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He made this food for her and tried hard not to think about all the years he’d dreamed of cooking for her. How long it had taken him to stop thinking Josie would love this after he tasted something new that blew his mind. Years. It had taken years for the ghost of her to stop traveling with him.
And now, after today, how long this time? he wondered. Before he stopped thinking about how she felt in his arms. Before he stopped thinking—oh, I’ve got to tell Josie… More years? Forever?
Could he survive that again?
Did he want to?
He took out the bread boat filled with melty cheese, slipped a raw egg yolk on top with a hunk of ice-cold butter. Loaded the dippers onto the tray with the bread boat and took it all into the living room.
“Something smells amazing,” Josie said, looking up with a careful smile. He laid a tea towel on the ottoman, set the cookie tray on it, still hot but loaded with vegetables and potatoes and fruit, and then whipped the egg and butter into the cheese until it was all stretchy and perfect.
“What in the world is this?” she asked with the kind of wonder that made him happy.
“It’s based on a Georgian dish that I had a million years ago. I’ve bastardized it here with the cheese Alice had, but the idea is all the same.”
“A melted cheese bread boat?”
“Basically. The bread bakes while the cheese melts.”
She dipped a slice of apple into the cheese, put it in her mouth, and closed her eyes with a moan. He smiled and looked away, fiddling with a pickle. “I’m sorry,” he said. “About earlier. The truth is, Josie, I’ve spent—” he shook his head “—years thinking of what I would say to you after making love. Years. And in the moment…I freaked out.”
He laid down his silence against her and waited for her to lay down hers. Talk to me, he thought.
“I get it,” she finally said. “It’s not like we planned this.”
“Well…” He decided on painful truth. Absolute truth. They owed each other that. “The truth is, I might have been.”
“Since when?”
“Really, probably the second I saw you when I first came in.”
“You were going to have sex with me and…what…?”
“Say goodbye.”
She set down the carrot.
“It was a bad plan,” he said. More truth. Truth upon truth. “And maybe I created that bad plan because I don’t know how to frame us. In my head. I don’t know how to do…this.” He waved a hand between them.
“Well, you did pretty great earlier.” Her smile wobbled. “The sex part, anyway.”
She was trying to make a joke, and he appreciated it but he couldn’t laugh.
“We never got to tell each other how we felt,” he said. “And I loved you, Josie. I really, really loved you.”
Her breath hitched and broke and she sighed. “I loved you, too.”
“So,” he said, “my plan was stupid.”
“Not stupid,” she said. “The sex part was good.”
“It really was,” he said with a laugh.
“Really?”
There was something unsure in her voice and he looked at her with his eyebrows raised. “Josie,” he murmured. “You can’t have doubts about how good that was.”
“Well, as you know, it’s not like I have a lot of experience.”
“Please tell me I didn’t hurt you,” he whispered.
“You didn’t,” she said. “It was just…a lot. All at once.”
“How…?” He let it trail off because he didn’t know how to ask the question.
“How am I a twenty-four-year-old virgin? Because it took me a long time to get over what happened the night of my birthday. And then, when other men touched me, I was just…so aware they weren’t you. And then, I don’t know, it got easier to simply turn it all off.”
“Why now?” he asked.
“Because…” She sighed. “Maybe this is how we end. This is how we fix what went so wrong. And maybe it’s how we become friends again. How we’re in each other’s lives again.”
He held his breath, wondering what she was saying.
Does she want…?
“Not like a relationship. I mean, that wouldn’t work. Even a little.”
She laughed, and he smiled, though it stung. Why not? he wanted to ask. What’s stopping us from trying? Her job? His lifestyle? Those weren’t big problems. But her laughter indicated something else, something fundamental, and so he let the idea go.
“But as a goodbye?” She looked at him. “The goodbye we should have had? I don’t know what would have happened that summer if we’d gotten together, but we were just starting our lives. And a goodbye between us was inevitable. And we never got to have it.”
I would have followed you, he thought but didn’t say. I should have followed you. Those were the things he never said out loud.
“This is goodbye, then?” he asked.
“I figure we have until our family comes barrelling through those doors.”
