Page 40 of The Liar in Room 5

A lot excessive.

“Nope. It’s just going to be us,” Henry said, looking up with a smile from whatever he was doing at the island.

Since it didn’t appear that he was going to give me a straight answer, I flopped back in my chair and watched him work. When I first came in, I’d offered to help, but he’d shooed me away and told me to sit at the table so I could be ready for lunch.

I had no idea why I needed to be ready for lunch. It was a plate, not a marathon, but I wasn’t going to argue with the man in his own house, so I followed instructions.

“Okay, let’s get started,” Henry announced with a flourish.

He carried two plates in his hands and balanced a third on his forearm. Then he made two more trips back to the kitchen with more overflowing plates, followed by one last trip for silverware and a glass of water for each of us.

“Henry, how much food do you think we’re going to eat?”

“Probably a couple of bites of each. You said you didn’t know what you liked anymore, so I thought I’d order from different places I like. Then you could try everything and see what you like too.”

Henry said it matter-of-factly, like it was the most logical thing in the world to have dozens of dishes delivered for two people just so we could sample a bite or two.

It was the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for me.

“Henry…are you serious right now?”

“I am. Do you want to start with African and Mediterranean? Or South and Central American fusion? Mostly Italian but also a French place? Or American?”

“You are insane.” I laughed.

Of course I was delighted, but I didn’t have the words to tell him just how much, so I settled for disbelief.

“I should warn you, this date is going to take a while.”

“Why is that?”

“Because after we have lunch, we need to figure out what kind of movies you like, and we have to let our lunch settle before we get to the part after that.”

“And what’s that part?”

“I bought a freezer so we could do it properly.”

“Do what properly?”

“I bought one of every mini container of ice cream I could find at the store so we could figure out which ones you liked best.”

“Daddy!”

If I’d ever been happier or more content, then I couldn’t remember it. Henry had refused my offer to help in the kitchen, so I had a little time to myself to process what the afternoon, well, now evening, had meant.

After lunch, we’d moved to the living room and watched a few different genres of movies, and I’d forgotten how much I liked watching John Hughes movies when I was a kid. Yeah, some things would never, ever be put into movies now, but I liked them. I came away firmly convinced that my favorite type of movie was romantic comedies from the eighties, and there were worse places to land.

The ice cream was a monumental task. I hadn’t even gotten through a quarter of tasting the flavors before I admitted defeat and agreed I’d have to come back to finish that part of the experiment. Henry insisted it needed to be soon or the ice cream would go bad. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, but I wasn’t going to argue with a lawyer about logic. That was a no-win situation.

When it was all said and done, my having called Henry Daddy still hovered in the air around us. Henry had been kind enough to ignore it because if he’d pointed it out, I would’ve fallen apart on the spot. But a not-small part of me wanted it handled, though I didn’t know how. I wished Henry could just declare himself that, and I’d say okay. We’d both have it settled and done without any muss or fuss. I knew he couldn’t because that wasn’t how it worked. Consent was obviously important, but ugh, it made things weird. And awkward. And weird.

“All right, dishes are done,” Henry announced when he came back into the living room.

He immediately dropped onto the cushion next to me and laid his arm across the back of the couch. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to cuddle up to him, which he rewarded by moving his arm around my shoulders and squeezing me close. At the sound of my sigh, he laughed softly and squeezed again.

“Thank you for the best day,” I whispered to Henry. “I don’t even know what to think about someone putting that much effort into me.”

Henry didn’t respond right away. When I got the courage to look at him, his expression was hard to read. It was…affectionate?