He blinked. "You know how to cook?"
"How hard can it be?"
"Joel." He was looking at me differently now. "You don't have to. I'm offering."
"And I'm saying I've got it." The edge in my voice surprised us both. I didn't know why I was pushing back. I just knew that I couldn't stand here and let him take care of me, couldn't be the one who needed handling while he did the work.
Red held up his hands. "Okay. It's all yours."
Red went to explore the house. I sat on the couch with my phone and opened the grocery delivery app.
Categories lined the top of the screen: Produce. Dairy. Meat. Bakery. The cursor blinked at me from the search bar, waiting for input.
I had no idea what to type. I hadn't thought about what to eat in over a decade.
Red was an athlete. He needed protein. I added chicken breast, then paused. Did he like chicken? I'd never seen him eat chicken. I'd been sleeping with him for years and I didn't know what he ate for dinner.
I added salmon instead. Everyone said fish was healthy.
Vegetables: broccoli, spinach, and three pounds of avocados because I didn't know how many two people went through in a week. Eggs, pasta, rice, bread, olive oil, garlic, onions. I had no plan for any of it.
I hit order anyway.
The groceries arrived an hour later. Red helped me unpack them, and I watched his face as he pulled items out of the bags.
"That's a lot of avocados," he said.
"I didn't know how many we'd need."
"For four days?" He lined them up on the counter, and I winced. I’d ordered eight avocados. "We'd have to eat two a day."
"They're healthy."
"They're going to go bad." But he was smiling. "It's fine. We'll make guacamole."
I didn't know how to make guacamole. I didn't say that.
Red kept unpacking. He put things in the refrigerator and the pantry like he'd done this a thousand times. He probably had. He'd kept his father alive for years on meals he'd planned and cooked himself, while I'd been eating out of containers someone else prepared.
"So," Red said, closing the refrigerator. "Salmon tonight?"
"I'll handle it."
"Joel." He leaned against the counter, arms crossed. "I told you, I can cook. It's not a big deal."
"And I told you I've got it."
He studied me for a moment, and I didn't like what I saw in his face. It wasn't annoyance or frustration. It was patience, and underneath that, understanding.
"Okay," he said. "I'll be in the other room if you need me."
He left. I stood alone in the kitchen with my salmon and my eight avocados and absolutely no idea what to do next.
I opened drawers until I found a knife, then more drawers looking for a cutting board. I pulled up a recipe on my phone. Simple enough: season, heat pan, cook four minutes per side. I'd landed quad Lutzes in international competition. I could cook a piece of fish.
The pan was too hot. I knew it the moment the salmon hit the surface, the sizzle too aggressive, smoke already rising. I reached for the dial and my hand caught the pan handle, knocking it sideways. The salmon slid across the surface and landed half in the pan and half on the burner.
Smoke billowed up, and the smoke detector started shrieking.
