“You. Cooking for me. The food being terrible.”
“The pasta was a one-time incident.”
“The pasta was a war crime. And now this chicken has the texture of a legal brief.” I took another bite and chewed for what felt like a full minute. “Do you actually own a meat thermometer?”
“I own a thermometer. I’m not convinced it works for meat.”
“What kind of thermometer is it?”
He paused. “I think it might be for fevers.”
I laughed. Surprised, helpless, the kind of laugh that escapes before you can stop it. And Jack laughed too, and for a moment the weight of everything we’d just said to each other lifted just enough to let air in.
Just enough to remind us that underneath the hurt and the fear and the damage, there were two people who genuinely liked each other. Who found each other funny. Who could sit in the wreckage of a terrible meal and a harder conversation and still find something to laugh about.
“Next time,” I said, “I’m cooking.”
“You burned toast the other day.”
“Toast is different. Toast is adversarial. Chicken is cooperative. You just have to be nice to it.”
“Be nice to the chicken.”
“Treat it with respect. Read it a bedtime story. Don’t abandon it in the oven while you’re having an emotional crisis in the kitchen.”
“That’s very specific advice.”
“I’m a very specific person.”
He smiled, a real smile, tentative but there, and something in the room shifted. Not resolved. Not healed. But breathing.
I kept thinking about what he’d said.You don’t get to wake up one morning and become a different person.He was right. That’s exactly what I’d done—woken up in this body with twenty-seven years of hindsight and started acting like someoneI’d never been at twenty-three. Of course he didn’t trust it. Of course he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The miracle wasn’t that he’d said those things. The miracle was that he was still here, eating terrible chicken with me, trying.
“So,” Jack said, pushing rice around his plate with his fork. “Rebecca.”
I’d been wondering when we’d get to Rebecca. Had been dreading it, if I was honest. “What about her?”
“I keep thinking about something she said. When I ended things.” He set down his fork, staring at the table. “She said, ‘I hope she’s worth it.’ And I’ve been carrying that around for days, because what if you’re not? What if I gave up something good, something easy and kind and uncomplicated, for someone who’s going to disappear on me again?”
The words landed like stones. Not cruel, but honest. The kind of honest that costs something to say.
“Jack—”
“She was good to me, Maggie. She showed up when she said she would. She didn’t make me guess, didn’t cancel plans and then go silent for a week.” He rubbed his face. “And I sat across from her at a nice restaurant and told her I couldn’t stop thinking about someone else. Because apparently I’d rather be miserable with you than content with anyone else.”
I thought about meeting Rebecca on the sidewalk, portfolio case against her hip, telling me not to apologize for being the person he chose. The quiet dignity of a woman who’d been discarded gently and knew it.
“I ran into her,” I said. “A few days ago. On Newbury Street.”
Jack looked up. “You what?”
“She was coming out of a gallery. She recognized me from the grocery store.” I pushed a piece of chicken around my plate. “She told me not to waste it. Whatever you and I are building, she said don’t waste it.”
He was quiet for a long moment.
“She would say that,” he said finally. “She’s a better person than either of us.”
