“I couldn’t afford to pay her to do that.”
“So basically, she just served customers?”
Dash nodded.
“But that isn’t a manager, sweetheart.”
“She handled the cash.”
“When you say ‘handled’?”
“She took it to the bank every day on the way home so I wouldn’t have to. I had to clear up anyway.”
Jensen nodded. “And were you paying her the same as Jean paid the girl who came in on Saturdays?”
Dash shook his head. “I had to pay her based on her experience.” She’d been very definite about that, and Dash had been desperate.
“While that is true in a lot of cases, and while experience should always be rewarded properly, she wasn’t actually using her experience. It sounds to me you were manipulated into employing her in the first place and paying a wage you couldn’t afford. Didn’t you think it odd she always wanted what you didn’t have?”
Dash buried his head in Jensen’s chest and inhaled. He loved how Jensen smelled. He loved it even more when Jensen wrapped his arms around him. Jensen squeezed him. “So it isn’t that you can’t cook for other people, just you find it too much pressure?”
Dash nodded but didn’t answer, and for a while he was content to just sit and wish he never had to move.
“I-I get overwhelmed with decisions,” he said and cringed internally. It sounded a hundred times worse when he said it like that. “There just seemed so many to make and all at once.”
Jensen didn’t reply for a while but then said, “Everybody has different strengths. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“You were hungry.” Because it was lunchtime and he didn’t want Jensen to be hungry, and he had no idea how to answer Jensen. Steven used to ask him things, but he knew that no matter how he answered his dad it would be wrong. Steven used to pick apart the simplest of questions. If Dash had said the sky was blue, Steven would have argued it was just something to do with certain light particles traveling faster, and he should know that. It got so he agonized over the simplest decisions.
“I could eat,” Jensen said mildly. “Do you like pasta? I have some chicken, and I want to make the soup for later.”
Dash’s belly rumbled, and Jensen grinned. “Well, I heard that answer loud and clear. I like that.”
Dash stilled for a moment as they just gazed at each other, and then Jensen moved slightly and Dash scrambled off Jensen’s knee and out of the way.
But Dash didn’t think Jensen would like what Dash was really thinking about, and it wasn’t what they would have for lunch.
They’d only finished eating when the doorbell rang. It was the driver with Dash’s things. There was a suitcase full of clothes and three other boxes of things Dash had been unable to part with, but he wasn’t sure he was strong enough to open now.
“Where shall I put them?” Dash asked helplessly.
“How about you just unpack the case and put all the clothes in the washing machine?” Jensen asked practically. “You can open the others whenever you want. Whenever you’re ready.”
Dash gazed at him, sure the gratitude was stark in his face. Jensen knew it was hard.
“They can go in the cupboard under the stairs until you need them. It’s dry in there.”
Dash nodded and went to lift the suitcase to carry into the kitchen and through to the laundry, but Jensen beat him to it. “Humor me until after Tuesday, huh?”
Dash flushed, but he nodded and tried not to beam in delight. Every time Jensen did something like this, or when he opened the car door for him, or at the hospital when he’d insisted Dash wore his coat, it melted his heart. And Jensen didn’t do it in a way that made Dash feel incapable; he did it because he seemed to genuinely care.
The trouble was having Jensen care was getting addictive, and Dash knew that was foolish.
Jensen excused himself to make some calls and got his laptop out, but Dash totally understood he had a business to run. He carefully sorted and washed his clothes, then decided to go and get the laundry from upstairs which wasn’t much. While he was upstairs, he thought it wouldn’t hurt to make sure everything was tidy including the bathrooms, so he hunted for some cleaning supplies and got to work. He was just rinsing Jensen’s bath when Jensen found him.
“What are you doing?”
Dash jumped. He’d been absorbed in his task and hadn’t heard Jensen