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Alec: Come on, I’ll make your favorite. And I have chocolate cake.
There’s a longer wait this time.
Stassi: How do you know what my favorite is?
I snort. She might think she’s an enigma in a riddle in a mystery, but she’s not that hard to figure out.
Alec: I grew up across the street from you. I know.
I expect her to tell me to go to hell, or that I can’t possibly know, but instead, I get:
Stassi: Fine. Be there at 9:30. I’m eating and then I’m going to bed. Nothing else.
I get the stuff at Shaw’s on the way home so I know it’s still fresh. Stassi hates all seafood, except if it’s fried shrimp, maybe a little calamari. She even hates lobster.
Some Maine girl she is.
As a kid, she used to eat a lot of peanut butter and jelly, French fries, and Caesar salad. But I’m not making any of that. My baby—and my girl—need proper nutrition. I get to work, chopping the vegetables, making the broth, and stirring, stirring, stirring the rice, so that by the time 9:30 rolls around, it’s almost done.
My doorbell buzzes early, and when I open the door, I find her fresh off her shift, still sporting her Ted’s pizza uniform, her blonde hair in a messy loop on her head.
“Sorry if I smell like Italian dressing,” she starts out. “I spilled a whole bowl of salad on myself.”
Leaning in, I inhale. “You’d be really good with some croutons.”
“If I wasn’t so tired, I might actually laugh at that.” She looks around cautiously, taking a tentative step in. Her eyes narrow as the strains of classical music swell. “What’s that?”
“Mozart.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Mozart? Who the hell are you and what have you done with Alec?”
I shrug. “What do you mean?”
“You used to listen to Slipknot on repeat so loud that I couldn’t sleep.”
“My tastes have matured.”
“Riiight.” Her eyes are still doing a careful volley around the room. They do a double-take when they land on the candles on the dinner table I just set. Now, she doesn’t just seem confused, she seems disgusted. “What’s that?”
“Dinner?”
“By candlelight?”
“The lighting in Ted’s is jarring and bright. I just thought this would be relaxing,” I tell her.
She sniffs. “Wait … is that … ?”
I nod.
And just like that, I almost see a little crack in her hard façade. “You made me vegetable risotto? How did you know?”
I press my lips together, refusing to tell. But it’s not some conjurer’s trick. “Your mother says she brings it to you, sometimes, when you’re sick. Because it always makes you feel better. Mine probably isn’t as good. But …”
“Wait, when did you talk to my mother?” Sheer panic floods her voice as she freezes in place.
“Don’t worry. She doesn’t know anything. I just asked what your favorite foods were and she told me.”
“She didn’t ask why you wanted to know?” Stassi squints, suspicious.
“I told her I was trying to be neighborly and that all you eat is crappy pizza. She didn’t question it.”
“It smells just like it,” she concedes. “I didn’t even know you knew how to cook.”
“I had to teach myself in med school after I started packing on pounds from eating on the go all the time. The truth is, if you’re trying to give nutrition advice to patients, it falls on deaf ears if you weigh more than a small moose.”
She laughs. “I honestly came here expecting a peanut butter and jelly. Maybe a glass of milk.”
I lead her to the table, pulling out a chair and placing a napkin in her lap.
“This is weird,” she says. “You don’t have to do all of this.”
“I want to.”
She picks up her fork and digs in, closing her eyes as she savors the first bite. “Oh my God, this is so good.”
I imagine anything tastes like heaven when you’re used to eating burnt, undercooked pizza every night of the week.
I take the spot beside her and dish myself a serving.
“Forgot to tell you,” she says. “Based on my last period, they think I’m due December third. Will know for sure at the ultrasound though.”
“December third,” I murmur, pouring her some sparkling water. “Wow.”
It hits me then how much a life can change in just one year. Last December, I was planning to move back up to Maine and looking for some last-minute hook-ups in Winston-Salem. Now, I’m here, and about to be a father before the year is out. Unreal.
She must be thinking the same thing, because she says, “I know, it’s crazy. Anyway, it’s all good. I’ve told a few of my friends, but I’m not telling my family yet, not until I’m at least a few more weeks in. So I’d prefer if you keep it just between us.”
I fill her plate with more risotto since she’s already polished off the first helping.
