Recipe for Two

Chapter 1The house was quiet when Wyatt climbed out of bed and headed downstairs for breakfast. It was only eight, but the Abbots were early risers. Justin started work at what Harper called stupid o’clock every morning, Dad was in LA for a few days for meetings, and Lettie got up early every day to take the dogs for a run before school. Harper had always liked to sleep in as late as she could, but she hadn’t lived at home for a few years now. First she’d had college, and now she had just started an internship at a non-profit in San Francisco that assisted immigrant families. Wyatt missed her, but they still talked at least once a week, and texted every day. She was still his biggest cheerleader, despite the fact she wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing with his life. Well, that made two of them. Wyatt was turning twenty in a few months, and he still hadn’t figured it out. Dad and Justin were happy for him to take his time, but his unofficial gap year had stretched on to about eighteen months already, and Wyatt was starting to feel like he was mooching. He wasn’t—not technically at least, since he helped Dad out with his show, and helped Justin out in the greenhouses—but it bothered him that he hadn’t done anything for himself yet. He’d had it all handed to him. Not like Harper, who’d got her internship all on her own. She was forging her own path, and Wyatt was still getting carried by Justin and Dad. Wyatt shuffled into the kitchen. It was spotless, as always, except for Justin’s breakfast things sitting in the sink. Wyatt rolled his eyes at that and put them in the dishwasher. Dad hated when things were left in the sink, but even after fifteen years together Justin was still doing it. Which was fair, Wyatt supposed, since Justin was always on Dad’s case about leaving damp towels on their bathroom floor. Wyatt grabbed the cereal from the pantry and the milk from the refrigerator, and ate leaning up against the counter. One of the perks of being a kind-of celebrity’s kid was that he didn’t have to explain their family dynamic to many people. He called Dad his dad, but really Dad was Justin’s husband, and Justin was Wyatt’s big brother. Most people got their heads around it, eventually. And one of the downsides of being a kind-of celebrity’s kid was, well, everything else. Wyatt had loved being celebrity chef Del Abbot’s cooking partner on the YouTube channel Dad had started when Wyatt was still a little kid. He’d even come up with Dad’s catchphrase: buh-bye. It had been cute when he was four. Wyatt had never been great at talking to the camera the way that Dad was, but he hadn’t needed to be. That was Dad’s thing. So they’d done the YouTube channel together, and a few specials and things for cable TV for the holidays, and there were even some family photographs in some of Dad’s cookbooks and stuff. Then, when Wyatt had been fifteen, one of the kids at school had showed him this website. It had a counter on it, counting down the days until Wyatt turned eighteen. And the comments underneath it had said exactly what people wanted to do with him when he was legal. Some of them had made him blush, but some of them had been much, much worse than that. Wyatt hadn’t wanted to be in the next cable TV special after that. So he was pretty sure that he didn’t want to follow Dad into the world of TV shows and autographs and appearances and celebrity. He still loved cooking though. He’d loved it ever since Dad had taught him. He’d always liked making desserts more than mains, and had gone through a stage of wanting to be a pastry chef. These days though, he had a thing for cakes. Cupcakes. Not like the gross ones that were double their own height in frosting. Just nice ones. Plain ones, he supposed. Nothing i********:-worthy at all, but they tasted good. He hadn’t figured out a way to tell Dad that maybe he didn’t want to be a pastry chef after all. He wasn’t even sure himself, not really. He wasn’t sure of anything. Story of his life. Wyatt put his bowl and his spoon in the dishwasher and wiped the counter down before heading back upstairs again. He showered and shaved and then used the fancy moisturizer that Dad had been given in a gift pack at some awards night he went to, and had taken one whiff of before turning his nose up at it. Wyatt liked the smell of it. It was a little citrusy or something. Wyatt dressed—jeans and a T-shirt today—and then looked for a hairband to tie his hair back. Some days he liked to leave it loose. Some days he even played around with a blow dryer and product to make it fall in loose curls, or give it waves, but today he just pulled it back into a messy bun. Today was definitely what Wyatt was coming to think of as a boy day. His stomach clenched as he popped the elastic around his hair. Not that… Not that his other days were girl days. They were just softer days. Or something. They were days when he added some eyeliner, or some lip gloss, or wore a shirt that maybe looked like it came off a rack from the other side of the store or something. He was softening his look, he wasn’t being a girl. He was…he was just being Wyatt. The family didn’t care. One bonus of being raised by two gay guys? It hadn’t been an issue when Wyatt, thirteen years old, had told them he was gay too. So they thought that sometimes he was experimenting with his look with the clothes and the eyeliner and the lip gloss, except Wyatt knew that’s not what it was. He was…he was maybe not exactly a guy at all on those softer days. Not a girl, but maybe not exactly a guy. It was confusing. He was Wyatt, and that should have been enough, right? His family would tell him that was enough, but Wyatt felt it somehow wasn’t. Not when he was still figuring out who Wyatt was. Wyatt stared into his dark eyes in the reflection of his bedroom mirror and wondered if he’d always feel a little like there was a stranger staring back. * * * * Wyatt was downstairs with one of Dad’s old YouTube episodes on in the background when Lettie burst into the house surrounded by her pack of dogs. “Don’t let them in the kitchen!” he called to her. “I won’t!” She sailed through the house with the dogs barreling along with her. Lettie was a sophomore in high school, and she was in perpetual danger of failing a bunch of classes. It wasn’t that she wasn’t smart. She was on the spectrum though, and she tended only to be interested in things that, well, interested her. And schoolwork was not one of those things. Dad and Justin had tried to tell her that if she wanted to start her own business training dogs when she was finished with school that she’d at least need to know how to do her own books, but Lettie didn’t seem bothered. Wasn’t that what accountants were for? Wyatt paused the video. Dad wanted help planning the next series, which meant Wyatt was writing his ideas down. Listening to Dad’s voice in the background helped, for some reason. When he was little, and Dad had spent a few nights away here and there with work, Justin used to let Wyatt go to sleep watching Dad’s videos. Though looking back, Wyatt suspected it had been an excuse for Justin to watch them too. Wyatt didn’t remember much about before they came to live in California. He had vague memories of going to visit Del, now Dad, and of Dad being one of the first adults he really felt safe around, but everything else was hazy. He didn’t remember his mother, not really, and sometimes felt a jolt of panic when he tried to remember her. He didn’t know how much of that was his actual memories, or if it was just a reaction from what he’d learned much later had happened: when she’d overdosed, Wyatt had been sitting on the couch with her. Nobody knew how long it was until Harper had got home from school to find them there. Wyatt had been to a lot of therapy since. Was he an introvert now because of her? Was he so quiet because once upon a time he’d screamed for hours and nobody had come? Or maybe he’d just thought she was sleeping and hadn’t been bothered at all. He didn’t know. Nobody knew. Lettie appeared in the doorway. “Have you seen Justin?” “No.” “He said there was some guy coming for an interview.” She shrugged. “I forget what time.” “Okay, thanks.” Wyatt closed his laptop and gathered up his papers. Justin usually used the living room for interviews, and Wyatt didn’t want to get in the way. He headed upstairs to his bedroom. He worked on ideas for Dad’s channel for a little while longer, putting on his headphones and listening to music. He was sitting at his desk by the window when he saw the guy getting out of a car and moving closer to the house. Justin must’ve been on the porch below Wyatt’s window. Holy s**t. The guy was tall and lean, with dark hair cut short at the sides but messy on top. The sort of messy that made Wyatt want to drag his fingers through it. He had facial hair as well, shaped close to the angular planes of his face. He was wearing sunglasses. He was lean. He was wearing skinny jeans and a button-up shirt. He walked with a swagger, like he was a bad boy rock star, or— Wyatt’s breath caught. Or a con. Wyatt leaned back from the window before the guy spotted him. Of course he was a con. Well, an ex-con, and probably one with the sort of record that would see him struggling to find work with anywhere but here. Some of their neighbors in Oak Glen weren’t too pleased that Justin hired guys with records, but some of their neighbors, Dad pointed out, were snobby assholes. Wyatt couldn’t really remember a time Justin had had to fire anyone for anything more egregious than not turning up. He was a good judge of character, and the guys who worked for him were guys who had made some mistakes but were trying to turn their lives around. And that was a lot easier, Justin always said, with a steady job. Some of them only stayed around for a few months before other opportunities came up, but a few of the guys had been with them for years now. And some of them, if they didn’t have family of their own, even joined the Abbots for holiday celebrations. Wyatt wondered if the bad boy rock star would pass Justin’s interview. And then he thought of whose position the bad boy might be taking and grabbed his phone to send Deshawn a text. Hey, Deshawn. Good luck in the kitchen! Deshawn had been hired to work for Justin, but he’d ended up asking so many questions about Dad’s work that Justin had eventually given up and invited him to dinner one night. Deshawn had been so enthusiastic about cooking that Dad had lined him up a job in LA. He’d start off peeling potatoes, but like Dad said, so would the guy with the culinary arts degree. He didn’t have to wait long for Deshawn’s answer. When I’m a big shot celebrity chef like your dad, you can come eat in my restaurant for free! Wyatt laughed and sent back a thumbs up. He’d miss Deshawn. Deshawn had been everything Wyatt wasn’t: loud, confident, and brash, but Wyatt had liked him and, weirdly, Deshawn had liked Wyatt back even though Wyatt was quiet, shy and—unless he was in the kitchen—awkward and clumsy as hell. Before Deshawn had left, Wyatt had overheard Dad giving him a talk. “You know that restaurant kitchens are hell, right?” Dad has asked him. “Fast paced, stressful, and the hours are shit.” “Yeah, I know that.” “Good,” Dad had said. “At some point, someone’s gonna offer you something to get you through a long week when you’re dead on your feet, coke or speed or whatever. I’ve seen a lot of young guys in kitchens made the wrong choice. Don’t be one of them, Deshawn.” Dad had told Wyatt some horror stories of working in a restaurant kitchen before, but not that one. Wyatt had grown up sheltered in many respects. Justin didn’t drink alcohol because he was diabetic, and Del didn’t drink because Justin didn’t—though he had the occasional glass of wine at dinner parties with friends—and drugs were definitely out. Everyone in the family knew exactly where drugs could lead, and Wyatt sometimes read articles about the genetic disposition towards addiction and worried that he’d be the one to fail. Not Harper, who was headstrong and focused, and not Lettie who wasn’t interested in much apart from her dogs, but Wyatt, who had always tried a little too hard to fit in, and had always found it difficult to stand up to peer pressure. He wasn’t as strong as his sisters, that was for sure. He was glad he hadn’t gone to college. His friends from school were in their second year now, and some of them were still partying hard every weekend. Wyatt wasn’t wired that way—or he was afraid he was wired too much that way that he’d fall into that lifestyle deeper and deeper until he couldn’t get out. Didn’t everyone start of thinking they could handle it? Is that what had happened to his mom? Wyatt tore his headphones off and closed his eyes. He drew in a deep breath through his nose for four seconds. Held it for seven. Exhaled through his mouth for eight, and then repeated the cycle. His therapist had taught him the relaxation technique years ago, and he still used it when he needed. Wyatt ran through the cycle four times before he opened his eyes again, fixing his gaze on his green bedroom walls. He had a vague memory of helping to paint the walls when they’d moved in here. Dad and Justin had helped him pick the paint, apparently steering him gently away from a lurid neon green to a much easier-on-the-eye pale shade. It was a soothing color, and it always made him feel safe and calm. Wyatt picked up his headphones and went back to work. * * * * In the afternoon, Wyatt took over Dad’s kitchen and decided to make cupcakes for Justin and his crew for the morning. He made two batches, keeping one batch entirely sugar free for Justin. Wyatt couldn’t lie—the sugar free ones were never quite as nice as the others, whatever the recipes promised, but Justin loved them. Justin arrived home soon after. “Cupcakes?” he asked hopefully as he walked into the kitchen and peered into the oven. “You can take them to work tomorrow,” Wyatt told him. “Thanks, Wy.” Justin hugged him. He smelled of sweat and soil. “The guys will love them.” Wyatt warmed with the praise. “I’m starving,” Justin said. “Damn, I hate it when Del’s away! What’s the point of marrying a chef if he’s not here to cook for me every night?” “How sad,” Wyatt agreed, and then grinned. “How sad that you, a grown man, can’t even survive a single night without your husband.” “Excuse you, it’s been two nights already,” Justin said in mock outrage. “Two!” “You’re ridiculous,” Wyatt told him. “And you stink. Go and have a shower.” “Can’t,” Justin said, opening the refrigerator and grabbing a bottle of water. “Sarah had to take off early to take her mom to a doctor’s appointment, so I’ve still got to put the horses in.” Sarah was the stable manager. When Dad and Justin had bought the house, the stables and the enclosed paddocks were being used for agistment, and Justin had taken over managing that until he’d got his organic produce business up and running. When that had gotten too time-consuming to handle both, he’d hired Sarah to run the stables. “Is her mom okay?” Wyatt asked. “Yeah, I think so,” Justin said, and then dug into the pocket of his jeans as his phone began to ring. His expression softened as he looked at the screen, and he was smiling by the time he answered. “Hey, Del.” He listened for a moment. “I miss you too.” Wyatt checked on the cupcakes. Justin and Dad were still stupidly in love after fifteen years together. It was sweet, but it made Wyatt ache a little too. He wanted someone to look at him the way he sometimes caught them looking at each other, like they still couldn’t believe how lucky they were. “Awful,” Justin said in response to something Dad asked. “You’re not here to cook for me! But Wy is making me cupcakes for work tomorrow.” He paused. “I know he is. The best. Wy? Del wants to talk to you.” Wyatt wiped his hands on his apron and took the phone. “Hey, Dad.” “Hey, Wyatt,” Dad said. “I miss you, kiddo.” “I miss you too,” Wyatt said. “Are you back tomorrow?” Dad made an unhappy sound. “Probably Saturday. Michel got me another meeting, and they can only meet with me tomorrow afternoon. But if it doesn’t run too late, I’ll drive back tomorrow.” “Oh, okay.” “Want me to bring you anything?” “No, I’m good.” “What about your sister?” “Don’t ask her,” Wyatt warned him. “She’ll want another puppy.” Dad laughed, the sound full and warm. “That’s a good point! Okay, I’ll see you soon. Put Justin back on for me?” “Love you, Dad,” Wyatt said. “Love you too, Wy.” Wyatt handed the phone back to Justin and then went and washed his hands under the sink. Everything of Justin’s ended up covered in a layer of potting soil, including his phone cover. “It went okay, I think,” Justin said to Dad. “He’s a little prickly, I guess, but so was Deshawn when he first started. I mean, I don’t know if he’ll work out or not. But I’ll give him a chance.” Wyatt’s heart beat a little faster. Justin was talking about the bad boy with the rock star swagger. Justin listened to Dad a little while longer. “Okay,” he said at last. “I love you too, Del. Drive safe.” He ended the call and stared at his phone screen. “You okay?” Wyatt asked. Justin seemed to shake himself awake, and smiled. “Yeah. I just miss him when he’s not here, you know?” Wyatt knew. He wondered if anyone would ever feel that way about him.