Recipe for Two

by Tia Fielding

  Yeah, somehow the place sounded too good to be true and completely realistic at the same time. He wouldn’t have thought the latter if he hadn’t met Justin himself. The way the guy’s eyes shone with pride and happiness as he’d explained things to him a couple of days ago, it hadn’t seemed like bullshit. It had seemed genuine. If that was the kind of boss Justin was going to be, Izzy could see himself being happy there.

  He locked the door to his room and walked through the narrow hallway and into the kitchen. He was pretty damn early, knowing there was an hour’s drive ahead, but there were still people getting ready for their days.

  “Hey, Izzy, you got the job?” Max, one of the young guys asked as he put together a breakfast at the counter.

  “Yeah, starting in an hour and a half. Need to grab something to eat on the way and drive to Oak Glen,” he replied while checking he had everything he needed with him for the fifth time, because the drive was long enough that there was no turning back if he forgot something.

  “Well, when you get paid, you know,” Vinny said from behind a newspaper. He’d probably stolen it from a neighbor who wasn’t home, but nobody was going to call him on it. Vinny was one of those guys who had come out of prison into this house and everyone knew it was only a question of time before he’d go back in.

  “Yeah, I’ll get you your money. Might take a month or two, but I’ll make sure you get yours first.” After rent and food, but he didn’t need to say that.

  “As long as it’s not longer than that. I need to go visit my sister and I need to have my own car fixed before that.”

  “Yeah, promise. Bye, guys!” Izzy made his escape and started the journey out of town.

  At least Vinny wasn’t violent. He was more the type that would set his friends on you, though, and well, some of those guys were outright hostile toward anyone who wasn’t in their own group of people.

  Luckily they weren’t allowed at the house, because guys like Max who were susceptible to peer pressure wouldn’t do well with Vinny’s friends.

  Izzy listened to music as he drove and ate his Egg McMuffin. He’d gotten a large coffee too, and wished he had some more money so he could have bought something for lunch. Sadly, he was broke, and filling his gas tank had basically bankrupted him.

  If he could cook, that would’ve helped a lot. There was a guy at the house, an older man who’d been in prison for some insurance fraud and found himself without a home or a marriage when he got out, who cooked a lot. Maybe Izzy could make a deal with him, see if the guy would make food for his lunches if he gave him money for the ingredients?

  He was jamming along to some Placebo when he got to the narrow hillside roads again. This time he concentrated on the songs, singing along as he navigated to his workplace. It still made him smile, the thought of having a job.

  He hadn’t met anyone but a guy called Carlos the other day, as most people had been busy working and hadn’t had time to chat. Everyone had greeted him though, some cautiously and some just happily, which said a lot about what kind of a place Justin ran.

  The only negative so far was the fact that his work started on a Saturday. It had been the first open shift, so of course he’d taken it when Justin had asked, but it still felt weird. Oh well.

  Today, he’d be packing deliveries, making sure he knew the different tasks at least somewhat, so that he could be let loose on Monday morning—Justin’s words. That meant absorbing a lot of information, and letting it simmer in his head so he could remember at least enough to be helpful on Monday. Besides, Justin himself would be there to teach him.

  He parked the car at the employee lot and got out, stretching his back with a groan. The car ran fine, but hell if it wasn’t uncomfortable.

  At least he had work boots and an old denim shirt to wear with his jeans. The undershirt might’ve been overkill, but at least he could ditch the denim one if he needed to cool down.

  There was a hippie-looking lady setting up the booth thingy on the edge of the parking lot, and Izzy gave her a wave. She waved back, smiling slightly, her gaze shrewd as hell. He’d either love or hate her, and that was a gut feeling.

  Izzy found Justin in the break room like they’d agreed.

  “Morning, Izzy,” Justin said, smiling widely. “Good to see you made it in one piece. You ready to work? There’s coffee if you want a cup before we get to work.”

  “Morning.” Izzy felt a bit shell shocked by the exuberant greeting. “Uh, I’m good. I had some on the way.”

  “Well, if you don’t have lunch with you, there’s almost always something here to snack on. If nothing else, then produce that’s not as pretty as it’s supposed to be. My brother brings in baked goods a couple of times a week and sometimes my husband brings some stuff he’s cooked if he’s experimenting with recipes and gets into making bigger batches than what we eat at home.” Justin got up from his seat and took a coffee mug to the nearby sink. “It’s first come, first serve though, and especially Wyatt’s cupcakes and cookies vanish fast.”

  Wyatt must’ve been the brother, then. The girl with the dogs, Lettie, was Justin’s sister. While they walked to the first greenhouse, Izzy wondered how the situation had come to be. Why was Justin living with his teenage siblings? Had his husband adopted them? How did that even work?

  “I’ll show you a couple of things you might find interesting, and then put you to work with Sam. It’s the end of the week, so we pack the stuff we deliver to the food bank and the homeless shelters.”

  “I really like the fact that you do all that charity work,” Izzy said as he tried to keep up with Justin. He was a couple of inches taller than his boss, but holy shit did the guy walk fast.

  “Yeah, it’s kind of something—”

  “Hey, Justin? Did we get another nozzle for the thingy?” a tall, thin guy called out, cutting Justin off.

  “Oh, hey Lou, yeah, there should be one in the storage room. You washing the crates?”

  “Yeah, I’ll change the nozzle and wash them, and then Sam will dry them before he starts packing,” Lou said as he walked closer.

  “Good, I’ll show Izzy around a bit and then leave him to work with Sam.”

  “Hey, man, nice to meet you. If you have questions, just ask anyone, we’re pretty friendly here,” Lou said as he shook hands with Izzy.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” he promised.

  “Justin, I’ll have to leave early because of the kids, but I’ll stay longer on Tuesday,” Lou said casually, like it was no big deal to just inform your boss about something like that.

  “Yeah, you figure it out. Tell Patty if you’ll be late so she knows to ask someone else’s help setting up the stall,” Justin said, gesturing vaguely. “Tell the kids I said hi and take some produce with you.”

  “Will do, thanks, boss!” Lou saluted them and walked off.

  “He has his kids every other Saturday afternoon until Monday evening,” Justin said as if that was an explanation.

  “He’s worked here long?”

  “About…I’d say two years, maybe? Something along those lines.”

  Maybe the guy was a valuable worker, then? In a world where one of Izzy’s neighbors, a student who had had a part-time job as a server, had been fired for going to the bathroom during a shift, well, this place was heaven. Or an illusion, Izzy wasn’t sure yet.

  * * * *

  Izzy found that he liked Sam. The guy was around his age, really the strong and silent type, quick to smile, but not overly chatty. Sam had a small radio in the end of the greenhouse where they were packing the vegetables and they listened to a random station that seemed to play, well, everything possible.

  “Do you live on the property?” Izzy asked when they were loading some of the plastic crates in the back of the van so they had room to fill more.

  “Yeah, I’ve worked here for about a year and lived in the trailers for maybe ten months. I think the guy I’m living with, Ignacio, he’s almost saved enough to move to New Mexico where his g
irlfriend lives. So there might be an opening soon if you’re looking for a place,” Sam said, huffing as he lifted another heavy crate on the pile.

  “Might have to, the hour each way drive is a killer,” Izzy admitted. “So why the plastic bins? Isn’t it extra work?”

  Sam jumped out of the van and they started back into the greenhouse.

  “Justin did some research and these are actually much friendlier to the environment. Like of course we have to wash them, but they lucked out with the wells on the property and when Justin converted the new greenhouses to hydroponic ones, they redid a lot of the irrigation system and managed to cut back water usage a lot.”

  Izzy hummed. “I’d think the veggies would go bad faster in plastic tubs?”

  “They can, but the places we deliver these have their own ways of storing them. We collect empty tubs from the previous week and wash them here if they haven’t cleaned them for us and so on. It’s still more environmentally friendly than using say, cardboard. At least it is for us, you know, with how we operate.” Sam shrugged and pointed him to another batch of veggies.

  * * * *

  The work would’ve been monotonous if he hadn’t had the interruptions. People came in to introduce themselves and everyone had this ease about them. Like they knew what they were working with and whom for, and they’d just run with it. It was menial work, but nothing like the menial work from prison. The difference was, Izzy guessed, that everyone actually wanted to be here.

  When lunchtime rolled around, he went with Sam to the break room. Couple of others were there, and when they realized Izzy didn’t have anything to eat, they shared their lunches and added some tomatoes and bell peppers into all of their plates, just to balance it out.

  “These are really good,” Izzy said after eating a whole tomato in two bites.

  “Yeah, this is first grade stuff,” Carlos agreed as he bit into a sandwich.

  The lady from the outside hadn’t appeared yet, but then it seemed like people from the town were coming in to buy produce so maybe she didn’t have time.

  “Hey, did you get any of Wyatt’s cookies yet?” Sam looked at Izzy from the coffee maker.

  “Nope.” Justin’s brother, right.

  “Well, there’s plenty left. Want any?”

  Izzy shrugged. “Sure.” He didn’t have a massive sweet tooth, but free cookies and all.

  Yeah, so, turns out maybe he’d never had really awesome cookies before? He ate two of the chocolate chip ones, and the guys in the break room looked at him knowingly. It was teasing and nice, not annoying, so he let them mock him.

  The thing about prison was that you learned how to eat fast. That meant Izzy still had about fifteen minutes of his break left when he was done eating, so he told Sam he’d be right back and decided to take a little walk just to get away from people for a bit.

  He found a path leading away from the greenhouses and decided to walk along for a bit. At least he wouldn’t get lost if he stayed on the path, right?

  Everything around him was just so green and lush and lovely. He’d never thought he’d be able to enjoy something like this on the daily, and suddenly the thought of living here made him excited. He really hoped that one guy could save money quickly so Izzy could ask Justin for his spot. Being Sam’s roommate or trailermate or whatever would be nice.

  Just before he decided to turn back, he spotted someone a little ways away from the path. The guy was sitting down and when Izzy peered behind him, he saw a nice enough view. Go figure.

  He walked closer quietly to scope out the situation and heard the telltale sounds of someone trying to breathe through something, like an anxiety attack or maybe just heavy crying?

  The guy turned to look at him as soon as he made noise, and by instinct, Izzie smirked at him. It was his default in all situations where he didn’t feel comfortable.

  “Hey, you okay?” he asked, moving closer to the guy.

  He had dark hair and pretty eyes filled with tears, and he had to be Hispanic. Maybe another worker he hadn’t met yet?

  When the guy flushed deep red, as if ashamed of being caught in the situation he was in, Izzy decided he had a few minutes to spare.

  “I’m Izzy, I just started at the greenhouses.”

  The guy closed his eyes and Izzy thought he had spectacularly long eyelashes. It took him a moment to understand that the guy was doing the counting thing.

  “Shit, a panic attack?” he asked, and the blush that had been fading came back. “I get them too sometimes. I smoke weed. Helps a lot.”

  The guy’s eyes suddenly opened and his gaze snapped to Izzy’s. There was something he couldn’t quite read in those big brown eyes, and Izzy felt oddly…if not judged, then at least…fuck, he didn’t even know.

  The guy struggled to his feet and began to walk away as fast as he could. What the fuck had Izzy done? Who got that uptight about a comment about weed? Jesus.

  “No need to get your panties in a twist, ‘s not like I smoke at work!” he called after the dude.

  He maybe sounded more aggressive than he’d intended, but he needed to make that absolutely clear, because of Justin’s no drug policy. Last thing Izzy needed was some little snitch telling the boss that Izzy liked to get high. He didn’t want to get fired on his first day.

  He returned to the path and backtracked to the greenhouses. The kid had vanished to another direction somewhere, so probably not a worker after all. Oh well, time to earn a buck or two.

  Chapter 5

  So, Wyatt’s meeting with Izzy turned out to be less about cupcakes and awkward conversation and more about panic attacks and the realization that the guy used drugs. Which was…which was his business, except for where it was also Justin’s business too, and probably also the business of whichever parole officer who watched over Izzy’s file. It wasn’t Wyatt’s business, was the point. And he knew—he knew—that Izzy only said weed, and weed was like barely anything, and Wyatt didn’t believe that stuff about it being a gateway drug…except he also remembered what weed smelled like. Strange that he couldn’t remember his mom’s face, but the smell of weed, even just a trace of it in a crowd, could take him straight back to that small, dirty house in Oregon when he was small and dirty too. Smell, he read somewhere once, was tied more closely to memory than any of the other senses. Maybe that was even true. But Wyatt wasn’t like a puritan or a pearl-clutcher or anything. He was afraid. He hated cigarette smoke too, and the smell of beer, and not just because of his past, but because he was afraid of what they might mean for his future too. Like it or not, Wyatt came from a family with a predisposition to addiction. Most of the O’Dwyers had ended up in prison or in the morgue. Wyatt was scared that even though he’d left that name behind, and he’d left Oregon behind, that there was no escaping genetics.

  Of which he only had half the story anyway, of course, but knowing what he knew of his mom, he doubted his dad had been a fine upstanding citizen, right?

  So like even if Wyatt hadn’t made a hell of a first impression with Izzy by being a teary mess, and even if Izzy was even attracted to guys in the first place—what were the odds?—and somehow miraculously overlooked Wyatt’s disaster of a first impression and actually wanted him—ha!—he was not the sort of person Wyatt could trust himself to be with.

  Wyatt tried to put Izzy out of his mind, which wasn’t that easy at all since where did his thoughts go late at night when he was lying in bed jerking off under the covers? Not to whatever porn he was watching on mute on his phone, but to that tall dark-haired guy with a face like sin and a swagger in his hips. To those tattoos Wyatt had barely glimpsed but wanted to unveil like artwork. Wyatt wondered how far they went under his clothes, and imagined Izzy lying underneath him as he straddled him and peeled his T-shirt up, his fingers and his mouth seeking out every piece of ink and worshipping them.

  It was a solid enough fantasy that Wyatt came hard and fast every time, but it had no place in the daylight. No place in the real world.

>   The real world was busier now that Dad was back. Dad was snowed under planning this show. Every day was a new round of phone calls with producers and PR people, and even some of the chefs that were going to be on the show. And then a passport application form landed on Wyatt’s bedroom desk from somewhere, and Dad said they needed to fill it out before too long because the show started filming in four months. So far Wyatt had left it untouched, intimidated by what it represented. He’d be okay traveling with Dad, but the idea of Dad leaving him in Paris was terrifying. Wyatt had weird dreams in which he was a little kid, and he was lost in an airport, or in a city he didn’t know, and he wanted to scream for Dad, but because he was a little kid again he couldn’t make any noise. And sometimes he caught glimpses of Dad through a cold, uncaring crowd, and Wyatt tried to catch him but Dad just kept getting farther and farther away.

  He usually woke up in a cold sweat from those dreams.

  It was hard to pretend he wasn’t terrified, but somehow harder still to imagine actually telling Dad how he felt. He was so afraid Dad would be disappointed in him.

  Dad did this thing when he was stressed out where he went into the kitchen and cooked and cooked and cooked. And Wyatt helped out, because that’s what he’d always done, and because being beside Dad in the kitchen was the most natural thing in the world. And, because Dad was suddenly taking all these phone calls, someone had to make sure the béchamel sauce didn’t burn, right? Wyatt had been Dad’s sous-chef before he even knew what the word meant.

  It was Monday afternoon and Wyatt was wondering if they’d even got room in the oven for this third tray of lasagna—”Three, Dad? Really?”—when the doorbell sounded. Neither Wyatt nor Dad moved, but there was a sudden flurry of barking and claws clicking on the floor, and a moment later Lettie peered into the kitchen.

  “It’s Jimmy,” she said. “He wants to talk to you, Wyatt.”