Condensation covered glasses and hot food on a warm night.
My eyes roamed over him from my spot at the stove. The sizzle of pork in the pan was the only noise in the house. His own dark eyes stared blankly out across the dimming lights in the garden.
His overall expression was blank really, brows relaxed and mouth slightly parted. His arms were propped up behind his head and his legs laid flat against the porch.
I turned back to the stove, shuffling the pieces around. I grabbed for the bowl of carrots, peppers, daikon and pineapple and poured them on top.
I reached back to the counter and grab a mason jar of premade spicy teriyaki sauce. I rubbed my tongue against the back of my front teeth as I turned the heat onto a simmer and contemplated.
I then turned the back burner to low once it started to boil and added two cups of rice. I rubbed my lips together before my tongue swept out to wet the chapped skin.
I had just made my way back to the island when a groan from the porch echoed into the kitchen, followed by purposeful thumps of footsteps heading my way. I reached up into a cupboard for two long clear glasses.
“Hot food on a warm night?”
His voice was soft as he spoke the rhetorical question and situated himself on one of two stools in the dining room facing the L-shaped counter.
I didn’t respond. He wasn’t expecting me to.
It took a moment of blind mauvering inside the top shelf of the cupboard to retrieve my prize. The plastic was slightly warped and the spout on the lid had no cover. I shuffled slight to the right toward the sink and turned on the cold water.
I filled the water jug and placed it on the counter slightly to his left, and pivoted on my heel back to the fridge, to the left of the stove and the pantry.
I’m not sure he meant for me to hear the click of his tongue before he spoke again, “I have ice in the freezer.” I didn’t look back at him as I tipped my head slightly, but I could imagine his faintly wry expression regardless.
My legs didn’t slow as I trekked all throughout his kitchen without so much as a help yourself, I figured it was because he know why I was here and also he seemed to think that speaking about things out loud made them real.
My right cheek quivered at the thought and I forced it away before reaching into the fridge and pulling out a container of strawberries and some lemons, I closed the door and then reached down for the ice in the freezer drawer.
I paused momentarily on the way back to the counter to shut off the heat on the rice, and angled the cover as steam rose and water dripped onto the stovetop.
His eyes locked with mine before sliding down to my arm full as I returned to the water jug on the counter. He stood slowly, purposefully, as I placed everything down on the counter.
I reached to my right and grabbed the still drying cutting board and a knife, while he made his way to stand slightly behind me to my left. He bent and open one of the doors and pulled out a container of sugar, placed it on the counter and returned to his spot.
I watched him from beneath my lashes, head turned just so and his chin resting on his left palm, as I peeled the stickers off the lemons and stuck them on the strawberry container. “I don’t mind sour but I don’t really enjoy sweet things.”
Of course, he knew that I was aware of this. Though I didn’t mind, I knew that he spoke up to fill the silence when he didn’t want his thoughts to wander.
I mindlessly cut the tops off of the strawberries and the ends of the lemons before slicing them into thin strips, setting the seeds to the side. Scooped up the strawberries and let them drop into the water, try not to splash any onto the counter. The lemon slices followed and I measured out one and three quarter cups of sugar and added it to the two quart water jug.
Ideally, I mused as I added a few cups of ice to the jug and the clear cups, I would’ve melted the sugar down first.
I placed the cover onto the jug and set it over more to the right side of the counter out of the way and moved to stand in front of the stove.
As I stirred the pork and vegetables I heard him stand and start to clear off the counter. Putting the plastic container in the trash and the ends in a compost bucket under the sink. I listened to the water start and tunes back into my meal.
Satisfied with the thick glaze and the tenderness of the carrots and daikon, I shut off the burner and grabbed the bowl sitting on the unused burner to the left. I scooped out a healthy portion of rice and then a smaller portion of pork and vegetation, secured the covers.
I watched him briefly from my spot in the middle of the kitchen floor, watched the subtle rise of shoulders under my scrutiny, and the muscles of his arms as he scrubbed against the blade in his hands. The glint of lights above us reflecting on its surface as he started the water again and rinsed the suds off.
He set the knife in the dish strainer and I moved to walk back to my spot near the glasses and the slowly melting ice cubes. I lightly ground my teeth together trying to concentrate on something other than the past flashing unwarranted through my mind.
I felt the brush of his shoulder against mine as I passed him his bowl. A faint twitch of a smile on his lips was thank you enough and I busied myself pouring us two glasses of the most balanced sour-sweet strawberry lemonade I’d ever had.