered if he meant a man would only bother to learn to cook if it was for in exchange for money.
    “Dad, he’s just being elusive. He’s not a chef.”
    “What?” my dad asked, confused, and Cole rolled his eyes at me.
    “Good lord, love. I like to cook. I’m good at it. Does that not make me a chef? It’s not as if I’m lying.”
    “But you’re implying—”
    “I’m not implying anything, except that I cook—”
    “Forget I asked,” my dad said, but I wasn’t listening.
    “I don’t know why you can’t just be honest.”
    “I’m being honest. I do cook. You’re the one who assumes that the question ‘what do you do?’ can only refer to a career—”
    “That’s not just my assumption, Cole! That’s everybody’s assumption!”
    “It doesn’t matter,” my dad said, louder this time. “I was only trying to—”
    “George,” Cole said suddenly, turning to my father, “the truth is, I’m unemployed.”
    There was a moment of silence, and I wished I could kick Cole under the table, but he was sitting next to me, and it would have been anything but subtle. “Oh,” my father said with obvious embarrassment.
    “I’m sorry to hear that.”
    “Don’t be!” Cole said, smiling, and I could see that my dad was more confused than ever.
    “Let’s talk about something else, shall we?”
    But I wasn’t ready to let it go. I didn’t want my dad thinking that Cole was a bum, or that he was somehow living off of me. “He’s rich,” I blurted out.
    They both turned to look at me again. This time, the annoyance on Cole’s face was obvious. Even my father must have seen it, because he asked suddenly, as if coming to my rescue, “Cole, are you from Phoenix originally?”
    Cole kept his