It gets dark early in the mountains, and soon it becomes pitch black outside.
Lu Zhao cooked dinner.
Xia Yu can't cook. If he were asked to cook, he would almost destroy the kitchen.
But he kept leaning on the sink, crunching his apple. The room was hot, not like winter at all. The collar of his sweater was loose, revealing the ambiguous kiss marks on his neck.
Just now he and Lu Zhao were entangled and kissing on the sofa, and they did everything except the last step.
But at the last minute, Lu Zhao touched his flat belly and said it was time for dinner.
So Xia Yu is a little unsatisfied now, and looks at Lu Zhao with quite resentment.
Lu Zhao, however, seemed to feel nothing and was still staring at the pot with the rigorous attitude of doing an experiment. He didn't know how to cook many dishes, and dinner was very simple, cream stew and fried fish, but it happened to be what Xia Yu liked.
Lu Zhao scooped a spoonful of soup from the pot and handed it to Xia Yu, "Try it."
Xia Yu glanced at Lu Zhao, then lowered his head and drank it. He thought it was not bad, but he asked curiously, "When did you learn to cook?"
Lu Zhao was clearly just like him, a young master who had never done any housework.
"My mother taught me," Lu Zhao said, "a few months before she passed away. She actually couldn't cook, but she knew these two things. Later, she taught me, saying that I could make it for my loved one one day."
And now, his beloved is right beside him.
Xia Yu took a bite of the apple. It was hard to imagine that this was what Lu Zhao's mother would say. Emotionally, she was very similar to the Lu Zhao of the past, as cold and unapproachable as an ice sculpture, without a single soft element.
He asked Lu Zhao curiously, "Has your mother ever done this to your father?"
Lu Zhao glanced at him and said, "Of course not."
His parents' open marriage was well known to everyone. If we were to talk about best friends, his father might be able to compete, but they were never lovers.
Lu Zhao scooped the stew out of the pot. He lowered his head, and the lights in the room and the mountains outside were reflected on his face.
He seemed to remember something and whispered, "But my mother should have done that for my piano teacher."
Xia Yu almost choked on the apple and looked at Lu Zhao in horror. Is this something he can say
But Lu Zhao obviously didn't care.
He put dinner on the table and poured the red wine into a goblet.
He motioned Xia Yu to sit down and casually said, as if chatting, "My mother had been dating my piano teacher since I was very young, and they thought I didn't know."
Xia Yu silently stuffed a bite of food into his mouth. Although he wanted to restrain himself and felt embarrassed to eat the melons of his elders, his eyes were sparkling.
Lu Zhao smiled when he saw this, but he actually didn’t think it was a big deal.
Now that he thinks about it, this might be the reason why he and Xia Yu couldn't communicate all those years ago. He was used to people just playing along and treating sincerity as cheap colorful fragments, so he couldn't learn to cherish Xia Yu's love.
Thinking of this, his expression became more restrained.
He picked up the knife and fork, helped Xia Yu shave off the fish bones, and said, "My piano teacher was still very young at the time, less than 30 years old. If I remember correctly, he actually proposed to my mother. But obviously, my mother would not agree."