Blue Plaid

Domesticity

In which Tyson finds everything to be weirdly normal.

//

Humming to myself as I slowly dragged the wooden spoon through the meat sauce, I glanced to the lounge room to make sure Cooper was still contently playing with his toy cars. He giggled as he pushed the model red Mustang across the wooden floor, vibrating his lips to making an engine noise as he crawled.

I smiled and turned my attention back to the dinner I was creating. Cooper had already been fed his dinner of bowtie pasta with vegetables in a cream sauce and was playing before he needed to be put to bed. Generally, Stella was the one home for dinner time, but now that I was unemployed, I took it upon myself to make the most of my culinary abilities and cook up a proper meal.

Stella had been gone all day, shooting a series of commercials for the clothing brand she was the face of, which meant she was going to be exhausted when she got back and I knew spaghetti with meat sauce was her comfort food.

The door opened just as I turned off the stove and I flashed a smile at Stella as she stepped through the door, looking stunning as always, her hair windblown and her cheeks and nose red from the cold.

"Hey," I greeted as she shut the door and dropped her purse to the floor before stepping out of the tall, flat black boots she was wearing over her jeans. "Perfect timing. Dinner's almost ready."

"Great!" she breathed out, pausing to inhale the smell of the meat sauce deeply as she shrugged off her pea coat and tossed it over a kitchen chair before padding across the apartment to where Cooper was playing, squatting down to kiss him on the head before turning back towards me. "I'm starving. What are we having?"

"Take a look," I nodded towards the pots on the stove as I lay the wooden spoon on the granite countertop as she made her way towards the stove.

She stood on her tiptoes unnecessarily as she peered into the pots, a smile slowly stretching her lips when her gaze lifted to meet mine. "My favorites."

"I know," I grinned.

Her smile widened and she stepped towards me, her arms lifting to wrap around my neck as my hands settled at her waist. "You know, I never took you for the sappy type, Tyson."

"I prefer to think of myself as the sweet and romantic type," I replied, my fingers lacing together at her lower back.

"Do you now?" she laughed, tugging playfully at the hair on the back of my head.

"Yep," I smiled, leaning forward so my lips could brush against hers. "I do."

The corners of her lips lifted even more as she closed the distance between us and we both smiled into the kiss.

If you had told me a year ago that there would ever be a time when I would be making out with Stella St. Clare in an apartment we shared while we raised a child together, I probably would have told you to keep dreaming. But it was almost effortless how easily Stella and I had made the transition from sort of friends to...well, whatever it was we were currently doing. We hadn't really discussed it in detail, but as of right now, it consisted of a lot of kissing. We hadn't gotten to the point where we were actually having sex, but it was safe to say it was progressing in that direction.

Despite the fact that I had been the one who wanted to have the conversation about where our relationship was headed in the first place, I had been pretty relieved when Stella had jumped on confessing her feelings when we returned from Dallas. The two weeks since that fateful evening had been pretty blissful. Of course, we still verbally sparred because it wasn't as though either of us had suddenly become less stubborn, but those arguments usually resulted in making up in the form of feverish kissing.