"Story hour's a start," Jason adds. "But it can't just be big gestures. It has to be the small stuff too. The boring stuff. Showing him you want him, not just the idea of him."
I think about Toby clutching that ridiculous cat cardigan like it was the only thing keeping him together.
"Thursday," I say. "We'll start Thursday."
Chapter 17
Toby
Tuesday afternoon. I'm curled up on the couch grading essays from the youth writing workshop—"What I Want to Be When I Grow Up"—when there's a knock at the door.
"Robin, use your keys!" I call, not looking up from a particularly creative essay about becoming a dragon veterinarian. The kid has included detailed salary expectations and a benefits package. I'm genuinely impressed.
Another knock.
I sigh, marking my place with a sticky note, and pad over to the door. Robin probably has his hands full with catering supplies again. He's been stress-baking even more than usual since everything happened, which means our freezer is stuffed with cookies and our counter is a rotating display of experimental tarts.
I open the door to find no one there.
But there are grocery bags. Nice ones—the reusable kind from that expensive organic place downtown that I've only been inside once. And flowers. Huge sunflowers in a glass vase, so bright and cheerful they almost hurt to look at.
The sound of a motorcycle engine makes me look up.
Knox is at the edge of the parking lot, straddling his bike. He's too far away for me to read his expression, but he raises one hand in a small wave.
Then he drives off before I can react.
I stand there in my doorway, barefoot, staring at the space where he was.
"What the fuck?"
The grocery bags are heavy. It takes two trips to get everything inside, and by the time I'm done, my kitchen counterlooks like a magazine spread for people who have their lives together.
There's cheese—the expensive kind from that place Robin's always talking about, the one that ages everything in actual caves. Three different kinds of salami. Fresh fruit that's clearly in season and definitely didn't come from a regular grocery store. Olives in a glass jar with a fancy Italian label. Fig jam. Crackers that Robin loves, the specific brand he has to drive across town to get. Two bottles of wine that I'm afraid to google because I'm pretty sure they cost more than my weekly grocery budget.
And gelato. A pint of stracciatella from that place across town—the one Robin took me to for my birthday last year, the one we said we'd go back to but never did because it's so far away. That I mentioned in passing.
I stand there staring at all of it, trying to figure out what I'm feeling.
He remembered. All of this—the cheese I mentioned once while we were cooking dinner, the crackers Robin grabbed from the cabinet, the gelato I said was the best I'd ever had—he remembered. He was paying attention when I thought he was just waiting to get me into bed.
The sunflowers watch me from the counter, aggressively cheerful.
I pull out my phone before I can talk myself out of it.
You can't buy my forgiveness with cheese.
The response comes immediately, like he was waiting:Not trying to. Just wanted you to eat something nice.
This is like $300 worth of "something nice"
Is it nice though?
I look at the spread on my counter. At the sunflowers. At the gelato that's going to melt if I don't put it in the freezer soon.
It's nice.
Good. Enjoy it.
