“You want to help?” I ask.
She hops down, comes up behind me, and wraps her arms around my waist.
“Always,” she says.
And for the first time in hours, I believe it.
There’sa trick to cooking with someone, especially in a kitchen as compact as mine: you have to move in tandem or you’ll bruise each other up like ripe fruit. Simone has no problem with this—she’s a natural, weaving around me as she rifles through the fridge, her presence a constant pulse at my side. Every time our hips brush, I feel her body heat through my jeans. It’s not even sexual; it’s a warning shot, a promise that there’s more where that came from.
She reads my notes on the counter and laughs. “You wrote this out like a science lab,” she says, tapping the legal pad. “Chop onion. Sauté spinach. Pre-heat oven. It’s kind of cute. Are you this methodical in bed, too?”
I glance over, pretend to be scandalized. “Only on the first try. Then I improvise.”
She snorts, grabs a chef’s knife, and starts hacking at a red bell pepper with impressive violence. “Watch the fingers,” I say.
“I’ve been feeding myself since I was, like, ten,” she says. “I’m a pro.”
The conversation is background noise for a while—her cursing at the stubborn pepper, me shuffling pans and setting timers, both of us narrating our movements in that half-ironic, half-serious way that couples do when they’re still working out the script.
But then we hit a lull, the music from my phone drifting up between us—something slow and old, Etta James or maybe Nina Simone. Simone (the blonde one) sets the knife down, eyes soft under the kitchen lights.
“Your kitchen is so clean it’s weird,” she says. “Are you secretly a serial killer?”
“Only if you count the plants,” I say, gesturing at the window-box of shriveled basil. “I can’t keep anything alive.”
She grins. “I don’t believe that for a second. You’re a caretaker. It’s written all over you.”
I want to say something back, but I don’t. Instead I reach for the olive oil, pour a splash into the skillet, and watch it shimmer as the pan heats up.
She sidles closer, bumping my hip with hers. “So, Liam Thomas,” she says, “what were you like as a kid?”
I think about it, how the answer would play with someone else. But with her, I can’t lie. “Serious,” I say. “Obsessive. My parentsworked all the time, so I basically raised myself. The only real rule was don’t get in trouble.”
She grabs a handful of spinach and drops it into the hot oil. The sizzle fills the air.
“They kept a roof over my head,” I say, “but were never really there. Every time I brought home a report card, they’d say, ‘Nice job,’ and then go back to their laptops. I think I learned how to talk to strangers before I learned how to talk to my own parents.”
She stirs the spinach with a wooden spoon, her eyes on me. “So you were lonely.”
It’s not a question, but I answer anyway. “Yeah,” I say. “I guess I always thought it would be different, once I had a family of my own.”
She goes quiet, and the silence is as heavy as the scent of garlic starting to brown.
I take the opportunity to put a hand on her lower back, just a touch, nothing pushy. “You okay?” I ask.
She stares at the steam rising from the pan. “Yeah. Just—” She shrugs, then offers a shaky smile. “I never really thought about having a family. Not in a real way.”
“Because of the fibroids?” The words are out before I can check them, and for a second I hate myself. But she doesn’t recoil.
She shrugs, a sharp, brittle movement. “It’s not a big deal. There are worse things.”
I turn down the heat and slide the pan off the burner, then take her hand in mine. Her palm is cold, her fingers stained greenfrom the spinach. “I want you to know something,” I say. “I don’t care about any of that. I just care about you.”
She squeezes my hand, then lets go. There’s a look in her eyes, something hard and scared and beautiful all at once.
“You want to know why I never went to the doctor?” she asks.
I nod, and she leans back against the counter, crossing her arms.
