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“Let’s put some clothes on.” We walk to the bedroom and Brittany disappears into the bathroom. I shed the wet swim trunks, dry off, and pull on some bottoms. I go into the kitchen and grab the Ritz crackers, peanut butter, marshmallows, a butter knife, and a pan.
“Why are you shirtless?” Brittany asks from behind me, her arms going around my waist. “And what are you making?”
“Because I can be, and it’s sorta like a s’more but with a cracker and peanut butter.”
“Sounds good. What’s it called?” She peers around me to watch me spread peanut butter on a cracker before sticking half of a marshmallow on it and setting it on the pan.
“I don’t know. It’s just something my—” I falter as memories of my mother making them for me assault me. Shaking my head, I start again. “It’s just something my mom used to make. I don’t know what they’re called. I don’t remember her ever giving it a name.”
“Oh.” She’s quiet as I make a few more. “I can list what I know about your mom on one hand, and really, one hand is too much because I only know one thing—that she died in December. Is there a reason why you don’t talk about her?”
“I don’t not talk about her; she hasn’t come up a lot is all. She tried her hardest to be the best mom, and she was a good one.”
“How did she die?”
I sigh. “There’s a story there, Britt, and we’re not getting into it this weekend.”
“Okay,” she says softly.
“Turn the broiler on in the oven, and cut these marshmallows in half.”
She kisses my shoulder blade before doing as I asked. Once all the crackers are topped with marshmallows, I stick them in the oven, turning on the oven light. I stand next to the oven to keep an eye on them while Brittany hops onto the counter top. She dressed herself in sweatpants and a hoodie. I bend down to check on our sweet and salty dessert, which is starting to brown.
I look at Brittany and see her head tilted down as she stares at the floor. “Brittany, you okay?” Maybe she’s thinking too much about what I did and didn’t say about my mom. She doesn’t act as if she heard me. “Brittany,” I say a little louder.
Her head snaps up. “What?”
“Did you hear me?”
“No. Sorry, I zoned out, I guess.” She’s zoned out a few times today.
“You feel okay?”
“Yeah, I feel fine.” She smiles.
I believe her. However, that doesn’t stop an uneasy feeling from settling over me. I grab a potholder and open the oven just in time to pull the pan out before the marshmallows get too dark. Brittany comes to stand next to me.
“They look good,” she says.
“Give them a minute or so to cool and we can eat a few.” I reach over to turn the oven off. Once they’ve cooled, we each pick up one. Brittany takes a bite while I pop the whole thing in my mouth.
“Mmm. That’s good,” she says once she’s swallowed her bite.
“I know.” I grin, and she laughs.
We eat a few more before going to sit in the living room and turning on the TV. Brittany’s phone dings with a text, and I suspect it’s her mother. I know Brittany told her she would be gone with her boyfriend over the weekend. It’s caused her mom to text instead of call. She picks it up, sends a quick text, and then leans into my side.
“When did it start to feel different?” she asks.
“What?”
“Us. When we were talking before. When did it start to feel different?”
I think about it for a moment. Was there a particular instance when I knew we were veering in a totally different direction than the one we started on? I remember being hesitant about texting her. A big level of trust is involved when handing out your personal phone number to a former client. Not only that, around the time she asked was when I was in the middle of a divorce. I didn’t tell her until after it was finalized, but the realization that I wanted to talk to her more in whatever way she wanted was what caused me to move to texting. Things progressed slowly from there.
“If I had to pick one moment, I’d say when I got the email with your phone number.”
“For me, it was when you told me you got a divorce. I didn’t ever think about you having a wife, and I wondered if I should feel guilty for talking to you. That’s when I knew something about us had changed, but it wasn’t until I saw you in your office that I realized how much I wanted a chance for something more. I was so relieved to see you.” She skirts her fingers over my stomach. “How are you not cold?
