“Bacon and eggs,” Nimble said, standing up, yawning, running his fingers through his hair, and, of all things, raising his T-shirt to scratch his bare belly.
“What? Bacon and eggs?” Morgan looked away, focusing on the window as if he meant to pull the blinds open and had not just been witness to a very personal moment.
“Your groceries,” Nimble said. “I put them away, but don’t you know what you bought?”
“Three old geezers took over my shopping, and it was a whirlwind,” Morgan said. “I’ll start the coffee.”
He turned toward the kitchen with more eagerness than he’d experienced in a while. He’d been living off airplane food, funeral food, salty snacks, and coffee, along with one memorable pancake breakfast at the Laughing Fork that his lawyer had treated him to. Otherwise, he’d not felt much like cooking or eating, and now his sweats hung off him and his brace needed tightening because he’d lost muscle around his knee.
Nimble scampered past him into the kitchen and pulled up the blinds behind the sink.
Beyond the window was a relentless white that pushed against the glass as if it wanted him to forget there had ever been a world without snow. But he was tugged from those thoughtswhen Nimble turned on the water, took a breath, and shoved his head beneath the flow.
Sputtering, he rubbed his face and used his finger to scrub at his teeth. Then, eyes clenched, he stood up and fumbled to shut off the faucet.
Without a word, Morgan reached over, standing close enough to get flecked with cool water as he took a kitchen towel, hopefully clean, and placed it in Nimble’s damp hand.
“There you go,” he said, not expressing his dismay at the amount of water now on the floor—that, or the fact that there was now a vast triangular wet patch on Nimble’s T-shirt, the cotton so thin Morgan could see Nimble’s ribs. The twitch of his skin, nipples hard from the cold. “You could have taken another shower, you know.”
“I’ll take you up on that in a bit.”
Morgan turned away and focused on the coffee ritual, glad to have that to think about. Rather than the eyeful Nimble made.
He didn’t check to see what Nimble was doing. Was that foolish? Nimble was a stranger, after all.
But when Morgan did look, Nimble was peering out the window at the storm, pushing his damp, spiky hair back from his forehead. Not awake, but always aware of where he was, slouched against the counter, insouciant, making himself at home.
“Here,” Morgan said, pouring coffee into two white china mugs. “Sugar’s on the table; can you grab the milk from the fridge?”
Nimble hopped to comply, water scattering from his hair and dripping on his skin. He placed the milk near Morgan’s hip with a shiver that he didn’t seem to notice.
Then he went to the farm table, sat down, and dumped spoonful after spoonful of sugar from the blue-and-white bowlinto his coffee, so much that it might have turned into coffee-flavored syrup.
He drank it that way, black and sweet, cupping his hands around the mug to warm them, looking at Morgan with happy eyes. “This is the life, eh?” he said, smacking his lips.
“It’s just coffee,” Morgan said, though grousing about it seemed to take more energy than simply enjoying the moment. Morgan sat down as well and doctored his coffee more slowly: a little sugar, some milk. He took a sip. It was hot, which was good on such a cold morning.
“Wait till you try making coffee in an old metal coffee can over a fire in a barrel on a moving train.”
“You never did that,” Morgan scoffed, reminded, with some surprise, how nice it was to have someone to talk to while he woke up.
“Sure did.” Confidence beamed from Nimble’s green eyes. “Can I make those eggs now?”
With a sigh, Morgan made a go-ahead gesture. He wasn't used to eating breakfast these days, though he supposed he should eat.
Nimble whistled softly as he got eggs and bacon out of the fridge and opened the wrapping around the loaf of bread.
If someone had ever told Morgan that he’d be grateful to be stuck inside with a near-perfect stranger during a blizzard, he would have called that person crazy or, at the very least, a liar. Yet there he was a little while later, having stumbled through a shower and a shave, sitting down to a breakfast of fried eggs, bacon, and toast across the table from Nimble, who might have been a serial killer in his other, train-hopping life, but probably wasn’t.
As they ate, he listened to the wind howl, the snow spitting against the glass, the cold oozing through the single panes, grateful that nobody would be showing up at the store, at leastfor a while. Mabel and her dog wouldn’t come by like an army general and her attaché to check on Morgan, judging whether or not he’d gotten the feed and grain up and running like it should be.
He watched Nimble inhale the breakfast that he’d so efficiently and joyfully prepared, pleased that except for the unearthly sounds the storm was making, he could get a little peace and quiet. Less hustle, no bustle, and breakfast made for him by an unlikely cook.
When he’d shown up yesterday, Nimble hadn’t looked like he knew the meaning of hot water and soap, yet there he was, after his own quick shower while Morgan guzzled a second cup of coffee, having cleaned up very well.
Morgan couldn’t stop looking at his freckles, the plane of his jaw, the dimple in his left cheek.
As well, Morgan could see the bones beneath Nimble’s skin, as though he sometimes went without enough to eat—and now that Morgan thought about it, it was so plainly true it made him pause as he chewed a piece of bacon. There was only one piece left on the serving plate, and he wondered if they should split it. As if there weren’t more in the fridge, just waiting to be fried up.
