My Dad's Best Friend Said No Daddy Jokes, So I Made Him Say Yes novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: His Kitchen

Lucius's kitchen has a cypress table old enough to have opinions.

He had set it for two with mismatched plates, and a pot of gumbo steamed on the back burner.

I stood in the doorway with a bottle of wine.

"You made a roux."

"I told you."

"You burned it a little," I said.

"It's called dark."

"It's called burned, Lucius. I'm eating it anyway."

He took the wine from me and set it on the counter, and he did not take his eyes off me.

He wore a clean blue shirt with the sleeves rolled and had trimmed his beard.

It took me a second to understand he had dressed for me.

We ate.

The gumbo was smoky and rich and a little bitter, and I had two bowls.

He watched me eat the second one with an expression I had never seen on him, soft and a little stunned.

On the wall behind him hung a framed photograph, curling at the corners.

Two young men stood on the deck of a shrimp boat in the sun.

One was Lucius at twenty-nine, black-haired and lean, squinting.

The other, six years older, had his arm around Lucius's neck and was laughing so hard his eyes were shut.

He had my father's gap in his teeth, which is also mine.

I looked at it all through supper, and it did not hurt as much as I thought it would.

← Chapter 8 · All chapters · Chapter 10 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend