With great sadness, I leave and walk back to Danny’s.
While Shallots and I are snuggled up on his couch, I have to distract myself, so I Google all that I need to make Slowski’s requested agedashi tofu dish. While I’m not convinced I can pull it off, I order what I need. The dashi broth is key, and I buy kombu kelp and bonito flakes online. I need a deep fryer, but I figure I’ll use that more than just for this. Not sure where I’ll find fresh daikon around here, so I’ll probably have to skip that garnish.
It’s hard, not being at my house, and it gets harder when days later, the boys all ban me from coming back because they want the kitchen and the whole interior to be a surprise. I’m entirely annoyed and frustrated with them, but Danny is happy to let me take my frustrations out on him.
So, I cook more, play with new recipes, test out the tofu dish for Slow. It takes a few tries before I’m happy with it, and his smile when he savors it makes it worth the work. Even Danny agrees to give it a taste and is forced to admit how good it is. Tofu isn’t usually my thing, and I haven’t tried to cook much Asian cuisine yet, but by day ten in my forced “lockdown”—as I’ve been calling it—I’ve toyed around with a number of new Asian recipes, including an incredible Korean spicy soft-tofu stew.
When I bring a pot over to my house, I do my best to sneak a peek inside the windows, but I’m totally busted by the guys and banished. Still, they take the stew, and later, my phone blows up with fire emojis because it’s fiercely and wonderfully spicy, and I smile at the countless thumbs-ups. And requests to make this again and again. It’s a victory that I didn’t expect but one I accept with great joy.
Later that night, after we’re in bed, Danny pulls me on top of him and strokes his hands up and down my back for what feels like too long. “I have to tell you something, Callie.” He avoids looking at me. “I don’t know how to say this, but I have to.”
His serious tone makes me nervous, and I feel my breath catch and my stomach become nothing but knots. But whatever he has to say, I need to hear it.
“Okay.”
He puts his hands on my face and makes me look at him. “I hate you for making me sincerely, really, deeply like tofu.”
“You’re an asshole,” I say, laughing with relief as I drop my head into the crook of his neck and fight back emotion. “Such an asshole. You really had me worried there for a second.”
While I try to play it off as embarrassment, he doesn’t buy it.
“Hey, hey…what’s going on?” He lifts his mouth to my ear. “Why are you shaking? I was just teasing. Were you legitimately worried?”
It takes too long for me to say, “Nothing. I didn’t mean it.”
“No. You meant it. What are you worried about?” he asks again. “Tell me.”
“I’m waiting for the bomb to drop,” I whisper. Something that I didn’t realize myself until now.
“What bomb?” His hands move to my shoulders, and he pushes me up, trying to make me look at him directly.
But I can’t face him, so I turn my head. “The one that eradicates this new life I have. The one that makes me lose you. Loseus.” It’s not a truth that I love voicing, and it makes my heart literally race, but it is my truth. “I’ve never had anything close to this in my life. Whatever is going on between us? Fuck, I never even knew this could exist. Everything is tooright. Ofcourse,I’m afraid it will all go way.”
“You won’t let that happen.Iwon’t let that happen.”
“How do you know that?”
He glides a hand into my hair, and he speaks so gently and so sincerely. So honestly. “Because I want to know what it feels like to fall so deeply in love that I can never come out of it. Because I want to be so engulfed and so intrinsically tied to another person.” My heart is pounding again when he tells me, “I want that with you. And that is not something I could tolerate losing.”
The relief I feel makes me quiet in my response but only because I’m floored and shaken in such marvelous ways. “Okay. I believe you.”
“Besides,” he says with a grin that I still see under the hint of moonlight that pushes into the room, “I made you a super-sexy kitchen, and I need to be part of my life forever.”
Because he’s put me at much ease, I’m able to laugh. “Oh, did you?”
“It’s really damn hot.” He flips me onto my back and lifts my hands above my head.
“All the ideas were mine,” I remind him.
He scoops my lower back and raises my hips. “And all the ideas for what’s going to happen next are mine.”
Not surprisingly, he’s got exceptional ideas.
On a Thursday evening, after about two weeks since my banishment, I am finally given an escort back to my house. Matteo, Slowski, and Paul stand outside as Danny walks me inside. It’s a miracle that my knees don’t buckle when he swings open the front door.
Simple white has taken over dark walls, and I love how the basic paint is now illuminating my living room, just as I hoped. While the main floor of my house looks incredibly different, it looks exactly as I envisioned. And then I gasp and clap and jump up and down because the furniture I picked out works perfectly for the space.
They walk me through the details, but I can barely hear what anyone is saying because my mind is totally blown by how perfect this space is. How light and comforting it is, how much roomier it feels. The fireplace that I wrecked and rebuilt now shines, mostly because of the framed pictures on the mantel. A number of old ones of me, my parents, and sister but also new ones from this summer. Shots of the brunches, one of Danny kissing my cheek, me and Mary Ann raising baskets of veggies that we picked from her farm, one of me and Paul with his arm over my shoulders, in which he is actually smiling and looking less severe than usual.
