Page 61 of Delicious (Delicious #1)

Chapter One

Rhett

‘P rofessor, I’m horny.’ That’s what Allie signs . What she says is, “Professor, I’m starving.”

In the few lessons she’s absorbed about ASL, she understands that emphasis is the key in a lot of ASL conversation, she just missed the mark on this one by signing it far too many times. The one thing I can say is she’s enthusiastic.

Horny? Probably not.

But this isn’t an ASL class. It’s a history class. It just so happens the professor is Deaf, and he’s encouraged the students to take a few sign language lessons so they can communicate with him in his own language.

Apparently, she did what he asked—she just didn’t quite get that lesson right.

I glance over at Robbie, who chokes and dribbles the sip of coffee he was taking down the front of his shirt. Luckily, it’s a black shirt, so it doesn’t really show.

His eyes dart over to me, and he signs my name. ‘Rhett? Stop smiling, you asshole.’

‘You’re smiling too,’ I fire back with a smirk.

Robbie swipes the back of his hand across his lips and clears bits of coffee from the back of his throat very loudly. He turns to her and manages a smile. ‘Fifteen minutes until class is over. And that’s the wrong sign for starving,’ he signs.

I repeat that aloud for her. It’s second nature to me now. I find myself mumbling aloud in conversations with all Deaf friends just because it’s habit, and sometimes I think I do it in my sleep. Hell, the two guys I’ve managed to take home on shitty app dates have complained about it. They say I should stop flapping my arms and wiggling my fingers.

I wanted to flap my fingers right into their eyeballs. Instead, I just ghosted them and pretended like the nights of crappy sex didn’t exist as I went back to my increasingly mundane life.

If it wasn’t for the fact that the pool of interpreters in this small town is dreadfully small and the fact that the community college here is offering Deaf teachers a chance to teach literally anything else besides ASL, I’d probably retire.

But I can’t do Robbie dirty like that.

He’s worked too fucking hard for this job, and his only other real option would be to either teach at a Deaf high school—which he’s said repeatedly he’d rather throw himself into the sun and watch his skin melt off in slow motion—or head across the country to Gallaudet, but a Deaf university isn’t exactly hard up for Deaf professors there.

It helps that the benefits are pretty good here, and it’s full-time pay. I can’t quite give up something with stable working hours and health insurance.

I just have to deal with, you know, students . Post-pubescent but not-quite-adult-yet students. Their brains aren’t fully formed, and I swear, every semester, there is at least one student who tries to cover up his farts with coughs.

“What did I say?” Allie asks. She looks mortified, eyes wide, cheeks red, and I understand. She’s one of the few students who actually bother to give a shit, and she went and fucked up.

I’m pretty sure Robbie can read that question off her lips, but I still interpret, and he laughs, waving his hand. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

“Uh, Professor,” someone chimes in from the back of the class. Ah, John. The fucking clown with the pale face and freckles who never puts his hood down. Honestly, I’ve only seen his face twice. “Don’t you always say that telling someone ‘never mind’ is insulting?”

I interpret this with all the rudeness I can muster, making sure my signs and facial expressions convey how he spoke.

Robbie’s eyes narrow, but I know he’s not going to relent. He’ll tell Allie later so he doesn’t humiliate her in front of the class. Not to mention, he refuses to teach any of them the dirty signs. He turns his back to the class without answering and begins to draw a timeline and dates on the whiteboard.

I straighten my back and ignore John’s loud noise of protest on Robbie’s orders because he thinks it wastes time for me to interpret all the noises he fully plans on ignoring.

Another thing I love about him. My wrists and shoulders are a little less sore with him than with others I’ve worked for.

Eventually, everyone settles. Allie stops looking so mortified, and I do feel a pang of sympathy for her. She’s on track to follow in Robbie’s footsteps, which is a nice change from the students who took this class because they thought it was going to be an easy A.

By week three of this class, we have students dropping the class. There are several Deaf professors on campus, and somehow, someone started a rumor that they were coasting classes because they can’t hear you.

Just like we have a couple of blind professors, and the campus myth is that you can sneak out after your name is called and still get your attendance credit. As though the professors were smart enough to get their doctorates but not smart enough to know that sighted people are assholes and make contingency plans for it.

Some of the students do try though. Several of them have taken Robbie’s other classes over their following semesters. We only get to know them for two years, but I’ve seen a handful come back conversationally fluent in ASL and on the track for the master’s program, and I can see it in Robbie’s face why he does this.

Why he’s fought so hard to do this.

I wish I had the same passion.

And it’s not like I dislike my job. Really. Every job is frustrating, but it was just…a thing that sort of happened to me rather than me chasing a dream. I took ASL because I already knew it, and then I took Deaf studies because it made sense. And the next thing I knew, I was graduating without really trying to find anything meaningful in my life.

I just never understood the way people felt so strongly about one thing or another. I have friends who run a gym—adorable himbos who are smarter than most people give them credit for. I have professor friends and friends who own their own business. I know a guy who just inherited a little farm with button quail and chickens.

My sister’s a lawyer. My mom’s a pediatrician. My dad died when I was four, but he owned his own landscaping company, and he was elected to the city council when he was twenty-six.

My biggest accomplishment is the trophy I won for surfing when I was sixteen and the fact that I was frugal enough to buy my own condo the year after I graduated, and I didn’t move in completely house-poor. I guess in this economy, that is a pretty big accomplishment, but it feels oddly lonely and isolating.

I don’t know why my brain is so different from everyone else’s around me, but I’ve started to wonder if my lack of passion for those things has seeped into my personal life. I have friends. I have family—both blood and the people I’ve surrounded myself with.

But I can’t seem to keep a relationship to save my life. Every time I try, it ends with a polite smile and a kiss to the forehead and a promise that I’ll find what I’m looking for.

Whatever that is. I wish I knew. Maybe I’d have better luck.

Several friends have asked me if I’m aromantic or asexual, and I actually gave it some serious thought before deciding that no, I wasn’t. I do want a relationship, and I am a very sexual guy. I’m just…lost.

I realize my mouth is speaking Robbie’s closing statements for the class—assigning page numbers, which will be updated in Canvas so no one can make excuses for missing what he and I have said in two languages. He drops his hands, and I settle back, preparing myself to interpret any questions anyone has.

Unsurprisingly, Allie is the only one hanging back. She’s trying to look inconspicuous, putting her stuff away very, very slowly. Robbie smirks at me, and I grin back. John is the last one to leave. I think he’s hoping he can hang back and figure out what we want to say to Allie, but I give him a pointed stare, and he leaves, slamming the door behind him.

Robbie jumps when the vibrations roll under our feet.

‘Asshole,’ he signs.

I nod, then lean forward over my thighs as Allie finally looks up.

Her fingers are shaking when she asks, ‘What did I sign wrong?’

Robbie comes around the desk and leans against it. He’s a very good-looking guy. Too many students get crushes on him, and it gets a little weird some semesters. He’s got that hot librarian kind of look—not my thing, but aesthetically, I can see the appeal.

Dad bod, dark hair with a few streaks of early grey, often messy because he can’t stop running his hands through it. He’s got full lips, wide eyes, and metal-framed glasses he really only needs for reading. And he has a very kind smile in spite of the fact that he’s a grumpy dick eighty percent of the day.

‘Sometimes,’ he signs slowly for her benefit, though I’m going to interpret this aloud anyway, ‘ASL is complicated. With just a slight change, a very simple sign can turn into one that’s…’ His fingers flutter in the air, hesitating. My voice trails off. She glances at me, but only for a second. ‘Impolite.’

Allie’s cheeks turn bright red, and she covers her face. “Oh my God, what did I say?”

Normally covering a face or a mouth would send Robbie through the roof, but it’s clear he can tell she’s just mortified. He reaches out and gently taps her on the shoulder and waits for her to drop her hands.

‘That sign implies you have a different hunger. Not for food,’ he clarifies.

She just stares at him, not comprehending, so he just signs and signs the word, forcing me to voice it as well.

Her whole body goes still, and then the pink blush turns almost purple, and she drops back down to her chair. ‘Oh my God? Oh my God!’ She looks at me, and I give her a grimace and a shrug because what else can I do?

‘It happens to everyone,’ he tells her. I hope my voice is at least somewhat soothing. I tend to have a low affect if I don’t have to emphasize anything, but I don’t want her to suffer. Robbie gestures at me, and I nod.

“It’s true,” I tell her aloud. “I’ve been signing for most of my life, and I get it wrong sometimes.” I repeat that all in sign quickly for Robbie, though I’m sure he knows what I’m saying.

He snorts but doesn’t throw me under the bus.

Allie straightens her shoulders, then looks behind her before lifting her hands. ‘Thank you.’ Her hands fall because her vocabulary isn’t big enough for the rest of her sentence yet, and ASL 101 won’t be open until the fall semester. “Thank you for not telling everyone else.”

Robbie scoffs. ‘They know my rules. And please use that sign responsibly.’

She looks mortified again and thanks him with two hands at her chin before grabbing her bag and rushing out the door.

Robbie collapses on his stool with a loud groan, and I lean back almost far enough to lift the wheels of my rolling chair off the ground. ‘Can I quit now? I think I’m done with life.’

I roll my eyes. ‘You don’t want to quit. You want lunch. We need food before your next class.’

He makes a c shape with his hand and runs it up and down his chest repeatedly, so I pick up a piece of scrap paper, ball it up, and throw it at him.

His head falls back in a laugh. ‘I’m sorry. It was just surprising. I was not expecting students to be signing “horny” at me today.’

I roll my shoulders, then stand and glance at the clock. We have an hour and ten minutes before his next class, so Robbie uses that as his escape from students and their problems. It’s one of the few times on campus he doesn’t need an interpreter, which is great for me because I really do need the break after morning lectures. Most students are too intimidated to interrupt his free time, so he uses that to fuck around on his phone and procrastinate on his plans to join the one gym in town that has a Deaf personal trainer.

‘What are you hungry for?’ I ask him.

At that, he perks up. ‘A friend of mine is here.’

I glance behind me, and when I look back at him, he’s on the verge of laughing.

‘No. My friend owns a food truck. Deaf Chef,’ he spells it, then spells his name, ‘Mellie. He was working in Seattle for a few months, but he’s back.’

Part of me wants to ask what kind of food, but then I realize I don’t care. I’m not really picky about that either. Food is food. It’s fuel. I don’t understand foodie culture at all. I know when something tastes good and when it doesn’t. It’s never more complicated than that. If I could take a pill every day instead of eating, I would.

Robbie’s got his phone in his hand, his fingers moving restlessly but slowly. Then my phone buzzes in my pocket. ‘I sent you my order. Tell him I said hi.’

And just like that, I’m dismissed. But I’m also off the clock, which feels oddly like a physical relief, and I grab my bag from the chair and make my way out of the classroom as he goes on to tidy up the whiteboard and then grab his things to take to his office.

The campus is quiet in the afternoons. It’s something I think I can say I genuinely enjoy about working at a community college. There’s a certain culture to a university that is appealing. It’s almost like a rite of passage a lot of students feel like they’re owed. But this is…softer.

Kinder.

It’s more like a home than a house, in a way. It’s easier to get to know people and professors in ways I could when I was in an auditorium class with hundreds of students. And by the time I did make it to my three- and four-hundred-level classes with the more dedicated academics, I was so fucking burnt out it was hard to care what was going on in anyone’s life.

At least here, I can relax. The gossip tends to be worse, but I’ve always been good at ignoring that.

I smile at a couple of people—Jack, the Deaf art teacher I’ve worked with in the past. A couple of students who recognize me and learned quickly not to talk to me over talking to Robbie during lecture. I turn my face up at the sun—it’s not very powerful, but it rarely is in the Pacific Northwest. It’s just right, as my mom likes to call it.

Like Baby Bear in Goldilocks. It was why she chose to settle here after my dad died.

I can’t really fault her for it.

Picking up the pace, I follow the smell of fry oil down the little path to the back parking lot that has a large roundabout. Every now and again, we get food trucks that roll in, but today, there’s only one.

It has a large propped-up sign on the top with a dark-haired illustration of a chef holding fingers to kissing lips. The truck itself is mostly white, with stenciled ILY signs all over it. There’s a large window, an awning, and then a menu on one of those folding chalkboards.

It’s tragically small, but there’s a line, so it must be good. Or, at the very least, edible.

I queue up behind a couple of young students who look like they’re together, but all three of them are on their phones, and I try to push back my annoyance at how much communication has changed. I can’t begrudge it.

It’s allowed my Deaf friends access to communication in ways that most of them hadn’t been able to conceive of in the past. Robbie and his siblings had gone to a residential school hours away from their parents and talked to them through letters, and eventually emails, and saw them on their weekends home.

But sometimes, this new technology feels like it’s creating a lack of empathy that’s becoming a little terrifying.

One of the girls laughs, and the other two lean in to look at their phone before all three are cackling. I don’t bother trying to see what’s funny. I also don’t understand their humor. I feel ancient sometimes.

Shoving my hands into my pockets, I rock on my heels and stare at the menu, not that there’s a lot to debate about. The Deaf Chef specializes in sandwiches, and there are three on the menu. Japanese egg salad sando, hot pastrami with spicy mustard served on rye, something called Nonni’s Fave that I think has four kinds of pork, and meatball.

I pull out my phone and look up Robbie’s order.

Robbie: Hot Past w fries extra mustard pls ty ily

I’d go with meatball. My job requires me to wear black—or on days I’m feeling extra sassy, a deep navy blue—so it’ll hide any mess. But I’m not sure I want to make a spectacle of myself. God, why am I turning this fucking sandwich order into Sophie’s Choice?

“Um, hey. I want—” the girl in front of me says. Her words are cut off by a sharp knock on metal and then a noise of protest.

I look up and finally see the Deaf Chef himself. He’s a redhead—more strawberry blond than carrot ginger, but in the small strip of sunline that cuts across the ordering window, I see the highlights. His face is a constellation of freckles, and his eyes are very dark, and so are his lashes, which is a surprise.

Maybe he dyes them. Fuck, I don’t know, but he’s hot though. Christ , he’s hot. He’s biting his lip as he points to something I can’t quite see, and he’s got slightly prominent front teeth like a bunny, and his eye teeth stick out far enough to touch his lip.

His fingers are thin and very lithe and expressive, even though he’s not signing.

“Okay, I want?—”

He stops them again with that same knock and points at whatever’s in front of them.

“What does that even mean?” the girl says, sounding angry now.

I know he can handle himself. I’ve been trained not to step in when someone’s giving someone else a hard time. But I hate the look of frustration on his face. It’s adorable—hell, it’s kind of sexy, actually—but enough is enough.

“I can interpret,” I say and sign at the same time. My sim-com is absolutely shit after a long day, but three-word sentences usually get the point across.

His dark eyes dart to me and, yeah, no. He doesn’t look grateful. He looks more pissed off. ‘I didn’t ask you to.’

‘I know, but?—’

‘No.’ His fingers snap together hard enough I can almost hear it. ‘They can order like everyone else.’

His signs are clipped and sharp, larger than normal, and for some reason, the way he’s silently screaming at me has my dick getting hard.

Having stepped to the side, I see it now. He’s got a menu printed with the signs for each sandwich. And it’s clever—really. It’s amazingly clever. But having done this job for a long, long time, I also know how shit hearing people are at following written ASL.

But he’s said his piece, and I’m not about to butt in again.

The girl in front of me turns to me. “You know sign, right? Can you tell him?—”

“No,” I say. I look up at him, and my interpreter instincts are in high gear. I want to let him know what’s being said. But his jaw ticks like he’s daring me to do it, so I shove my hands into my pockets and shrug. “Just follow the menu.”

She turns back to him, and he taps the menu again.

“Screw this. This is fucking so stupid. Who even lets people like this park here if you can’t accommodate everyone?”

“He is accommodating you. It’s not his fault you’re lazy.”

Her eyes widen as she turns back to me. “Excuse you?”

“You heard me.” I’m not going to fight his battle, but also, fuck that. “You’re on a campus with Deaf teachers.”

“Uh, yeah. Who have translators or whatever,” she says, waving her hand at me.

“Interpreters, actually.”

She huffs at me once more.

‘Let her go.’ I see his hands moving in my periphery, and I turn. He’s deflated and looks less angry than before. I wonder how often this happens. I’m willing to bet he’s got a hearing people bingo card in that truck somewhere. I hope he buys himself something nice when he fills it.

I approach. ‘Am I good to order?’

He taps the menu sign, and I realize they’re all what are probably his own personal name signs for his food. They’re easy enough to follow—I think, and I can feel his eyes on me like a physical touch as I order.

He nods. ‘Drinks?’

I hold up a finger and then pull my phone out to ask Robbie if he wants anything.

Robbie: Arnold Palmer tell him way I like pls ty ily

‘Robbie wants an Arnold Palmer. He says you know the way he likes it.’

Mellie makes a confused noise and repeats Robbie’s sign name and wriggles his finger in question. ‘Who?’

I spell his name, and to my absolute and complete confusion, Mellie throws his head back and lets out the most adorable belly laugh I have ever heard. He’s laughing so hard he holds the side of the cash register, and when he calms down, his eyes are glinting.

He clears his throat, then holds up his hand, and I swear to God, he signs, ‘That’s not the sign name I know. It’s Horny rooster corn.’

“ What ?” I say aloud, then very quickly fix my mistake. ‘What? Who?’

He spells Robbie, then makes the sign name again.

There’s no fucking way that’s my Robbie. I pull up my Marco Polo app and show Mellie the last video Robbie sent me. ‘Him? Horny rooster corn, him?’

Mellie grins at me in spite of the fact that I get the feeling he still doesn’t like me very much. Doesn’t bother me in the least. Kind of like it, to be honest.

‘He didn’t tell you that?’

Well, no. I feel like that’s not the sign name he’s going to be spreading around campus. On campus, he’s Teach, not initialized. I know to his parents he’s got the sweet childhood name sign of an R tapped on his heart.

But horny rooster corn? That’s…next-level.

I try not to laugh. It’s not really fair to Robbie, who isn’t there to defend himself, but still.

I clear my throat. ‘Do you know the way he likes his drink?’

Mellie nods, and his mirth begins to fade from his face like he suddenly remembered he’s talking to me. Whatever I did—I still don’t know what…except, well, that social faux pas where I stepped in it and tried to fix something that wasn’t broken.

‘Your sign is terrible. Terrible hearing accent.’

I know for a fact that’s not true. There’s a reason Robbie has basically wheedled and threatened the college to keep me as his main interpreter, and that’s because I can sign at Deaf speed. I’ve been using ASL since I was four and a half and my cousin moved in with us. He’s the only Deaf one in our family, and no one bothered to learn it, but even as a kid, knee-high to nothing, it didn’t make sense.

‘Sign slower?’ I ask to be a shithead because I know he can understand me just fine.

He grimaces and shakes his head angrily.

‘Faster?’

He sighs and waves me off. ‘Drinks?’

‘Arnold Palmer and a bottle of water.’

He punches the orders into the little order pad probably way harder than he needs to, then points at the little square box where I’m meant to tap my card. He spins the order pad toward me, and the suggested tip is sitting on the screen.

I don’t know why, but I type in the number twenty. It’s kind of a dick move, but while I know I fucked up a little, I’m not going to let it stand, damn it. I will kill him with kindness. And bribery.

I tap my card and pay. I see the moment he notices the tip because his pretty lips part on a soft inhale, and then his dark eyes bore into mine.

I stare back. A challenge.

Do it , I think. Call me out. Get mad.

He turns his back, effectively turning off all communication. My whole body deflates, and it’s only then I realize that I’m worked up and hard behind the zipper of my jeans. Luckily, they don’t show anything, but I adjust myself as discreetly as I can and make a mental note to grill Robbie on everything I possibly can about Mellie the Deaf Chef.

You know, for science.