Page 45 of Take Two

“None taken. I get it.” He turns toward the refrigerator, opens it with the ease of pure habit, and pulls out two bottles of water. He walks back toward me and I become suddenly, acutely aware of how much space he occupies when he moves, “My mother didn’t raise an inadequate man,” he continues, holding out one of the bottles.

I take it from him, immediately in desperate need of hydration, though not entirely because of the walk from the front door. “Fair,” I manage. My voice comes out marginally rougher than intended.

“Tazja cooks. Jacques cooks. I cook.”

The answer arrives so naturally, with so little fanfare, that I know he has never once thought of it as remarkable. It simply is.

I twist the cap off and take a long, grateful sip.

“My mom did all the cooking growing up,” I say eventually, once I’ve recovered something resembling composure.

Jamie’s eyebrows climb. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

He shakes his head with the solemn gravity of a man delivering a formal verdict. “That’s tragic.”

A laugh breaks out of me despite myself, because he’s not wrong. It is tragic. Julian and I are both paying for it now in our own way, yes, we can afford private chefs and every conceivable convenience, but there’s something quietly humiliating about being a grown man who couldn’t feed himself from scratch if the occasion required it.

The conversation might have continued naturally from there if something at the far end of the counter hadn’t immediately hijacked my attention.

Three oversized glass jars, sitting in a neat row. I drift closer before I’ve consciously decided to move, and when I get near enough to see the contents clearly, I stop dead.

“Jamie.”

He glances over. “What?”

I point. “Why do you own an alarming quantity of Jolly Ranchers?”

His eyes follow mine to the jars and the grin that appears is immediate and entirely unapologetic. “My candy,” he says, with a faint but unmistakable note of territorial possession that makes me laugh.

Every single jar is filled exclusively with red and green ones. Nothing else. No variety pack compromise. No orange stragglers.

I pick one up and turn it slowly in my hands, examining it the way one might examine a piece of evidence. “Why only red and green?” I ask.

“Cherry and green apple,” he says, as though this is obvious. “They’re my favorites.”

I set the jar back down carefully, and I notice the way Jamie watches my hands while I do it, with the mild vigilance of someone monitoring an interaction with something irreplaceable. “That is still a genuinely alarming amount of candy,” I say, turning back to him.

“They’re a staple. Very important to my game,” he replies, with the serene composure of a man delivering completely reasonable information.

My eyes go wide. He has my full, undivided, slightly baffled attention. “Explain,” I say slowly. “Please. For the non-athletes in the room.”

Jamie leans back against the island, looking precisely as pleased with himself as the situation warrants. “Game-day superstition.”

I blink. “No shit?”

“No shit. One of each, every time, while I’m getting suited up. Without fail.”

I look at the candy. I look at the Stanley Cup champion leaning against his kitchen island as though this is perfectly ordinary. I look back at the candy. My expression must be doing something fairly transparent because Jamie simply shrugs, completely unbothered.

“I buy them wholesale.”

The laugh that comes out of me is involuntary and complete. “Of course you do.”

“It saves me having to sort through a mixed bag,” he says, pointing his water bottle at me with the confidence of a man who has thought this through extensively and arrived at the correct conclusion.

“It’s ridiculous.”