He takes my hand in his and walks me out to the kitchen where he pulls out one of the bar stools tucked under the island. He pats it. “Have a seat. I’ll take care of the food.”

“Are you sure you don’t want any help?”

“I appreciate it, but I’m good,” he says and makes his way to the fridge to check what I have on hand. I’m more than a little embarrassed to admit that it isn’t much, but I’m so busy with school and my yoga classes that I rarely have time to cook anything. I usually don’t buy much for the same reason because it all ends up going bad before I ever have the chance to cook it.

“Kind of slim pickings, isn’t it?” Declan asks with his head still in the fridge as he pushes things around looking for anything he can use.

“Yeah, it’s probably obvious, but I don’t cook much.”

“I kind of thought that might be the case. But that’s alright. I’m sure I can come up with something,” he says and walks over to the small pantry on the other side of the kitchen to open it. It’s even barer than my fridge is. I use it so infrequently that part of me is surprised bats didn’t fly out. “Aha, here we go. Can’t beat a simple spaghetti.” He reaches for the sole box of spaghetti noodles on the shelf and closes the door behind himself.

“But I don’t have any pasta sauce. Or at least not that I know of.”

Declan breaks open the box of noodles to check they haven’t gone stale, but he must be satisfied with them because he smiles and walks them over to the stove.

“No, but you do have these tomatoes that are starting to turn, so I think I can work with that,” he says and points at two tomatoes I have sitting on the windowsill above the sink. One of my yoga students brought them to me from their garden, and I’ve been meaning to use them to make some BLTs, but it just never happened.

“Good thinking.”

Declan starts opening cabinets, looking for a knife and cutting board, so I direct him where to find things then listen to the soft sound of his knife against the cutting board as he dices the tomatoes. “You have any garlic or onion hiding in here anywhere?”

“No, but I have garlic powder and onion flakes in the spice rack.”

He smirks. “That’ll have to do.”