“I don’t know what you usually eat, but I picked up ingredients to make pasta. If you have any allergies, let me know and I’ll adjust.”
She looks at me with a surprised expression, and I’m not sure whether it’s the cooking that catches her off guard, but I find myself slightly flustered at the counter.
I set the pasta down and drag a palm slowly down my face.
“Help me out here, Amalia, because I don’t know what I’m doing either,” I say, keeping my voice low. “I don’t know how I’msupposed to act or what counts as normal, but I know I want you to feel comfortable around me.”
I feel her body press against mine, and in the same low register, she answers.
“I like pasta, I’m allergic to honey, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do either, so let’s find the right algorithm for both of us, okay?”
I nod, and we both start working on the food. Amalia takes over chopping the vegetables; I put the water on and prep the meat.
At some point I hear her exhale, and when I see the tears running down her face from the onion she’s cutting, something tightens in my chest.
“Let me take that.”
“I can handle chopping an onion, Silas,” she tells me, sniffling, tears still rolling down her cheeks.
She doesn’t understand that her flushed, tear-streaked cheeks are producing a reaction in me that I’d very much like to stop having.
“I know you can, but it’s making you cry.”
“It’s an onion. That’s what onions do.”
“Then let them do it to me,” I tell her and take it out of her hands.
I feel my own eyes start to water immediately, but when I turn back toward her, her cheeks are already dry and she’s watching me with an amused expression. And the thing I was feeling disappears.
We cook together, and I can’t remember the last time I felt this much contentment beside another person in my own space. We anticipate each other’s next move without thinking, and it feels like having an extension of myself in the kitchen.
When we sit down and I watch her take the first bite, my chest tightens. Again.
“Ay Dios mío,this is incredible, Silas.”
I smile, and through dinner she tells me about her day and I tell her about mine. She laughs when I mention that Rodolfo argued with me over a percentage calculation only to conclude with“mathematics is relative.”It never has been, but I let him keep that impression. She tells me about her meteorology programming project, and I realize at some point that I’ve stopped eating and I’m just listening, completely absorbed.
She’s so lit up by what she’s working on, by every detail that has to fall into place to get the result she wants, and all I can think about is how I could make sure she always has that kind of excitement about a project.
After we clear the table, we settle in: me in the armchair, her on the couch beside me. She takes a sip of her hot chocolate and then frowns at the mug.
“Is this the same one from yesterday?” she asks, and I try to work out whether that’s irritation or not.
“No, it’s a different brand. It’s supposed to be creamier, according to the description.”
For a few seconds she just stares at me, and I try to figure out what could have possibly caused that reaction.
“You got a different brand?” she whispers, and her eyes go glassy.
Fuck. What if the one from yesterday was her favorite?
“You mentioned yesterday that it seemed too thin, so I thought I’d look for other options...”
Before I finish the sentence, she launches herself at me and kisses me.
It takes my brain approximately one millisecond to move past the fact that she’s in my lap again, and then I kiss her back without any restraint. She tastes of chocolate and cinnamon, and as if acting entirely on their own, my hands find their way underthe sweater she’s wearing, palms flat against the skin of her back, pulling her closer.
She’s so soft, so warm, that I have to remind myself not to hold on too hard.
