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“I remember that face. It’s the same one you used to give me when we were partnered up for chem lab. I know you’re judging me.”

“This is not my judgment face,” he says, turning off the heat on the stovetop.

“Yeah, then what kind of face is it?” I ask.

He moves the pan filled with the fluffiest scrambled eggs I’ve ever seen to a wooden trivet, and then he stares straight into me. His pale blue eyes have turned almost oceanic. Maybe it’s just the lighting. I feel my body flush at this prolonged eye contact. I’m too close to the oven, I assure myself, as his long dark lashes flutter ever so slightly.

“Wanna grab two glasses for all that wine, or is your plan to just drink the entire thing yourself, straight from the bottle?” he asks, breaking the silence.

“See, you were judging me!” I exclaim, practically grateful to be arguing with him again. The silence was…charged?

“I can wholeheartedly confirm that I am not judging you.” The timer on his phone goes off and Henry uses a towel to remove the baking sheet from the oven. The competent gleam in his eyes makes my stomach flip, and I reason that I must be hungrier than I thought if my mind is playing tricks on me like this.

* * *

We take the breakfast nachos and the wine back to our room, sitting on the floor as we dive in. I rip open two Lactaid pills, and I feel instantly better once I’m eating. Everything in the kitchen was just a fluke. Hangriness is definitely a thing, and clearly hunger makes you feel things that aren’t real.

That’s all that was.

“David, uh,” Henry says, slowly testing the waters.

It’s so weird to hear him say my dad’s name. Mom and Hannah are the only people I really ever talk about him with, and with them, he’s always just Dad. I look up at Henry, taking a sip of wine, desperate to hear what he has to say.

“David,” he starts again, “taught me how to make scrambled eggs.”

My eyes search his face for further explanation.

“I was maybe eleven or twelve,” he continues. “David came back from a run and saw me sitting on the porch, waiting for you to come back from dance class, I think. He invited me inside, said he was gonna cook some food. Asked if I knew how to make eggs.”

Henry is looking down at his plate, but I can tell he’s smiling.

“Of course I didn’t know how to make eggs, I didn’t know anything. He took out the whole carton and cracked an egg one-handed. I couldn’t believe it. He tried to show me, but I dropped the first one right on the floor. No problem, Hen, he said to me. He wasn’t mad. He just wiped it up and we tried again. Let’s start with the basics. One simple crack, and then two thumbs open it up. When that one actually made it into the bowl with his perfectly cracked one, he showed me how to whisk them together, how much to season them. Then he made sure I watched carefully as he moved the spatula around, handing it over to me to finish up. Now you’ve got yourself a true staple in the kitchen, he said to me when we were finished.”

Henry finally looks up at me.

“He was the best,” he says simply. “I think about him every time I make breakfast.” There’s a twinge of regret, of deep hurt in his voice as he clears his throat.

Henry and Kristine were a complete family unit. She picked out the sperm donor from a giant binder, and that was that. She wanted a kid, and after she broke up with a serious girlfriend, she decided she would make her dreams of a family happen with or without a partner. Kristine and Henry were always a team, and I knew he never felt anything lacking. But hearing him talk about my dad in such a warm and loving way makes me feel a pull in my sternum.

Our friendship ended the day my dad died. I avoided Henry at the funeral and shiva for my own sake. I’m the one who lost her dad; I never thought about how it might have affected Henry. But now the pain is so clearly etched on his face. Another person who misses him like I do.

“I didn’t know that,” I say quietly, because it’s all I can muster. My dad’s been gone for nine years. I never thought I was going to get a new story about him this far down the road. A new thing to know about him. Henry’s given me a gift. I feel a swell, too much all at once. I can’t crack myself open and be vulnerable with him like this. I can’t handle it.

“About that day—” Henry starts, but he must see the panic on my face.

It’s dangerous to be this familiar with Henry. I know that.

So I deflect.

“The eggs could use a touch more salt.”

I hold my breath, waiting for his reaction, hoping he’s giving me permission to change topics. A heavy sigh of relief escapes from me when a huge smile spreads across Henry’s face. He shakes his head, and I take another big sip of wine.

“You’re impossible,” he tells me. But he’s still smiling. Over the last few days, I’ve gotten plenty of smirks from him, but I haven’t seen this smile in so long. A faded imprint on my heart. I want to memorize it.

“So tell me what your life is like,” I ask, my mind chanting deflect deflect deflect.

“My life? I work in commercial real estate. I just moved out of an apartment I lived in with three other guys and into my own place.”