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Dasha had always been selfless and would give the shirt off his back. Would he have wanted this? If I were able to ask Dasha for his permission, would he say yes?
Slamming the glass down after draining it, I stared at Dasha’s picture once more and hauled myself out of my chair, intent on making it to bed before I collapsed.
Stumbling, I accomplished my goal, but barely, falling asleep with a belly full of gin and a heart full to bursting with Raychel.
Chapter Ten
Raychel
We had each plunged back into our respective lives as if nothing at all unusual had happened that weekend. Anthony busy with Black Secrets, I assumed, since I hadn’t heard from him, and me burying myself in work and painting.
One night, I came home and there was a light on in my apartment. I checked the parking lot and spotted a little red Mini, and knew that Christopher had dropped by. Despite the fact that I had just worked a double to try to afford the coat I didn’t want but that Anthony wanted me to have, I sprinted up the stairs and into my apartment, only to be crushed in a bear hug the moment I opened the door.
“Raychel!”
Christopher was a thin, small man, but he gave huge, wonderful, all-out hugs, and I felt myself let go and relax against him. It was the first time I had felt relaxed since things had started to develop with Anthony.
“Christopher! It’s so good to see you!” I hugged him back, but I knew that my hugs weren’t nearly as fantastic as his were.
He leaned back and kissed me, then returned to the small galley kitchen where he began stirring a pot. “I was just going to leave a contribution to the ‘feed a starving artist’ fund. I thought you worked mornings on Tuesdays?”
I crowded into the kitchen with him and took a deep breath of the fragrant steam from the pot he had on the burner. It smelled like pure heaven to me. The restaurant where I worked didn’t have the usual policy toward employees—that they could eat there free. Instead, they gave a small discount on the price of a meal, and since I could eat cheaper at home, I almost never ate what I served all day long.
The truth was, I didn’t eat much at all. Once I got home, eating didn’t even enter the picture. All I wanted to do was either sleep or paint. Nine times out of ten, painting won out over sleep.
“Yeah, I do, but today I did a double.”
Christopher stopped stirring long enough to give me a glare that reminded me uncomfortably of Anthony. “Is the Bill Fairy going to have to pay you a visit again?” he asked, pulling his gold wire-rimmed glasses down his nose and giving me his best schoolmarm imitation.
“No, he is not! I still owe the Bill Fairy from the last bailout!”
I watched as he began to ladle his famous Not French Onion soup into four of the oven-proof bowls he’d accidentally left at my place. That soup in particular was a favorite of mine, Christopher knew. It was unlike French Onion soup because it was nowhere near as salty. The base wasn’t beef broth, as was the norm, but rather a lighter vegetable broth, chock full of all sorts of onions—not just the usual Spanish but Vidalia and red and shallots and scallions, along with just a hint of garlic and white wine.
There was no chunk of soggy bread in the middle of Christopher’s soup, either. Both of us detested that, so instead he had made some homemade garlic bread that was crisp and hot from the oven. After topping the soup bowls with mounds of cheese, he set them under the broiler long enough to melt it and grabbed two large soup spoons from the drawer, giving me one.
We both stood there, staring at the ancient gold oven as if it held the secret to immortality. The minute or so that it took to melt the cheese seemed like forever when you were waiting to feel all that warm, oniony goodness making your mouth happy.
When it was done, we fairly descended on it, each grabbing a bowl on a plate and several slices of garlic bread for dunking, then making our way to my tiny living room, where he had already parked a two-liter bottle of chilled white wine in ice in a cooler, and strategically positioned two empty glasses.
I broke through the slight resistance of the browned cheese to the soup beneath, sighing in ecstasy with the first swallow. In complete seriousness, I asked, “Christopher, will you marry me?”
Involved in his own gastronomic orgy a few feet away, Christopher ignored me. I always proposed to him when he cooked for me. I was easy.
