"He found my recipe."
"He asked me where it was. Got here an hour early to make sure he had time to get it right." Robin's expression is complicated—half amused, half something softer. "He was nervous, Jason. Actually nervous. I've never seen Ash nervous about anything."
"I know he's trying."
"Do you want him to try?"
I think about his fingers on my ankle. The way he stayed to watch baking shows he didn't care about. The way he said stay like it mattered. The way he asked questions about chocolate tempering like he genuinely wanted to understand.
"Yeah," I admit. "I think I do."
"Then let him." Robin squeezes my shoulder on his way past. "But make him work for it. He's got a lot of unfucking to do."
I stand in the empty bar for a while after he's gone, looking at the spot where Ash sat. The popcorn bowl is still on the coffee table, a few kernels left at the bottom.
Maybe Robin's right. Maybe he is trying.
Maybe that's enough to try back.
Chapter 8
Ash
The night air hits my face like a slap as I pull out of the bar's parking lot.
Cold. Clear. The kind of night where you can see every star if you get far enough from the streetlights. I don't look up. I keep my eyes on the road, my hands steady on the handlebars, my mind very carefully not thinking about the way Jason's ankle felt under my fingers.
Robin's warning echoes in my head from the porch conversation we just had.Don't fuck this up. He's not like your usual hookups. He actually cares.
I know. That's the problem.
The ride home takes fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes of dark roads and the rumble of the engine and nothing but my own thoughts for company. I take the long way without meaning to—past the high school where I used to skip classes, past the park where I taught Robin to ride a bike after Dad forgot he'd promised to do it, past the diner where Mom used to take us for pancakes on Sunday mornings before everything fell apart.
Memory lane. Literally.
I don't know why I'm torturing myself like this. Maybe because the alternative is going back to that empty house and sitting in the silence and thinking about a lion who makes his own popcorn seasoning and looks at me like I'm worth wanting.
The grocery store appears on my right. Twenty-four hour fluorescent glow, parking lot mostly empty this late on a Thursday night. I should keep driving. I have food at home—probably. Protein bars, at least. Maybe some eggs that aren't expired.
I pull in anyway.
The automatic doors whoosh open and the bright lights make me squint after the darkness outside. Generic music plays from somewhere overhead, designed to fade into the background. A bored teenager is working the single open register, scrolling through her phone.
I grab a basket. Force of habit. Then I stand in the produce section and stare at the vegetables like they've personally offended me.
What do normal people buy at grocery stores?
In the military, food was handled. MREs in the field, mess halls on base, local restaurants when we were somewhere civilized enough to have them. Before that, growing up, Robin and I lived on whatever we could scrounge—cereal eaten dry because we were out of milk, peanut butter sandwiches, the free lunch program at school that was often our only real meal of the day.
I never learned how to shop for one person. Never learned how to cook for myself. Never saw the point when it was just me rattling around in a house that's too big and too quiet.
I pick up a single apple. Put it in the basket. It looks lonely in there, small and red against the beige plastic.
Jason would know what to do with an apple. He'd probably turn it into something incredible—a tart, a sauce, some fancy thing with caramel and spices. He'd talk about it while he cooked, explaining the technique, his whole face lighting up the way it did when he was describing chocolate tempering.
I put the apple back.
The meat section is worse. Everything comes in family packs, bulk sizes, portions meant for multiple people. I stare at a package of chicken breasts—four in a pack, more than I'd eat in a week—and my chest goes tight.
