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“I didn’t mean for it to sound how it did. Like it wasn’t a big deal. It is. And I don’t want you to just up and leave. If Sky comes back from this trip and you’re gone, he’ll never forgive me. He didn’t even want to leave to go camping until he could say goodbye to you. The kids love you.”
Frankie wrinkled her nose. “Yeah. Well. I love them. Anyway.” She turned back to the stove and opened the oven door. She pulled out two loaves of bread that looked delicious, and he chose to focus on the bread, not her ass.
“Dinner is ready.”
“Good,” he said. “Good. I’m starving.”
He just hoped she didn’t notice all the ways in which he was starving.
“Yeah me too. I hope it’s all right if I... Do we still eat together?”
Frankie had always taken dinner with them when the kids were here. Frankie had been much more part of the family that an employee, and that had been his big boneheaded mistake. He reverted to treating her like this hadn’t been something more than a working relationship. In his attempt at practicality, he’d been a dick. And so he decided to try and rectify that.
To push his own discomfort aside, his own issues, and be there for her. For the woman who had been there for him all these years. He owed her.
He went and got some bowls out of the cabinet, while Frankie lifted the pot of stew off the stovetop and brought it over to the table, setting it down on a trivet.
He stared at it.
He couldn’t figure out if that was something Anna had bought, something that they had before, or if it was something Frankie had gotten for them. God knew he had never bought a damn thing for the kitchen.
For some reason this felt heightened now that they were the only two people here.
“Frankie,” he said. “How much of this stuff have you bought for us?”
Frankie looked at him, then quickly turned away. “Oh, I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter, does it?”
“I think it might. Did you buy the trivet?”
“I think so. A couple of years ago. You have them, but they were old. And I just thought these ones looked nice in the kitchen.”
“And that pot that the stew is in. You bought that, too, didn’t you?”
“Well, I have to cook here.”
“All the stuff that you bought for me, you can take it with you after.”
Her lips twitched. “Thanks.”
He’d said something fucked up again. Great.
“I’m not rushing you,” he said.
“It’s fine, Walker. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m worried about it. I keep putting my foot in my mouth. I’m sorry. We don’t need to talk about what’s next.”
“Great,” she said, sitting down at the table and smiling at him.
The smile hit him somewhere uncomfortable. He turned away.
He went to the fridge and took out a couple cans of flavored sparkling water, another thing he was pretty sure Frankie stocked for him. Then they sat across from each other at the table, and Frankie did not dish herself. He stood and made sure to serve her first. She started to protest, but then got up and grabbed the bread, and began slicing it vigorously. She brought it back to the table, along with some butter. The two of them slathered butter on those bread slices like it was a competition.
“So what happened with Chad?” There. He could be helpful. He could be normal.
Frankie paused mid bite. She pulled the bread out of her mouth, and he noticed that her teeth had left little grooves on the butter.
He did not know why he noticed that.
