Coda Books 04 - Strawberries for Dessert (MM)

issue. He spent the night with me on the eleventh and made breakfast for me the next morning. Unfortunately, I was running late, and knew I was going to have to eat fast.
    “What took you so long?” he asked when I finally emerged from the bedroom in my suit.
    “I’m running out of shirts,” I said as I sat down to eat. “I hate shopping.” I hated it so much that once I found something I liked, I bought ten of them to avoid having to shop again anytime soon. The problem was, buying everything at the same time meant they all wore out at the same time too. “Are you sure you don’t mind that I’m having dinner with my dad?” I asked for at least the fourth time in two days.
    “I’m sure.”
    “Will I see you tonight?”
    “I don’t know, love. I might be busy.”
    “Okay,” I said, smiling. I knew he would be waiting for me when I got home.
    My day at the office was long and tedious, and I didn’t have time to go home before meeting my dad for dinner. It was traditional for my father to buy my dinner on my birthday in lieu of a gift, so I was surprised when he showed up with a box. It wasn’t wrapped. It was metal, green with flowers on it—not exactly my style—and looked vaguely familiar.
    He set it down in front of me without much fanfare. “Is this for me?” I asked.
    “It’s for your friend.”
    “My friend?” I asked, surprised.
    “It was your mother’s. It’s been in the kitchen cabinet all these years.” He shrugged. “I never knew what to do with it. It seemed wrong to throw it out, but I don’t cook, and neither do you.” That explained why it looked familiar. It had sat on our kitchen countertop for most of my childhood. It was my mother’s recipe box. “I thought the fruitcake might want it.”
    “His name is Cole ,” I said sternly. He shrugged again, as if Cole’s name was inconsequential. And yet he was giving him something that had belonged to my mother, which meant that he respected my decision to be with him—to some extent at least. “You want me to give this to him?”
    “Isn’t that what I just said?” he asked, and I almost laughed, because he sounded so much like Cole.
    “I’m not sure Mom’s tater-tot casserole is exactly his style,” I said.
    I regretted having said it immediately. All at once, his ghosts were upon him again, and he looked down at the table in front of him.
    “Jon,” he said quietly, “I can’t hang on to these things forever. He’s the only person I know who might want it.”
    I suspected Cole would laugh when I gave it to him, but my dad didn’t have to know that. “Okay, Dad,” I said. “I’ll give it to him.”
    We ended up having a good time. He wanted to take me to a game, and he hounded me the entire time to choose between the Suns and the Cardinals, and when I finally chose the Cardinals he asked if he should buy three tickets. I couldn’t imagine Cole going to a football game and told him no.
    I got home around eight and found Cole reading on my couch, exactly as I had anticipated. “How was dinner?” he asked as he set his book aside.
    “Good.”
    “What did your father give you?” he asked, holding his hand out for the box I was carrying.
    “This isn’t for me,” I said. “It’s for you. My dad asked me to give it to you.”
    “To me ?” he asked, his eyes wide with astonishment.
    “It’s silly, I know,” I said as he took the box and opened it, “but he wanted you to have it.”
    He pulled out the first card and looked at it. And then he went very, very still. “Where did this come from?”
    “It was my mother’s.”
    “Really?” he asked, turning to me, and the light in his eyes was at once beautiful and painful to see. There was something like hope there, and he might even have been close to tears. It surprised me. Not only did he not think it was silly, but he seemed to be truly touched. How could that little box mean so much to him?
    “I doubt there’s anything there you want,” I said skeptically.
    He put the box down on the table and came over to me. He took my head in his hands and stood on his toes a little so he could look in my eyes. “Sometimes you’re such a fool,” he said. But he said it lightly. He kissed me on the cheek. “Thank you.”
    “It’s from my father,” I said, still unsure why it mattered.
    “I’ll be sure to thank him, too,” he said, letting go of me.
    He followed me into the bedroom—I couldn’t wait to get out of my suit—and I was