SS 115
" I think we went a little overboard" Maya commented as she packed the few cupboards in Josh's shabby kitchen with the snack food and canned goods they had picked up at the grocery store.
" Hey! No one knows how long this storm could last! We could be stuck here all week"
May sighed " one can dream" she muttered as she placed the final bag of pretzels into the bursting cupboard and she pushed it shut, hoping it would latch and not all come tumbling out on her head.
" I'm grateful for the break. Campus being closed is the best thing to come out of this thing"
After the state of emergency was declared from the storm, both Hudson and Columbia had closed their campuses in order to aid in keeping people off the streets and out of the elements. According to the news, the storm was slated to be one of the largest and longest dumps of snow in the city's history, and after the mild winter, spring had been seemingly on the way. No one had been prepared for the sudden cold snap and weather change. The city's plows weren't prepared for the sudden on slot.
Having packed away the groceries, Maya turned her attention to the stove. She pulled out the storage drawer at the base of the oven, wincing at the squealing sound it made, and unearthed the old soup pot Amy and Alan had passed down to their youngest son.
" I thought I was in charge of lunch?" Josh asked teasingly. Maya rolled her eyes at him.
"Don't think you're off the hook. I've just decided to be a nice girlfriend and lend you a hand" she stated as she placed the pot on one of the stove's two working elements.
"You're going to be my sous chef?"
" Ha! No. I'm the captain of this boat. You're the deck hand. "
" Any reason you decided to jump to the ship metaphors from the kitchen rank?" Josh asked teasingly as Maya pulled out a cutting board.
"Don't make me rescind my generous offer to help" Maya warned, pulling a knife from the block on the counter and pointing it at Josh with a dramatic flare.
"Alright, drop the knife, tough stuff" He teased.
"Fine. You can do all the chopping then" she declared, sliding the cutter board and knife she had just pulled out across the tiny amount of clear counter space and in Josh's direction.
"What are we putting in this thing anyway?" Josh asked, watching as Maya pulled open the pitifully small apartment sized fridge and drug around in the crisper.
"Anything and everything" Maya replied, her head still in the fridge.
"So there's no recipe or?" Josh prompted. Maya rolled her eyes, pulling back from the fridge with her arms full.
" It's soup. We don't need a recipe" She defended, tossing a few stock of celery and two large carrots towards Josh. Not expecting the flying vegetables, Josh almost fumbled the throw.
"We just throw in anything we have, add water and seasoning and boom you've got soup. It was kind of my moms go to for dinners for the end of the month when money was tight, you can really make soup stretch, but we always had so much fun making it I didn't care. Sometimes she'd bring home leftovers from the restaurants and we'd end up with the most obnoxious combinations but it was somehow always good"
Maya smiled to herself at the memory before shaking it out for her head and getting back to the task at hand. She didn't want to get caught up in a rush of memories and emotion. She's done too much of that lately.
"So we just?" Josh asked, gesturing to the small pile of carrots that he's just chopped.
"Throw it on it" Maya replied, referring to the ancient soup pot on the stove.
….
Some while later Maya stood proudly over her softly simmering pot of soup. The pieces of carrots, celery and potato floated in the pale yellow broth tinted by the paprika and cayenne pepper that she dashed in liberally. Josh had been aghast at her lack of use of a measuring spoon having grown up with Amy as a mother who lived and breathed by the recipes on the pages of Good Housekeeping and A Taste of Home.
"You know, now i'm kind of mad at Sasha again" Josh joked as he pulled down two soup bowls from his small cupboard of dishware.
Maya narrowed his eyes at him, completely confused by this statement.
"Because if you two had never made up you'd probab;y be living here, and we could do this all the time"
Maya smiled softly at him. " Oh you'd get sick of me too. You'd be dropping me off on my dads doorstep within the month" She teased.
"Haha" Josh said with exaggeration. "Not likely" he stated, wrapping an arm around Maya's waist, pressing a kiss to her hair before passing her the soup bowls.
"You don't know how annoying I can be" Maya pressed, laddeling healthy portions of soup into both their bowels and passing one to Josh.
"Bro we spend the vast majority of our time together. I think I'm pretty well versed in all your so-called annoying traits" Josh carefully carried his soup over to the couch, which they'd mostly reconstructed before they left for the grocery store, although they'd left several blankets piled on the sofa cushions.
"Bro" Maya teased back " You don't know how bad I can be" she replied, bringing her own soup over and taking a seat next to Josh, carefully cradling her soup on her lap.
"Ok, please don't take this as a challenge, but I think I do and you biting your nails off and leaving them on the coffee table, while gross, is not enough to stop me from wanting to live with you"
"I do not do that!" Maya defended herself quickly.
" I literally cleared a pile of them off the table to make that fort last night. You're not winning this one"
Maya wanted to elbow Josh in the side but she knew that would lead to both of them getting covered in scalding hot soup.
"You're just looking for someone to cover half the rent" Maya joked.
"If that were the case i'd be taking Randall up on his offer to split a place." Maya paused.
"Randy asked you to move in with him? When?" Maya asked. Josh shrugged, blowing on a spoonful of his soup.
"He's mentioned it a few times. Our leases are both up this year and he really doesn't want to keep living with that Russian ballet dancer"
"Ok first of all, Antoni is polish and he is super nice!" Maya defended, having met Randalls roommate a few times at different social functions.
"Yeah Antoni is great, but he also works out at 4 am every morning and takes over their kitchen juicing celery, and Randall is way too polite to ask him to tone it down"
"So are you going to do it? Move in with him I mean?" Maya clarified. Josh shrugged.
"That depends"
"On?"
" On if you're going to live in the dorms again next year, or if you want to move in with Riley or live at home or"
"I don't have an answer to that"
"I know you don't and I'm not asking you for one. I mean this is all months and months away, my lease isn't even up until September"
" I know we've talked about this before, but I didn't know you were still thinking about it."
"Yeah, we have talked about it and I don't want to pressure you into it, but yeah I do think about it and on nights like this it sounds pretty damn good" Maya couldn't help but smile a little to herself.
" But it won't always be like this. It's not always going to be us locked up in a snowstorm"
"I know that, but it's not just times like this. It's just sitting here together doing out homework, or you stealing the covers all night"
Maya opened her mouth to object but Josh pressed on.
"I'm sorry I even brought it up. I don't want to make you uncomfortable or do anything you don't want to do or"
Maya stopped him. She had already put her own bowl of soup on the coffee table and she was reaching out to take Josh's bowl from him. She put the bowl on the table next to hers and then took his hands in hers.
"This is something I want," Maya promised. "I guess there's just a part that's afraid for anything to change. Things work between us. Better than I ever hoped they would. I don't want to ruin it and there's a part of me that's worried that I'm not ready because I am younger than you. I mean my dad and I talked about me not trying to rush things to keep up with you but a part of me feels like I am ready, like we are ready, but I don't want to mess it up."
"You're not going to mess anything up. You spent like 3 out of the 7 nights of the week here anyways. So we up the numbers a bit" Josh teased. Maya rolled her eyes at him.
"I think it's good we're talking about this now. We can spend the next 7 months being as annoying as possible around each other and if in september we still want to be a couple we can move in together" Josh joked.
"It's kind of crazy. We haven't even been together for a year and we're talking about moving in together"
"Yeah, but we've known eachother forever so that doesn't really count does it?"
"I guess not," Maya conceded, bumping Josh's hip with her own.
"Let's eat our soup," Josh suggested.
"Well for the sake of being as annoying as possible I'll be sure to slurp mine"
"In that spirit I'm going to swallow really loud right by your ear" Josh challenged.
" Sure you can do that. But if you do, know that i'll literally never let you touch me again."
"And suddenly I'm not hungry" Josh joked, pulling Maya onto his lap before she could reach for her soup. Maya let out an unexpected laugh before leaning into Josh's kiss.
