Page 74 of A Little Bit Naughty

Remi’s face got that soft Daddy look again. Even if Isaac was trying not to think about it that way.

“What if we both go make some food and stay on the call, alright? It’ll be like having dinner together.”

“Oh, yeah! Let’s do that!”

He carried the laptop to the kitchen and could see that Remi was doing the same. Remi asked what he was making, and he had to admit that he hadn’t gone shopping since he got back, so he was going to nuke a frozen burrito.

Remi, meanwhile, was making a gorgeous salad with a colorful assortment of vegetables and chicken on top.

Remi shook his head sadly at him. “You need to go shopping. With all that energy you burn off, you’re going to need something better than that.”

It was not quite Daddying, but so close that Isaac felt all warm inside.

“Two burritos?” he asked hopefully.

Remi laughed. “Two burritos and you go grocery shopping tomorrow.”

Mmmmmm…. That was Daddy looking out for him. He loved every instant of it.

He tossed the pale, frozen rectangles into the microwave, knowing they’d be starchy and soggy on the bottom by the time he took them out.

“So, um…” He turned back to the screen. “What are we doing right now?”

Remi’s hands stilled in the middle of chopping a pepper and his brows furrowed. “Are we just having dinner together?” he suggested softly. “As friends?”

It was both not enough, and the best practical choice. Isaac liked Remi. He’d had a really good evening with him. Maybe Remi wasn’t his Daddy right now, but there wasn’t any harm in having dinner together, right? It was kind of like… easing off an addiction or something.

He snorted to himself. That was being dramatic. Truthfully, he liked Remi a lot as a person. And there was this tiny niggling hope that if they stayed in contact, Remi might still be interested in him in another year.

“Yeah,” he agreed, just as quietly. “I’d like that.”

“So maybe we could have dinner again sometime? Maybe… Saturday? No, Sunday. I have a family dinner tomorrow night, and then you have your game on Saturday.” Remi went back to slicing the pepper, the snick-snick of the blade on the wooden cutting board getting picked up by the mic.

Isaac’s disappointment at waiting so long only lasted for a moment. Remi was keeping track of his schedule. He knew that he had dinner with his team after the games. Anyway, it wasn’t like they were dating. It was probably good to space things out to help him remember that they were just friends. “Sunday’s good. Just give me a time.”

The microwaved beeped and Isaac carried his plate over to the rickety table that he’d dumpstered last year. It wasn’t even as big as a card table, but it was the biggest thing you could fit in the kitchen and still have space for two folding chairs. He told Remi the story about how one of the legs had fallen off when he had Tommy had already walked it eight blocks back to their apartment, but Tommy had been certain he could fix it.

He’d “fixed” it with a nail that only made things worse, and then a bunch of duct tape. So far, the duct tape was still holding up, as long as you didn’t bump it too much. It wasn’t like Isaac had any better ideas.

Remi shook his head, laughing at their antics. “You don’t have a drill?”

“Only the one you gave me,” he answered before he could think better of it. He already loved the little drill. But that was at least in part because he had no clue how to do anything handy and masculine like fix things and always wished he did. Remi was obviously brilliant at it.

Remi’s eyes widened, and the moment hung crystalline between them, like a piece of glass that could shatter on a breath.

Now that they were… friends… it seemed weird to talk about the plastic toys.

“I don’t think that’s going to work,” Remi said slowly, obviously trying to keep it light. Isaac could practically hear some term of affection that Remi was biting back at the end. Baby boy or sweetheart or something else that would make Isaac give up on all his plans and promises and just want to get on a plane to Portland tomorrow. Or collapse on a heap on the floor.

“But if you buy a drill,” Remi continued, “or can borrow one from someone, I can probably tell you how to fix it.”

Isaac nodded. Of course. Remi wasn’t going to buy him a real drill or fly out to fix his table or any other crazy thing he might have imagined because Remi wasn’t his Daddy. By mutual agreement.

He was just an insanely hot guy who wanted to have dinner with Isaac over video call and happened to be the best Daddy ever, but was respecting his boundaries and keeping things on the friend level.

On the other hand, there was something so deeply affirming that Remi thought he could do this. It was like an induction into the ineffably defined club of men-who-had-hardware-skills, a club that Isaac had always wanted to join and never quite found his way into. It always felt like you had to already know what you were doing to learn more.

So there was a sort of giddy excitement to Remi teaching him how to use a drill. “Sounds good. I have a friend who could probably loan me one.”