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"Cabbage is never necessary," I insisted, pulling back to reach for my coffee.
"Take to bed for a week again, and it will be," he warned as he turned to unpack his bag.
I watched him as he moved confidently around my kitchen, realizing with a detached kind of amusement that he had actually rearranged my cabinets, not quite able to make my mind comprehend what he had just so casually said.
If I took to the bed for a week again.
Like he expected to be around to see if that happened.
Like if it did happen, he would be there to force disgusting cabbage soup into me.
Why?
Yeah, that was a good question.
I didn't have an answer to it either.
Who the hell, when they could have their pick of any woman, would choose someone as prickly as me?
A crazy person, that's who.
But a little voice was saying that maybe, just maybe, his kind of crazy was exactly the kind I needed.
"What's up, Lenny?" he asked, back to me.
"Just... trying to catch up with my thoughts," I confessed.
"Such as?"
"Such as I vaguely remember telling my mother that I hoped she died alone."
There was a pause. "You did say that. And more."
I nodded even though he wasn't looking. "I meant every word."
He looked over his shoulder at me. "I know you did."
My lips curled up into a smirk even though the last thing in the world I felt like doing when I said this was smiling. "Does that make you think less of me?"
"Because you rightfully hate your mother? No, Lenny. I think she earned every word of your little speech. And I think she will quickly forget you ever said any of it. She seems about as self-realized as a fucking goldfish."
"Don't insult goldfish," I demanded, making him turn back again, giving me a smile.
"It's nice seeing you be you again," he told me, and the sincerity in his words almost made me feel the need to walk over to him, and throw my arms around him.
Almost. I managed to keep that bizarre as fuck urge between me and my clearly fucked up little brain.
"Well, I, ah," - Was stammering? What the fuck was wrong with me? "I'm glad to not be a pathetic sack anymore too," I said, attempting levity, but it was clear Edison didn't care for my choice of words.
He put down the potato he was holding, then moved across the kitchen toward where I was leaning against my couch, snagging my chin. "You are not a pathetic sack. You know how I know that?" he asked, waiting for me to shake my head which was all I could manage with his eyes so intense on me. "Because you could never be pathetic, Lenny. You went through some shit. You let yourself fucking feel it for a change. There's nothing pathetic about that. Got it?"
It wasn't rhetorical.
He wanted an answer from me.
"I got it," I agreed, feeling my belly do a little flip-flop thing that was both exciting and somehow scary at the same time. Like the drop you get from the first downward pitch of a rollercoaster.
Hell, maybe that was what was happening.
I was in a cart that had been inching its way up a track for so long, maybe without realizing just how high up I was getting, and this was the moment I realized where this was leading, what was happening, I was flying into it with nothing to do to slow me down, to stop me.
Falling.
How was that even possible?
Me.
Cold, shriveled-hearted me.
There shouldn't have been room enough for that.
Hell, with Letha's passing, there shouldn't have been anything left. She was all that ever resided in my chest, in that thing called a heart. She was it. Ever.
No one had even come close to getting in there.
It should have gone in the ground with her.
It shouldn't still be in my chest, beating away, reaching out for someone else.
Maybe it was just the grief, just the gratitude for not having to go through it alone.
Maybe it had nothing to do with anything, just a trick of the brain.
Or, at least, as he moved away from me to fix me food, I was hoping that was all it was.
But then we ate, and he told me that he had smoothed things over with Meryl so that whenever I was ready, I could go back.
Given my soon-to-be negative bank account, yeah, that was going to be like tomorrow. No matter what place I was in mentally and emotionally. It wouldn't help things to be out on the street.
"And I need to call the funeral home," I added, telling him my to-do list because he insisted on seeing if there was anything he could take off my plate. Even with how much he had already done. I didn't actually think one single person could be quite so giving.
