I eyeball her.
She’s watching me right back with an expression that’s somehow both mulish and resigned, which I interpret to meanshe’s thinking she’d rather challenge me to see who can pack boxes of books faster.
Don’t ask me what my feelings are doing right now.
Finding a woman who thinks it’s fun to challenge me?
And knowing that this exact challenge will help her leave?
Justfuck.
“There’s an ice pack in the freezer, and I would be incredibly grateful if you could get it for me,” she finally says as she lowers herself all the way to the floor.
“Would it be better if I wait for the snow to start, collect it, and make you a homemade ice pack with it?”
Sweet Pea looks at me and growls again.
But Goldie—Goldie smiles through the other faces she’s making while she scoots herself around so she’s lying on the floor. And not any smile.
This is a glowing, unabashedly amused smile.
Which she turns on my dog. “You aresucha good dog, Sweet Pea.”
Sweet Pea pants at her adoringly.
“She says you are too,” I interpret.
And then I open Goldie’s freezer.
And realize I’m an absolute dumbass.
It’s full.
It’s fuckingfull.
But does it have the frozen turkey from last year’s Thanksgiving turkey sale that my father always insisted we get two of, even though Mom would only cook one and the other would get frostbite before she cooked it, too, the next October to make room for the new year’s turkeys? Does it have backup ice trays to the ice maker? Does it have freezer meals of undetermined origin frosted over on the edges of the packages?
No.
No, it’s got over a dozen large baggies with half-eaten cookies.
From Freckle Cookies.
“Don’t look in my freezer,” Goldie says from the floor.
“I have to get your ice pack out of the freezer.”
“Don’tjudgemy freezer.”
She’s flung an arm over her face like she doesn’t want to watch my face have reactions to her cookie hoarding, but she twists andack!s when Sweet Pea licks her armpit, and then grimaces again in pain.
Watching her hurting is breaking my soul.
But I stuff down the worry and say something far more expected thanI will do anything to make you feel better. “You’re lying to your old lady friends.”
“What do my friends have to do with anything?”
“They said you love these cookies. Specifically the peanut butter cookies.”
