You Get Full Credit For Being Alive

Chapter Twelve

By the time I got back it was getting dark and Margot was getting antsy. I figured that she would, so I fended off her wrath with a double cappuccino from the closest coffee house and went to put the groceries away, dropping off a bag of easy-wearing clothes, mostly T-shirts and sweats, outside my bedroom door on the way. "Shawn!" I banged on the door with my foot. "There's some stuff for you out here." Then I headed for the kitchen, because really, the frozen foods wouldn't last forever.

I heard Shawn roll into the kitchen a few minutes later, but I didn't glance over until he spoke.

"Need help?"

The tablet's voice was still strange to me, but at least I didn't jump when I heard it. "Nah, I've got this. I was going to get dinner started as soon as the countertops are free again." I put the milk and ice cream away while I waited for Shawn to type out his next sentence. I know, ice cream, what kind of killer am I? While I couldn't indulge my various proclivities as much as I might want to, I could give in on some of the easy things, and the local Baskin Robbins had a wannabe chef running it who made crazy flavors, including my favorite, piña colada with coconut flakes. I got vanilla and chocolate too, because statistically those were the two most popular flavors in the States, despite how incredibly boring they were.

"You cook?"

"Well, Margot certainly doesn't, and I'm not going to starve you while you're here. I do okay." I learned how to cook in the orphanage, for twenty people at a time, but I'd learned how to pare it down and add flavor over the years. My food was still simple, but at least it was edible.

"Hard for me to picture." I glanced over at Shawn and he smirked. "Mister Badass cooking."

"You're the sort of guy who lives on frozen dinners, aren't you?" I shook my head in mock sorrow. "Those things are disgusting."

"More like pizza." He frowned and retyped. "Like pizza. Fried chicken. Good food."

"Yeah, for young guys with crazy metabolisms, maybe."

Shawn pretended to flex, then looked down as his face fell. Even though I'd done my best to guess his size, I still bought a little too big for him. The plain white T-shirt hung loose on his chest and abs, and the sweatpants were cinched tight around his waist. Shawn had lost a lot of tone and his muscle control, even in his upper body, was still far from what he was used to.

I thought about it and made an executive decision. "I'm making meatloaf and you're my sous-chef. I'm going to put the ingredients on the table, with a measuring cup, and you're gonna put them all in the bowl."

Shawn didn't look exactly enthusiastic. "And if you're thinking something about how you can't do that, I don't want to hear it. You can type, you can talk, you can push yourself around so you can definitely help me with dinner." I grabbed an egg, milk, breadcrumbs, and handed over the ground chuck I'd left out on the countertop, then grabbed the utensils. "One cup each of those two, all of the meat and egg." Then I turned around and started chopping up an onion— no way was I going to pass that responsibility on, no knives for Shawn— and listened.

For almost a minute there was silence, then I heard the roll of wheels on the floor. A moment later the bowl shifted, and I found myself smiling even though there was no one else to see.

By the time I had the onion minced and turned around, Shawn was done. While there were plenty of breadcrumbs outside of the bowl, as well as a few splashes of milk, it still looked pretty good. He'd even gotten the egg in there. "Good," I said as I poured in the onion then doused the mix with salt and pepper. "Stir it up while I make the glaze for the top."