“You make it sound so simple.” He slips his thumb down the side of my hand, and I feel electric pulses straight up to my elbow.
“For me, it is simple.” Jack leans in closer. I want to believe him, I do. “You deserve to be happy.”
“I do?”
“For starters, you were so nice to me in grade school. You never made fun of me.” His eyes gleamed. “It’s one of the reasons I crushed on you so hard. You’re always looking after the underdogs.”
“Really?” Yet I feel warmed by Jack’s compliments, a heat that warms me from within.
“You adopted a one-eyed pit bull from the pound! You help elderly customers in the store. You have an amazing heart.”
Jack gazes at me as if I should win the Nobel Peace Prize. I hope he always looks at me like that.
I don’t think I do anything all that out of the ordinary, but I guess it is true that I have a sweet spot for outsiders, maybe because I often think of myself as one.
He interlaces his fingers with mine. “I know you’re doingthe Solo February thing, and I respect that. I do.” He glances at our hands. “I’ll wait as long as you want me to.”
“You will?”
“Of course.”
Our grins fade as serious emotion takes over. I’m leaning into him, and he’s leaning into me. Dangerous hope flares up in my chest and I defensively tamp it down. Can’t start chasing rainbows and unicorns now. What would the demanding hordes of Soloists have to say?
“Are you going to kiss her, Uncle Jack?” asks Allie, who has abandoned her show, now on commercial break, and has bounded up right to us, and is looking from Jack to me, expectantly, hugging a stuffed pink rabbit to her chest. We both chuckle, the seriousness of the moment gone.
“That’s none of your beeswax, kiddo,” Jack says.
“You should kiss her,” she demands.
“Do you want us to kiss or do you want dessert?” Jack challenges. Allie considers this seriously, as if weighing which college application she ought to fill out first.
“Dessert,” she finally answers, deadly serious.
Jack kicks open a box from Margo’s that contains heart-shaped chocolate chip cookies.
“Hearts are my favorite!” she declares. “So are chocolate chips!” She pads back to her chair near the kitchen TV, commercial break done.
“She’s adorable,” I say.
“She’s relentless,” Jack corrects. “When that sugar high wears off, she’ll be back, this time asking when we plan to get married.”
I laugh. I love Allie. I love this moment. I suddenly want dozens of other nights just like this one, stretching out for weeks, or months, or more.
Jack offers me a cookie. I take it. “I do wonder, though, like, how strict is Solo February?”
“What do you mean?” I ask. Suddenly, I feel I’m right back to looking at all of my DMs, the logjam of questions from readers about the technicalities of #GoingSolo.
“I’ve got this black-tie thing. The Golden Chef Awards on February twenty-eighth. I’m up for Best Pastry Chef. It’s kind of a big deal. Like an Academy Award, sort of. But for chefs.” He digs in his pocket, and pulls out an ivory invitation with two golden-edged tickets.
“You’re inviting me to the Oscars of baking.”
He grins. “Yeah.” He shrugs his shoulders as if to show it’s no big deal. “I want you to go with me, but I respect the Solo February thing. And I do not want to cause problems with your boss.”
“Yeah.” Going on a black-tie date might just cause problems. Not just with her, but with the serious Soloists out there.
“But here, take the ticket. You’re undernoobligation to go, at all. But if I’m not going with you, I don’t really want to go with anyone else.”
My heart flutters as he hands me the ticket.
