Logan’s jaw drops. “Hold on. He gave you his protein bars? Banks doesn’t share food. Ever. I’ve literally begged him for a protein bar when I was about to pass out, and he told me to—what was it?—’plan better.’”
“Suffer through it,” Archer corrects from down the table. “He told me to ‘suffer through it’ once. I was hypoglycemic.”
“I asked him if he was going to finish the other half of his sandwich last week,” one of the rookies chimes in. “He just stared at me until I walked away.”
Everyone’s looking at me now. I focus intentlyon my water glass.
“Well,” Winnie says, clearly enjoying this, “he gave me three. Without me even asking twice.”
“That’s basically a marriage proposal from Banks,” Logan comments.
“It gets better.” Winnie leans into me slightly, and I feel the warmth of her shoulder against my arm. “He didn’t actually walk away. He just stood there, eating his own protein bar, like he was waiting for something. So I stayed too. And we just… stood there, eating protein bars in silence.”
“Romantic,” someone says dryly.
“It was, actually. Because then I noticed he was watching something on his phone—he had one earbud in—and I asked what it was.” She pauses for effect. “It wasThe Great British Bake Off.”
The table erupts.
“No way.”
“Banksy watches Bake Off?”
“The show with the cakes? And the tent?”
“I don’t believe it. I refuse to believe it.”
“It’s a good show,” I mutter, and that only makes everyone laugh harder.
“So there we were,” Winnie continues, “eating protein bars and talking about Paul Hollywood’s bread critiques. And I just thought… huh. There’s more to this guy than everyone thinks.”
She looks at me, her expression soft. “He asked me to coffee a few days later. The rest is history.”
I stare at her.
That actually happened.
Not all of it—I never asked her to coffee—but the protein bars, the break room, the show. She’dcaught me watching it, and instead of mocking me like anyone else would have, she’d said, “Oh, I love this one. Is this the episode with the showstopper?”
We’d stood there for a few minutes, eating protein bars and discussing whether the technical challenges were too hard and why Bread Week was superior to Pastry Week.
I’d walked away feeling strangely… light.
I never thought about it again until right now.
She remembered that?
“Aw,” someone says. One of the girlfriends, I think. “That’s adorable.”
“Banks? Adorable?” Logan looks skeptical. “Are we talking about the same guy? The one who looks like he’s plotting murder 90% of the time?”
“He’s different when it’s just us,” Winnie says, and there’s something in her voice that sounds almost genuine.
Everyone’s looking at me now, expecting me to say something, to confirm the story, to be a normal human being who participates in conversations about his own relationship.
I manage a grunt that could be interpreted as agreement.
Winnie’s hand squeezes my arm again—reassurance this time—and the conversation mercifully moves on.
