Surprisingly, although Gabe said he was going to bring food, we didn’t return to my apartment after the meeting for me to find a bounty of wonder from The Gladly or The Henry or Culinary Dropout staying warm in my oven.
We came home to the ingredients of tuna casserole, plus garlic bread and the makings of an arugula salad.
It was becoming apparent that, although Gabe very obviously worked hard on maintaining his body, he did not treat it like a temple.
Instead, as he should (IMO), he used his active lifestyle as a way to be able to consume whatever the hell he wanted.
I approved of that.
Wholeheartedly.
(I mean, duh, I was a baker.)
Since I’d practiced my strategy for that evening while I was decorating cakes and cleaning my place, I knew exactly what I was going to say when the time came to say it.
I just needed the right time and the right amount of courage to actually say it.
So Gabe and I cooked.
Yes, together.
Yes, like an old married couple.
We did this while I filled him in about my day (including showing him snaps of the panda cake, which he declared “adorable,” and the bridal shower cake, which he rumbled was “super fuckin’ pretty, you got the touch, babe”—and yes, I buried both of those compliments to take out later, after I’d convinced him we had no business doing this, and I was wallowing in self-pity).
For his part, he shared he went to the gym first thing, but mostly he had a case he was working with Roam and Knox that they saw to, and he got into zero details about that (hmm).
Onward from that, I shared my decision I was going to take a breather and explained how it was not a break.
He shared he thought that was a good idea.
And that took us through the prep of dinner.
It was easy. It was chill. It felt nice.
And in a twisted effort of self-preservation in the face of actions that weren’t even close to that, I ignored how all of it made me feel while it was happening, and after.
Without comment, Gabe rewound to when I fell asleep, and we finished the episode I missed of Shetland while the casserole was bubbling in the oven.
Then we served up and ate it in front of the next episode.
We tidied after that episode, and when Gabe came back to the couch with a fresh beer (oh yeah, and he’d shot me a knowing look I also ignored when he discovered the enlarged cache in the fridge), I unearthed what I’d hidden from him (and myself?) and brought them to the couch.
I handed his to him while his eyes stayed glued to it before I sat on the sofa beside him with mine.
“Devil’s food, strawberry cream filling, and mascarpone icing,” I muttered to explain the cupcake he held in his hand with its excessively swirled mound of frosting. “With freeze-dried strawberry pieces sprinkled on top.”
Slowly, Gabe turned from his cupcake to me.
I shut out the expression on his face and looked away.
“I noticed you liked the strawberries last night,” I mumbled while avoiding his gaze and peeling my cupcake liner back.
“Baby,” he whispered.
I ignored that whisper too and bit into the cupcake.
Damn, I was good.
