fuck off, Elliot replies.
But, yes, he does regret it.
Chapter Thirteen
The first time their schedules line up again, they meet for dinner in the city. Elliot has a matinee game that day and after games he’s usually not in the mood to play masterchef, but he wants to hang out with Blake. So he tells Blake there’s a restaurant he wants to try and then spends an hour finding a restaurant that he actually does want to try.
Blake goes on a roadie the day after; Elliot plays one more home game and then leaves for two games in Canada.
When he comes back, Blake is still on the road in the West, but they set up a dinner date – well, not a date, but an informal meeting – for when Elliot has time to cook for Blake. Blake has a day off on a day that coincides with a day when Elliot only has practice in the morning and no obligations in the evening.
Elliot makes lasagna the first time Blake comes over for dinner, because he’s made it so many times that he can cook it in his sleep. Not a lot that can go wrong there. He can prep it in advance before Blake even gets to his place. Blake said he’d bring dessert and he promised that he wouldn’t try to make it himself.
Elliot does remember Blake cooking him eggs and bacon for breakfast when Elliot came to visit him during a summer many years ago, but maybe eggs and bacon aren’t exactly hard, so he doesn’t have much of a grasp on Blake’s cooking skills. Elliot can’t imagine that Blake’s grandma would have let him move into his own place without teaching him the basics, though.
Blake arrives carrying a box that probably has pie in it, snowflakes melting in his hair, after walking through an early December flurry. His hair is not in a bun today, just loosely falling down to his shoulders, ink-black, soft.
“Hey,” he says.
Elliot stares, only for a moment, before he, too, says, “Hey. Come on in.”
Blake hands him the box, takes off his boots, hangs up his coat, and then he’s standing in Elliot’s hallway in jeans and a blue sweater that matches his eyes exactly and Elliot is probably having some kind of aneurysm, because he saw Blake not too long ago and he didn’t want to stare at him for an hour like he does right now.
He doesn’t know what changed.
“Thanks for… this,” Elliot says and lifts up the lid of the box. It’s cherry pie.
“Still like cherry?” Blake asks.
Elliot nods, can’t believe that Blake even remembered.
Blake is clearly pleased with himself. “What’s for dinner?”
“Crispy lasagna,” Elliot says and wanders into the kitchen, Blake at his heels.
Elliot pushes the lasagna into the oven with Blake looking on like he still isn’t sure if he trusts Elliot’s abilities, which is fair, because Elliot’s first attempts at cooking pretty much anything ended in at least minor disasters. He had to buy some new pans and pots when he ended up burning food and there was no scrubbing those black marks away.
“Where do you wanna eat?” Elliot asks. He has a small table in the kitchen that seats three and another table around the corner where dining and living room share the same space. The dining room table is too formal, too big, would put them too far away from each other, but then he thinks about knocking his ankles against Blake’s under his small kitchen table and suddenly he wants that space between them.
Not his choice, though, because he just asked Blake.
“Uh, wherever is easiest for you,” Blake says. “I’m not… you know. No need to pretend you’re fancy or anything.”
“Hey, I can be fancy.”
Blake grins and nods at the kitchen table. “That one’s fine.”
“Okay,” Elliot says and the demon that possessed him when he saw Blake with snowflakes melting in his hair on his doorstep wholeheartedly agrees.
It takes a while for the lasagna to heat up and for the cheese to melt, so Elliot throws together a salad in the meantime, Blake being extremely helpful by eating all the grape tomatoes before Elliot can even put them in the salad bowl.
“Stop it,” Elliot says and swats at Blake’s hand when he goes for another one.
“They’re good.”
Elliot sighs at him, grabs a handful and washes them, puts them in a bowl and hands them to Blake, who’s leaning against the counter, eyes gleaming like he’s a small child who got handed a bowl of freshly baked cookies.
“Do you want wine?” Elliot asks.
Blake wrinkles his nose.
“I guess that’s a no.”
“If your lasagna is only good with wine, I’ll have a glass, but…”
“My lasagna is good no matter what you have with it, thank you very much.”
Blake smirks and shakes his hair out of his face.
“How’s Evan doing?” Elliot asks as he turns his attention back to his salad.
“He’s okay,” Blake says. “He’s… He spent some time in Norwalk in the summer, even after I left and… I think he misses Grandma a lot. Like, not that I don’t miss her, but he was even younger when Mom and Dad died, so he has even fewer memories of them and now she’s gone, too, and…” Blake shrugs. “It’s not that I’m worried about him, because he’s all grown up and I’m still around, you know, if he needs anything, but…” Another shrug. “Sorry, that was a lot of family drama.”
“No, I mean… I asked,” Elliot says. He realizes that it’s been about a year since Blake’s grandma died. He doesn’t mention it.
Blake looks at him for a long moment. “It’s weird…” Trails off again.
“What?”
“No, it’s… it’s depressing.”
“Tell
