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Now I was laughing, too. “Do you do that often? Take something from a man’s apartment?”
“No! I swear. I’ve never ever done that before. I’ve actually only stolen one thing in my entire life—an NSYNC pin when I was ten—and I felt so guilty about it that I went back the next day and snuck it into the store.” She still had her face covered with her hands.
I gently peeled back her fingers so I could see her eyes. “You wanted a souvenir from our weekend together?”
“I don’t know why I took it. I just did. If you couldn’t tell, I’m really embarrassed. I’m sorry.”
I brushed a piece of hair behind her ear. “Don’t be embarrassed. I’m glad you felt the need to take a souvenir. As long as we’re coming clean, I have something of yours, too.”
Her eyes grew wide yet again. “You do?”
I nodded. “I didn’t steal it. Because, you know, I’m not a thief like you. But I found a folded-up piece of paper under my bed the week after you disappeared on me. It must’ve come out of your luggage, and I didn’t notice it until then.”
“What paper?”
I reached into my pocket and took out my wallet. Unfolding the sheet of paper I still carried with me, I showed it to her.
Autumn took it. She closed her eyes after reading the first few lines. “Oh my God. Is there a hole somewhere that I can crawl into? First you realize I stole one of your plants, and now I find out you read an alphabetized list of excuses I wrote.” She blushed and shook her head. “Who does these things? Why are you even interested in me? I’m a freaking weirdo.”
“Normal is overrated, Red. But I am curious who you use the excuses on.”
“My dad. He never forgets anything, so if I gave him the same excuse as the last time I needed to get off the phone, he would remember.”
“So you started a list?”
“Right before I met you last year, he’d called me the morning I was leaving for Vegas. I said I was walking into an elevator and needed to hang up. Apparently, I’d said that on our last two calls, and he called me on it. I don’t like to fly, so I had a few glasses of wine on the flight and made that list, sort of half as a joke.” She sighed. “Can we switch? I’ll take this paper back and burn it, and you can have your plant back. Then we can pretend this conversation never happened.”
I smiled. “The paper is yours. But you can keep the plant, too. I like that you kept something around that reminded you of me.”
Autumn was still looking at the ground, so I slipped two fingers under her chin and lifted until our eyes met. “It means while your mind wanted nothing more to do with me, your heart did. I can work with that.”
She shook her head with a hint of a smile threatening. “You can work with that?”
“Yep. I’m patient.” I tapped the tip of her nose. “The heart always wins in the end.”
***
Dinner service that evening went smoothly. A few of my old buddies came and helped us, and I made sure one of them stuck by Autumn’s side when I got busy. The crowds that came to be fed didn’t always have the best manners, especially since some of them were too drunk or high to think straight. On the way home, I mentioned to Autumn that I’d spoken to Bud’s doctor who said Bud was doing great and could go home tomorrow or the next day.
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” she said. “I imagine it won’t be easy doing things with that cast on his arm. Maybe I can make him a few meals and bring them over?”
“If the rest of your cooking is anything like that broccoli salad, I’m sure he’d love it. To be honest…” My eyes shifted to Autumn and then back to the road. “When you said broccoli salad, I was thinking that might not go over too well. The crowd that comes in is more meat-and-potatoes than salad, but that stuff was damn good.”
“Thank you. It’s my mom’s recipe.” She looked out the window for a moment. “She and my dad didn’t tell me Mom’s cancer was back until a few months before she died. She had an inoperable brain tumor. She’d undergone chemotherapy and radiation years earlier, which slowed the growth, but a second tumor developed in a place they couldn’t even really treat.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. They didn’t tell me what was going on because I was twelve and busy with my friends, and they wanted my life to continue to be as normal as possible. But my mom decided she would teach me how to cook. I guess it was her way of spending time with me. So most of what I remember about the last months with her is being in the kitchen and laughing. I think it’s one of the reasons I love to cook.”
