“I really like her,” Cherry whispered, and she could hear the helplessness in her own voice.
Shea nodded as she smiled softly. “I can tell.”
“She’s cooking me dinner tonight.”
“Yeah? That’s pretty romantic.”
Cherry nodded. “She’ll hate me when she finds out.”
“You don’t know that.”
“How could she not, though? She blames people like me for what happened to her sister.” God, saying it out loud made it feel so much worse, and she hadn’t thought that was possible.
She expected Shea to come in and sit back down next to her, to talk her through, to make her feel better. But she did none of those things. Instead, she stayed where she was, and their gazes held across the room.
“Shea, when do I flip these?” Adam’s voice called from the kitchen.
Shea mouthed, “Pancakes,” and left to help. Which sent a wave of relief through Cherry because the direction things had been going just then was not a path she was ready to go down.
As if privy to the entire scene that had just transpired, her phone pinged with a text from Ellis.
Hey. Any food you hate? Allergies? I can’t wait to cook for you!And then came a GIF of a kitchen on fire that made her laugh out loud.
And just like that, she felt better. Ellis was cooking her dinner tonight. At her apartment. Where things would go after that…She shook the thought away so as not to jinx anything.
She knew she had to come clean to Ellis. She knew it. She just didn’t know how.
* * *
“Why am I so nervous, Nugget?”
The cat was on the back of the couch, lounging and watching as Ellis stood in her very small kitchen and held her hands out in front of her, palms down. There was a noticeable tremor, and when she saw it, she closed them both into fists. Flexed her fingers. Shook her hands out.
She could cook. She wasn’t worried about that. She’d become quite good after being on her own for so long. She had salmon ready togo into the oven. Sweet potatoes. Asparagus. She’d run it all by Cherry, and she didn’t seem to be a picky eater at all.
The doorbell rang and she gasped as she glanced at the clock on the microwave. Six on the dot. Somehow, she’d completely lost track of time, because Cherry was there right when she’d told her to be. She took a deep breath and then gave her whole body a shake.Here we go.
She greeted her over the intercom and buzzed her in, and then, there she was. Standing at Ellis’s front door, bottle of wine in her hands, looking…God, looking so absolutely breathtaking simply because she was her. She was dressed casually in jeans and a blue sweater, and her smile, well, it was completely clichéd, but it lit up the room. Easily.
“Hi, you,” Cherry said as she held out the bottle. “I hope this works. I asked the woman at the wine store what goes with salmon.” It was a bottle of semidry Riesling, and it would be perfect.
“This is great.” She took the bottle and stood aside. “Please, come on in.”
Cherry kissed her quickly on the mouth and walked by her, and the scent of vanilla and coconut made Ellis inhale deeply, quietly. Cherry went straight to Nugget.
“Well, hello there, my boyfriend Mr. Nugget. How are you today?” Cherry was clearly comfortable there and sat her butt right on the couch to love on Ellis’s cat. And Ellis loved that, that she didn’t hesitate. That she showed no uncertainty. Just walked in, plopped down, snuggled her cat. It was perfect in its ordinariness. Like a picture of normality. Of what home should look like.
Wait, what?
A shake of her head got her back to the moment, and she pasted on a grin. “Hungry? I’m just about to put the salmon in.”
“Are you kidding? I’ve been thinking about this dinner all day.”
“Really? Well, I’m flattered.” She glanced over her shoulder as she bent to slide the salmon into the oven next to the sweet potatoes that had been baking for a while. “And also feel kinda sorry for you if this is the kind of dinner you think about all day.”
“People who don’t cook always look forward to being cooked for.”
“No cooking for you?”
