ETHAN: I’d love enchiladas. As long as you don’t poison me.
ME: If you don’t fucking shut up, I’ll bludgeon you in your sleep.
ETHAN: That’s fine. I have great dreams. I’ll die happy.
ME: Weirdo.
I put my phone down and got to preparing dinner. Cooking was soothing to my soul, and I felt entirely at home in the kitchen. More than anywhere else, actually. It was my happy place.
I diced the chicken and tossed it into the pan, then sliced the vegetables. By the time it was all done and I had the sauce made, the front door opened, and Ethan walked in.
He froze in the doorway.
“What?” I asked, glancing at him over my shoulder.
“Nothing. It smells better than I thought.”
“Yeah, well, they do say that most people can’t smell cyanide.”
“Funny,” he drawled, dragging the word out. “I might order in instead.”
I rolled my eyes and grabbed the tortillas, slicing the packaging open with a knife. God only knew I’d made enough fillings for all of them, so I was going to cook all of them.
Ethan disappeared into his room, and I finished making the enchiladas. The oven was hot, so I put the dish inside it and closed the door. It already smelled amazing, and I was a little gutted that I had to put the dishes in the dishwasher.
I wanted to lick the pan.
Just a little.
Hey, some people ate cake mix from the bowl, I wanted to lick enchilada sauce from the pan.
We all had our vices.
By the time Ethan rejoined me, the kitchen was clean and I’d wiped down all the counters.
“Wow. You got fairies who do that?”
I shook my head as he pulled a bottle of beer from the fridge. “Yes, me.”
He held a bottle of beer out to me, but I shook my head. “Did you help Reagan for the rest of the day?”
“How did you—” I stopped. Of course he’d know about Preston’s car. He worked at the only garage in town. Since his uncle owned it, he had a standing job there whenever he came home. “Never mind. Yeah, I got back just after four. Did you fix his car?”
Ethan took a long drink from his beer, then shook his head. “No. We had to order in a new exhaust pipe.”
“A new exhaust pipe? How do you break an exhaust pipe?”
“When it gets loaded with rocks and pizza crusts.”
“I… don’t really know how to respond to that.”
“Yeah, well, neither did we until Halley hunted down the raccoons and found three empty pizza boxes hidden in a bush.”
I frowned. “Let me guess: Boris?”
Ethan nodded. “Fuck knows what happened, but that raccoon sounds like he should be in jail.”
He was not wrong about that. Hard time would probably do that animal some good. Readjust his priorities and all that.
Probation at the very least.
“Why would he put pizza crusts in the exhaust pipe?” I asked, pulling a bottle of wine from the fridge. “That’s the weirdest, most random thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t speak raccoon, and apparently, he ran off when Halley demanded answers. Does she know raccoons don’t speak English?”
“It’s something we’re working on,” I replied vaguely. “Seriously, she does, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to stop talking to them.”
“Has anyone ever told her that she’s really weird?”
“Yes. Every day. She couldn’t give a shit.”
“Fair enough.” Ethan cough-laughed and rubbed his hand over his lips. “But yeah, it looks like Boris has something against Preston, and took revenge in his car.”
“I don’t buy it. I mean, Boris is a raging fucking asshole, but how would he even know to put stuff in the exhaust?” I paused. “Then again, this is Boris, and raccoons are crazy smart. Smarter than we give them credit for.”
“This is vindictive ex-girlfriend shit, though.” Ethan flattened his hands on the island and leaned forward. “A guy I worked with a couple of years ago in Dallas broke up with his girlfriend when she caught him cheating on her, and shit, man. She went apeshit. I think there’s a video of her defacing his car on the internet somewhere.”
I blinked at him. “He broke her trust. Breaking his car seems like a perfectly reasonable revenge method to me.”
“And remind me to warn every man ever away from you.”
“Not all of them. Only the cheaters, but then you’d be doing me a favor.” I shrugged and crossed to the oven to check on the food. “Look, there are crazy bitches out there. I’m not one of them, luckily for everyone in my path.” I gave him a pointed look.
“Don’t you have a picture of my ballsac on your phone because I let the hedgehog out once? That’s crazy-bitch territory in my opinion.”
I shrugged. I wasn’t going to tell him I didn’t actually have it. “I’m vindictive, not crazy.”
“You say that like it’s an upgrade.”
“Sure it is. I won’t key your car or smash your windows with a brick, but I will make sure everyone knows you and your three-inch dick can only get off to the gay porn I found in your internet history.”
“There is no gay porn in my internet history.”
“Yet.”
“You’re a little scary, do you know that?”
I grinned, lifting my wine glass to my mouth. “Just reminding you of what I’m capable of if you ever, ever move my fucking candles again.”
He raised two fingers to his temple and saluted me. “Your obsession with those candles is weird.”
“I told you; I like them just so. They’re symmetrical. I like symmetry.”
“Well, that explains the cutlery drawer.”
I opened the oven again and side-eyed him. “There’s nothing wrong with an orderly cutlery drawer.”
“Do you have OCD?”
“What? Because I like things a certain way?” I set a three-minute timer on the oven and faced him. “No. OCD is way too overused for people who just like things a certain way. I can enjoy organization and order without having a genuine disorder that shouldn’t be thrown about as trivially as it is these days. Yes, I thrive on things being in the places they’re supposed to be in, and I like to make sure everything has its place, but that’s all it is.”
“All right, Dr. Phil. Calm down.”
“Watch yourself, or I’ll find you a place six feet under.”
“Your death threats are getting more and more frequent.”
“And they only happen after you say something stupid. Isn’t it funny how that works?”
“Living with you is a pleasure I didn’t know I needed to experience in my life, Ava.”
“Aw, that’s sweet. Living with you is the nightmare I normally wake up from.”
The oven timer beeped, and I jabbed the button to make it stop, then turned off the oven. I grabbed the oven mitts and removed the dish, setting it on top of the wooden cutting board.
Ethan got up and set two plates down on the counter, and I thanked him with a smile before I put two enchiladas on each plate.
“Only two?”
I peered over at him. “You want another?”