“Fine, yes.”
He didn’t need to look up to know she was smiling even bigger now.
“Neighborly of you,” she said, and he couldn’t justhearthe grin in her voice. It was like he could feel it, like she had her mouth pressed right against his chest.
It wasn’t neighborly of me, he wanted to say.It was something else of me.Not rash, not reckless, not selfish. But not neighborly, either.
“It was nothing,” he said, finally working up the courage to look at her again.
She rolled her eyes, flicked her braid over her shoulder. “I brought a thank-you gift. It’s only one serving, because I didn’t want it to seem like a threat.”
He breathed out a laugh. “Is it more of those cheesy bacon potatoes?”
Her face fell. “Oh. No. This is something I made.”
His eyes dropped to the package again. He had no guesses as to what could be in there, didn’t even really know if Nora was any kind of cook, but suddenly he felt hungrier than he had all day.
Than he had in two weeks, two days.
“I didn’t really like those potatoes,” which was half a lie. He liked them fine, when there weren’t ten pounds of them. He just wanted to know what Nora had made him.
“It’s manicotti. Homemade sauce. My nonna—”
He held out his hand, beckoned for the dish. “Lemme try it,” he said impatiently.
She clutched it tighter. “You can’t eat in aparking lot.”
He furrowed his brow. He’d eaten a lot of food in this parking lot. Last night when he’d gotten off his shift he’d shoved an entire hunk of stale corn bread from the cafeteria into his mouth before unlocking his bike. He was still chewing when he’d pedaled away. He hadn’t even tasted it.
“This is my best dish. You can’t disrespect it like that! This is a tablecloth kind of meal.”
She had this look in her eyes, one he recognized—thewhat a nice houseplant, here’s a laurel wreath, I found you some kittenslook. Part mischief, part triumph. He’d missed that look. If he had a lapel, he’d probably be smoothing it.
“Is that right?” he said, then shrugged. “I don’t have a tablecloth.”
She traced the tip of her finger over the loopy, colorful fabric of the package, and that—that was even more dangerous than the grin. He felt that finger’s path in the kind of way that was going to make for a very uncomfortable bike ride home, unless he got control over himself.
She blew out a gusty, exaggerated sigh. “Well I don’t know what to tell you then,” she said. “It’s a shame you won’t be able to en—”
“I’ve got an idea,” he interrupted, and she practicallybeamedat him.
Rash, reckless, selfish, that stubborn voice said to him, but he was so hungry—for her food, for that smile, forher—that at the moment, he couldn’t make himself care. And anyway, it’s not like his idea was to take her back to the building. This was different; this was separate.
This was safe.
“Let’s go,” he said.
In a pinch, the jacket he had stuffed in his backpack made for a fine tablecloth.
It wasn’t the first time he’d had an impromptu sort of picnic in this spot, one of his favorites in the city—a stretch of beach that only took him about twenty-five minutes to get to on his bike, a route along Lakefront Trail that made for a good workout. Every once in a while, he’d stop here, sweaty and pleasantly out of breath from his ride, lock up his bike, and walk to one of the expanses of smooth, tiered concrete. He’d sit and unwrap some half-smashed sandwich he’d forgotten to eat during the day, staring out at a spot on the horizon and letting his mind empty and his belly fill before riding the rest of the way home.
But with Nora here, everything felt different.
In the first place, there was no need to lock up his bike—it was stowed away in the back of Nora’s car, the front wheel off to make it fit. In the second, Nora had no use for tiered concrete, not when she saw the open stretches of pale sand, warm from a day beneath the bright sun. And in the third, Nora—the maker of the best meal Will had ever tasted, sauce like a religious experience—liked to look ateverything. The whole expanse of water, the city skyline, the boat slips, the sparse pockets of people gathered in different spots along the beach.
And because Will liked to look at Nora, he saw it all anew.
In between bites of food, that is.
