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Funny. That’s what I thought I would do a few hours ago. “I think I can manage something better than cardboard pizza. How’s it going in the den of hell?”
“Hardly hellish,” Brooklyn replies. “I’m actually done sorting everything.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. I told you; you will not constitute my most challenging client.”
“That’s comforting.”
“Can I help?”
“Can you help me with dinner?”
Brooklyn looks around the kitchen. “I don’t see anyone else here.”
“You didn’t see the gremlins when you were working in my office?” I ask.
“No. They must’ve been busy elsewhere. I suspected they were hiding somewhere.”
I laugh. I wish I could blame gremlins for my messes. “I invited you to stay for dinner. You don’t have to help me prepare it.”
“Four hands are quicker than one,” Brooklyn quips.
“Fair enough.” The last thing I expected this morning was to spend time cooking in tandem with Brooklyn. I’m beginning to think I should expect the unexpected.
***
It’s funny how the slightest change in environment can alter the dynamic between two people. Brooklyn and I work well together. I was a bit apprehensive when she offered to help me cook our dinner. My worries were unfounded. I discovered that Brooklyn isn’t known for her culinary skills. I also learned that she likes to learn. The only awkward moment arrived when I gave her a short lesson on chopping vegetables. She struggled at first. I settled behind her and put my hand over hers. I doubt her body responded the way mine did. As much as I would have liked to prolong my instruction, I forced myself to be brief and step away.
We talked and laughed for over an hour, Brooklyn chopping and me watching Brooklyn chop. It shouldn’t have taken more than half an hour to get dinner ready for the oven. I admit it, I didn’t want our time to end. Sitting across from her at my dining room table as we consume our handiwork, I wish we could flashback to the kitchen. It’s amazing how the couple of feet a table places between two people can feel like a million miles. There’s a sudden awkwardness that didn’t exist when we were colliding at my sink. I have the desire to fill up the silence with conversation. I don’t know what to say. I imagine if I’d presented her dinner as I’d planned, our conversation would have flowed easily with expected pleasantries. She’d comment on the taste of the food. I would thank her. She’d ask where I learned to cook. I’d launch into a story about my mother. I’d already told her about my kitchen foibles. As we moved in tandem, I explained that the recipe for the lasagna we pieced together was my mother’s. Bases covered. What now?
Brooklyn lifts her glass of wine to her lips. I watch in rapt fascination. How many times will I look at her and have the same thought? God, she’s beautiful. The last thing I want is for her to read my body language. I know I’m staring. Not ogling. Not gawking. It’s more than looking at her. When she meets my gaze, it’s as if she can see inside me—not through me, straight into my core. I sip my wine. I need to say something. Anything. “You mentioned your sister lives in New Haven,” I say. “Younger or older?”
“Younger,” Brooklyn tells me. “By two years. But more settled.” She giggles. “Susan got married a month after she graduated college. She was headed to law school.”
“Was?”
“Yep. Then she found out she was pregnant with my niece. That’s when she decided to use her middle name, Susan.”
“I’ll go out on a limb and guess there’s more to that story.”
“There is. Her first name is Chastity.
I laugh. “You’re making that up.”
“Nope. Her unexpected pregnancy might have landed as a bigger bomb with my father than my coming out. But she’s happy. Her husband is great. He’s a computer engineer. I think once the kids are in school full time, she’ll go back and get her law degree. She told me she wants to be home with them for now.”
“How old are they?”
“My niece, Josie, is almost four. My nephew, Chris, turns one on December first. I miss them. You’d think I would see them all the time. It’s not like Brooklyn is all that far from New Haven. It’s crazy how a little distance can feel like an ocean sometimes.”
Exactly. “I understand.”
“You mentioned a nephew,” she says.
“I have two. Jeremey and Phillip. Jeremy is twenty-eight. Phillip is almost twenty-one.”
“Wow.”
