It's Not About You by Olivia Reid

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    The air was chilly and the sky overcast. The weather said 50% chance of rain in the evening though the sky was blue when we finally left the house. Kyle's car was gone, so I assumed he was at the gym as usual. Michael drove my car to his place, with me dressed in jeans, sneakers, a tee shirt of The Walking Dead and very little make-up.  
    The whole drive we never stopped talking about things we both liked and things we didn't. I was an avid reader, of both fiction and non fiction. He preferred non-fiction, mostly biographies. But when he was a kid he devoured Science Fiction. We both loved movies, though he did admit he was more an action-adventure fan.  
    Food was easy. He was attracted to the fact I could cook and that somehow it had become an art for me. It wasn't so much an art as zen. "When I cook it's like…I have the ability and knowledge to bring so many things together to create tastes and experiences," I said as he turned down a side street off Peachtree Industrial. We were close to Lenox Mall where the housing value tripled. He was renting down here?  
    "My mother used to tell me cooking was a science, that you had to know the basic alchemy in order to build flavors on." He turned the car down another street where the houses were not as large but much older. Classic two stories and ranch styles.  
    "Your mother is right. She like to cook?"
    "She was a chef in her day. Cooked at some of the nicest restaurants in Washington and Oregon. She lives in Seattle now, in one of those cool little communities that grow their own vegetables." He winked as he slowed the car and turned into a drive way. "Kinda hippy that way."  
    I was going to say there was nothing wrong with growing your own vegetables. It was something I'd been thinking of doing for about a year, but I didn't like bugs and my back yard sometimes had an over zealous family of possums living under the shed.  
    And we can't forget the howler monkeys.  
    The house we stopped at was ranch style. One I knew as Cape Cod, with a walkway from the drive and a porch, complete with rocking chairs. The house was red brick with white trim. The lawn was excellently groomed and the grass smooth. I wanted to take my shoes off and run through it, but it was a little too cold for me.  
    I didn't see another car so I pointed to the closed garage. "Your car in there?"  
    "I don't have a car." He grinned again as he held out his hand. I took it and he lead me to the front door. "The house actually belongs to a college friend, but he and his wife are in Germany for two years. His wife works for the CIA. I don't know what she does and frankly I don't think I want to know. But it pays well and when he found out I was moving to Atlanta, he offered me the house rent free. I just have to make it lived in and maintain it."  
    "You're doing a great job with the front yard."  
    He blew a razzberry. It was cute! "Nah…that's a service he pays for." Michael unlocked the door and moved in quick. I nearly ran into him as he stopped and pressed numbers into a keypad just inside. "Sorry…security. I've already screwed that up twice and he gets charged for false alarms."  
    I moved inside with my jaw dragging on the floor. The place looked like something out of Southern Living Magazine. Marble foyer with a small but beautiful stained glass lamp beside what looked like an antique table. Michael threw my keys into the bowl beside another set of keys and took my hand.  
    "Don't worry about the keep-off feel of the furniture. It wears off after a while." He pointed to the living room and its beige, green and gold furnishings. "I didn't even go in there for two weeks after I moved in."  
    "It's beautiful."  
    "The whole house is like this. Chelsea—that's his wife—likes to decorate in her spare time."  
    We passed a modern, stainless steel kitchen, a small office with a seriously geeked out gaming system and leather couch, and two fully furnished spare bedrooms.  
    The