“Oh yeah,” I said with a nod. I hadn’t really thought about it, but I couldn’t argue with the date. The apples were crunchy, and the caramel was gooey and sweeter than I remembered from childhood. “This is different than the ones I’ve had before.”
“How so?” Tria asked. She looked up at me through her lashes, appearing apprehensive.
“The caramel is different,” I said. “It’s…sweeter, maybe? Definitely stickier.”
“Is that bad?”
“No,” I replied, “I like it this way.”
“Good,” she said as she smiled. “I made it from scratch.”
“You made caramel?”
“Yep,” she said, and she licked a bit off her lip.
I could have helped with that.
“So, you really do like it?”
Yeah…I’d definitely like to lick the caramel off…
“Liam?”
“Hmm? Oh…sorry.” I swallowed the mouthful of apple and tried to focus. “What did you say?”
Tria gave me a weird look and shook her head minutely.
“I asked if you liked the apple.”
“Yeah! It’s awesome!”
“See, I was thinking about this whole mooching off you thing,” she said, but I interrupted her.
“I told you, it’s not moochi
ng,” I said. “We’re just helping each other out.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Tria said dismissively. She waved her hand around a bit, trying to make her point. “It’s seriously lopsided, but I’m not going to argue about that any more. Anyway, I thought maybe I could even it up a little by doing the cooking.”
“Cooking?”
“Yes,” she said as she looked through her lashes again at me. I tried not to focus on her when she did that because it did funny things to my cock. “I like cooking, but it never seems worth it for just me.”
“Cooking,” I said again.
“You do realize there’s more out there to eat besides veggie burgers and protein shakes, right?”
“Sounds kind of familiar,” I said with a nod. For a moment, I wondered how she knew so much about my normal meal plan, but figured I had probably talked about it a couple of times on our walks.
Tria laughed.
“So, what do you think?”
I was still kind of focused on her sticky lips and had no idea what she was asking me.
“About what?”
“Food. Cooking. Me cook you food,” Tria said in short, clipped syllables and then began to laugh. “Did you zone out on me?”