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I still wasn’t all the way finished.
The floor needed to be done—and I’d been planning on doing that for about six months now—and I was living out of boxes because I hadn’t had a chance to hang the shelves in the closet just yet.
“Did you build this yourself?” she asked, looking around.
“I did mostly everything.” I knocked on the countertops.
They were concrete and I was proud as fuck that I was able to do them all on my own.
“It looks really good,” she said. “When I heard you say one bedroom, I thought it would be like one big, open floorplan. But you have everything here, just in a miniature version.”
I nodded once. “Yep.”
“I really like it,” she said, looking at the colors of the walls.
“I got my mom to pick out the colors,” I admitted. “I wasn’t sure what was in, and if I’d done the picking, everything would’ve been shades of gray. But I’m glad that she chose the beige. It looks great with the exposed wood.”
I was honestly so proud of this tiny cabin. It was the first thing that I’d done completely on my own—well, mostly.
“Good choice,” she said. “What’s next to finish?”
I pointed at the molding in the corner of the room.
“That,” I pointed. “I need to do all of the flooring, then put the molding and the trim up.”
When I glanced at her, she looked almost excited.
“Can I help?” she asked.
I thought about saying yes based solely on the enthusiasm in which she’d injected into the question, but I wasn’t up to doing anything today.
Maybe lying down and dying.
My body was starting to shut down.
Now that I was home, all I could think about was lying in the bed and not moving for at least twelve hours.
Or, more accurately, eight.
I had to work tomorrow, and it was going to suck.
I groaned when I remembered all of my medications in my saddlebags.
“Tomorrow,” I admitted. “When I get home. Maybe if I’m feeling better.”
She instantly looked worried.
“Are you feeling okay now?” she asked.
No, I was feeling like a pile of dog shit, and the longer that the day went on, the worse it was getting.
Tomorrow at work was going to be interesting.
“I’m okay,” I lied. “I’m just tired.”
Lies.
I literally felt like death warmed over.
When I started for the door, she didn’t stop me.
In fact, she didn’t say a word and she didn’t follow me.
When I came back, it was to find her searching through my kitchen.
“What are you looking for?” I asked when I put my things down onto the counter.
She looked over at the multitude of prescriptions and then at me.
“Something to make for dinner,” she admitted. “I thought you might need something to eat.”
I did, actually.
But I didn’t want anything heavy.
Which she proved to understand moments later when she pulled out a couple of packages of Ramen Noodles.
“This good?” she asked.
I nodded, thankful that I didn’t have to have a long-winded conversation.
“Perfect,” I admitted sheepishly. “I’m not all that hungry.”
And Ramen was my favorite.
It was also one of my comfort foods.
I didn’t complain a bit as she made dinner—which came with no mess.
She cleaned as she went, throwing away trash and wiping away splatters of water as the noodles cooked. Hell, she even washed the pot almost immediately after pouring my noodles into a bowl and placing it in front of me.
Everything was spick and span before she sat down to enjoy her almost-cool-enough-to-eat noodles.
I looked at the kitchen, then at her.
“You always clean before you sit down to eat?” I questioned.
She shrugged. “Yes. Then I don’t have to do it afterward. When I was younger, my dad would literally make me stop eating to clean up a mess. And if it was bad enough, he’d make me throw my food away altogether and clean up. I learned to adapt.”
She was beginning to make me hate the guy.
She’d only told me very little about the man, but what I did know about him, I didn’t like.
And, after the phone call I’d listened in on this afternoon, I knew that it was likely I never would.
I stood up and opened the drawer that I kept my chopsticks in, then walked back around to the seat I’d just vacated.
When I was about to sit down, she stared at me and said, “You know how to use chopsticks?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Can you teach me?” she asked.
I’d rather eat my food and fall dead into bed.
But the excitement on her face was contagious, and she wasn’t asking a lot.
So I handed her my pair of chopsticks and went back for another pair.
When I sat down, I carefully taught her how to eat with them, how to hold them, and then thoroughly enjoyed myself as I watched her make a mess.
“This is hard,” she said after about five minutes.
I gave her another pointer and she readjusted her fingers, successfully bringing up one single noodle to her mouth.
