That’s not why I made this recipe, though. It’s just the easiest thing I know how to make here at home without a screenshot of a recipe on my phone. I can make this dish from memory.
“At least that’s what the internet says,” I continue, shrugging and facing my food.
Out of the corner of my eye I see her take another bite while we sit in silence. I should have told her it was called something else. It’s just…a stupid recipe that’s making me overthink this way too much. My brain though? A fucking traitor, because what if…
Not what if I were to marry her—god, not that fast. Just this flash of her in my space in a way that isn’t temporary. Her laughing at something dumb I say while she’s barefoot in a kitchen that’s ours. Her leaving a mug in the sink like she belongs here. Her looking at me like she already knows the version of me I’m trying so hard not to show.
My chest tightens on reflex.
The old instinct that says:Careful. Careful. Careful.
If she sees it all, she’ll do what everyone does.
She’ll leave.
Yet here I am…letting her fucking in. I don’t let people in. I don’t have people over. I don’t give them the kind of access where they can bruise me without trying.
When I face her again, she’s watching me with that same careful focus she uses when working on her grandparents’ house, like she knows what I’m thinking, and she’s trying not to pry too hard.
We eat in silence for a stretch. It’s not an awkward silence, though. She breaks it when she makes some joke about Nan’s battle with the bushes during filming, and I’m relieved for a different topic of conversation. Then I tell her about the time Levi almost fell through a ceiling because he didn’t think the rotten spot was that big. We both fall intoeasylaughter, and I feelsomething inside me soften in a way that scares me more than any unsafe building structure ever could.
Finishing up the last bite of food on my plate, I stand and round the counter to put my dish in the sink. When I see she’s done, she moves to stand but I stop her by grabbing the plate and putting it with mine.
I take a moment, watching her as she rests her elbows on the island and props her chin in her hands. The two of us with eyes locked on each other and so many things left unsaid.
I feel the shift in mood before she says, “Can I ask you something?”
I smirk. “You already are.”
She rolls her eyes, but her mouth is trembling a little at the corners. “I meant to ask you that night you found me on the stairs outside. But I need to know…” She pauses, fidgeting with her hands. “Why did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Leave,” she says, looking down at her hands on the counter. “That morning in San Francisco, you just…left without a word.”
The kitchen feels smaller all of a sudden.
I could lie. I could make a joke and shrug it off. But I can feel that this is where we draw the line. The place where I decide whether I keep pretending or finally tell her something true.”
“I wanted to wake you up,” I say, my voice low.
Her brows crease. “But you didn’t.”
“I know.”
I scrub a hand over the back of my neck, searching for the words that don’t make me sound like a coward. “I was in San Francisco for two nights. Well, it was supposed to be two nights. Dallas had a meeting with his former team out there, and I was at Between the Buns waiting for him to finish. Never expecting to run into you…” I pause, feeling my body relax. “I had a dozen or so texts on my phone when I woke up in your hotel room that he needed to leave as soon as possible to come back to Bluestone Lakes. And he sent it urgently, pushing through my Do Not Disturb on my phone.” I laugh lightly. “I got dressed and?—”
The memory comes to me so vividly. Her hair splayed across the pillow, and her bare skin was exposed on her back where the covers fell. The only thing on my mind was that there was no way I deserved someone as beautiful and perfect as her.
“I stood there,” I continue. “And I thought, if I wake you I’m going to want to stay. If I stay, I’ll find a reason. And if I find a reason, I’ll start thinking I’m allowed to have something I want just because I want it.”
She stares at me, unspoken words on her face like I just rewired gravity.
“So I did what I’m good at. I left.”
She swallows. “That’s not an answer.”
I force myself to hold her eyes. “It’s the only one I’ve got. I didn’t leave because you didn’t matter, Scottie. I left because youdid.”
