“You’re always fucking starving,” she teases. “I’m really hungry too. I thought we were going to dinner before the movie, so I haven’t eaten anything since lunch.”
“He made you sit through the whole movie instead of taking you out for food?” I demand.
She fluffs up her hair. “Well, I, uh, didn’t tell him I hadn’t eaten.”
I wave the remaining half of my protein bar at her. “Why not?”
“I don’t know. It just felt embarrassing at the time. I know that sounds stupid, but it did.”
I swallow down whatever it is protein bars are made of. “New rule, Molly Myers. If you’re ever hungry when you’re hanging out with me—no matter where we are or what we’re doing—you tell me, and we’ll get food right away. Deal?”
I hold my hand out for her to shake. She wraps her palm around mine, and I know we’re both thinking about our handshake lesson from the day we met. Her skin is just as soft as it was then, but the pressure of her fingers is firmer this time.
“Okay, deal.” She grins up at me before pulling her hand back. “I am pretty hungry right now.”
She had to have felt that too—the way the wholemauditworld seemed to shrink to just her hand in mine. For a second, everything else was background noise. She seems to be doing her best to ignore it, though, and so for now, I follow her lead.
I gesture around the kitchen. “What food do you have in here?”
She digs around and pulls out two blue cardboard boxes.
“Kraft Dinner is the most sophisticated thing we’ve got,” she admits. “I do have some ham to put in it. Some people find that weird, but it’s my favourite.”
I almost drop my protein bar on the floor.
When I said I liked this girl, I may have been understating. Ireallyfucking like this girl.
“Molly.” I put my hands on her shoulders and look into her eyes. She blinks up at me. “Ham is my absolute favourite thing in the world.”
We eat our Kraft Dinner sitting cross-legged on the couch. The processed mac n’ cheese makes me think of being a kid again. With six kids in the family, we ate a lot of quick-fix meals. You’d think with an MP for a dad we would have grown up fancier, but when you’re trying to feed that many kids, fast and easy is more important that gourmet. I liked it better that way. All the frozen pizzas and oven-ready lasagnas were very kid-friendly when it came to helping in the kitchen.
“I used to love helping myMamanmake this,” I tell Molly, in between shovelling forkfuls of pasta into my mouth. “Putting the cheese mix in is the best part.”
“I thought the ham was your favourite part.”
“Ham is in its own league, Molly,” I tell her. “Ham and chocolate pudding cups are the NHL of food. Everything else is the minor leagues.”
She nudges me with her foot. “You’re such a man-child.”
I catch her foot with my hand and squeeze it, raising an eyebrow at her. “A sexy man-child?”
Her cobalt eyes get all big and round. I watch her bottom lip drop open.
Tell her. Just tell her.
“Molly...”
“I should put the protein bars away!” she yelps.
She jerks her foot away and jumps off the couch. The cupboard doors bang as she zooms around the kitchen, chucking boxes in every direction. Really, it’s an impressive collection of protein bars.
“In case Stéphanie comes back,” she explains to me, sounding breathless. “She’d probably be pissed.”
I finish the last few bites of my meal as she starts to do the dishes. Without needing any directions, I get up and grab a towel to dry while she washes. We fall into an easy rhythm right away, keeping silent for the first few minutes.
“This kitchen is so tiny,” I eventually comment. “This building is from, what? The sixties? People weren’t this tiny in the sixties.”
She seems grateful for the subject change. “Sometimes I wonder that too. Then again, when Stéphanie and I moved in, we realized there are like twenty layers of paint on the walls in this place. It’d probably be several feet bigger if you scraped them all off.”
