Vincent's Thanksgiving Date Read Online Free PDF

a sweet tooth isn’t much of a guess with me.” He bumped into Cory when Cory stopped, and then felt a flutter in his chest as Cory took a moment to sweep a look up from Vincent’s toes to the top of his head.
    “Honey,” Cory said significantly, making Vincent blush at how much it sounded like an endearment, though Cory was of course referring to the cornbread.
    “He wasn’t my boyfriend for long. It was only college.” Vincent had no idea why he had to share that with Cory, but he did. “I wasn’t always this nervous.” That was a lie. He had been, but he’d hidden it better. “Dating used to be easier. Now, well….” He shrugged to sum up years of stress and his mother and being dumped until somehow the anxiety had taken over. 
    Cory stopped to examine a bottle of corn syrup. “This wasn’t the one who was around after you moved in?”
    Vincent stubbed his toe on the cart’s back wheel and nearly dropped his phone. His face flamed hot and Cory put down the corn syrup. “That was…” He couldn’t believe Taylor’s visits had been noticed. “Not a boyfriend. Just a friend.” Who’d slept over sometimes, bringing take out and hurrying to his car in the predawn hours, which Cory clearly knew. He’d probably seen Taylor when he left for work. “He met someone,” Vincent informed Cory stiffly, lowering his head and scratching uncomfortably at his beard. “We’re still friends. Good friends.” Just not ‘spend Thanksgiving together because he had no place else to go’ friends. Vincent wanted a drink. Or every kind of pie.
    “So,” Cory hummed, “you like men who can feed you.” He appeared thoughtful.
    Vincent closed his mouth and put a hand to his glasses, as though they were to blame for what he thought he was seeing, what he was hearing. It felt like flirting. He hoped it wasn’t his imagination, but it had to be. People didn’t flirt with him like that. He could never decide if other men thought he wasn’t worth the effort, or if they thought he wouldn’t appreciate it. It was the glasses. People saw the glasses or heard ‘writer’ and they thought they had to be serious around him.
    He didn’t know what flirting even was anymore. This probably wasn’t it, even if his heart was beating hard in his ears. Cory was likely just curious about the other queer down the hall, or maybe he had plans to set Vincent up with someone he knew.
    Vincent shouldn’t feel so disappointed but of course he’d gotten stupidly excited in only a few seconds at the possibility that Cory might be interested. He gave Cory a blank smile and then took out his phone to frown down at the search screen he’d left it on.
    “I think I’ll make three pies,” he announced, only as half as morosely as he could have done. He would shovel three pies in his face and be done with it. His sister would find him in a pie coma.
    “Three?” Cory echoed in disbelief. “I hope one is for me.”
    That pulled Vincent’s gaze up. There was that tone again, that look. He felt like his heart was going to fly out of his chest. “Really?” he asked quietly, not sure what he was asking. He wasn’t sure of anything today. “Yeah. Yes. What kind did you want?”
    “What are you making?” Cory inched closer, still humming a little as he glanced down at recipe on the screen. “Pumpkin? I love pumpkin flavor almost as much as a white girl.”
    Vincent widened his eyes at the comment, then focused blankly on his phone. “Apple.” He remembered buying apples, in addition to the cans of pumpkin. “Pumpkin. And pecan?” Pecan sounded good.
    “Pumpkin, just for me?” Cory patted his hair. “From scratch or from a can?” he wondered, while still preening, and grinned when Vincent automatically put a hand out to try to hide the cans already in the cart. Then he got jostled by someone trying to reach the shelf behind him, and made an exasperated face at Vincent before he moved out of the person’s way. “This