Lost & Found

The Mother

She wasn't sure how they ended up in this situation. This wasn't at all what she had intended to happen. Honestly, she had just answered his question and somehow they'd ended up here: sitting in his car outside the restaurant where she was meeting her mother.

Perhaps it was their date a few nights ago that had served as the catalyst; it had been seeping with domesticity, after all. Justin and his wife had been invited to a dinner party and Jessamine had made herself scarce for the evening so that Tyler and Cassie could get some alone time.

He had offered to cook dinner for her, so she'd sat on the kitchen counter and watched in fascination as he's chopped onions and sautéed vegetables and made a cream sauce for the bowtie pasta.

"How long have you been cooking?" she asked, swinging her legs lightly from the counter top, tilting her head to the side to watch him use a wooden spoon to move the onions and vegetables around the pan.

"Since I was like twelve?" he replied, grinning at her over his shoulder. "Neither of my parents can really cook, but my grandma is amazing, so one day, I wandered into the kitchen while she was cooking us lunch and she put me to work and I just sort of fell in love."

"Do you find yourself critiquing other people's cooking now?" she teased, loving the way his eyes lit up when he talked about his history.

Shaking his head, he lowered the heat of the stove, but continued to move the vegetables around. "Not really, but I do enjoy discovering new recipes and new places to eat. Speaking of which, there's this new Greek place that opened on the pier that's supposed to be amazing. Do you wanna go next week?"

It amazed both of them how easily making plans came into the conversation. Not that Tyler wasn't normally adept at asking people out, but when it came to Cassie, it was as though it was almost assumed that they would be hanging out again in the near future. Though, he supposed now that they were exclusive, that was completely normal.

Still, Tyler hadn't been in a relationship in a while and Cassie wasn't sure she'd ever been in one at all, so everything that was currently happening was a bit overwhelming. They were taking it one day at a time, both avoiding talking about what was going to happen when Cassie went back to school in a week and a half.

"Sounds good," Cassie grinned in response. "When?"

Pursing his lips, he lifted one should as he turned to face her. "Wednesday? I have swim training every day, but Wednesdays are usually less intense because we do weight training."

"I can't Wednesday," she scrunched her nose apologetically. "I'm having dinner with my mom."

Her mother was in town for some sort of work conference and since she knew Cassie was staying with the Copelands, she had asked her daughter to get dinner. Cassie figured it was the least she could do, seeing as she was spending none of her break with her parents.

"That's fine," Tyler shrugged, moving away from the stove to come stand between her legs, his hands automatically coming to rest at her hips. "We can take her too. How come you didn't tell me your mom was in town?"

"I only just found out this morning and-" It took her a moment to process what he had said. "You wanna come to dinner?"

He'd slipped that so casually into his response that he even had a hard time believing he'd said it, but now that it was out there, he supposed there was no turning back. It was strange to think that meeting the parents had literally caused the demise of his last relationship, yet here he was, offering to do that for Cassie. She really had a hold on him and he wasn't entirely sure how he felt about it, but he figured he should at least attempt to be a good boyfriend and meeting her mother would definitely fall into that category, so he shrugged and squeezed her hips lightly. "Yeah, sure, if you want me to."