I’m guessing Larry and Moe probably don’t even know what today is, do they?”
When he frowned in confusion, Ellie rolled her eyes at him.
“Larry and Moe? The other two Stooges…Nick and Carter. Ah, now he gets it. Do they know?”
“No.”
“See? Guys just don’t get how this is supposed to work. Your buddies don’t know and your folks are away, so I thought to myself, Self, should the dipwad be alone tonight or should his super-awesome fake girlfriend share her knowledge of how to get through tough times? So here I am, sharing my knowledge.”
When his brow lifted in question, she pointed to the pizza box.
“Right there—that’s the secret to life. It’s gotten me through some pretty awful times, it never judges, it never disappoints. And if you’ve got a beer to go with it, that’s just icing on the cake. Or the cheese on the pepperoni, as the case may be.”
“But won’t the others be pissed if you don’t show up?”
“Are you kidding me?” Ellie lifted her beer and took a long swig. “We’ve got them so convinced we’re ‘us’ that Jayne nearly peed her pants when I told her I was coming here instead. The three of them are probably sitting there fighting over who gets to be godmother to our firstborn.”
“Wow. Then I hate to be the one to burst their godmother bubble, but…” His expression never cracked, but there was a tilt in his voice. “No double cheese? It’ll never work.”
“Your loss is Dickie’s gain, I guess. I hear he’s looking for a new wife, and I bet he’s not nearly as picky about his cheese.”
“To you and Dickie, then.” Brett lifted his beer in salute. “I’m sure you’ll be very happy together.”
“Thank you. Now tell me how it is that your last super-awesome girlfriend never taught you the powers of the pizza.”
“Yeah.” He winced. “Pizza was never really Kerri’s thing. She was more an Indian, Moroccan, or spicy Thai kind of girl.”
“All good choices, sure.” Ellie nodded as she lifted her slice a little higher. “But none of those have the soothing effects you can find in a good slice of pizza, am I right?”
“You’re right.”
“Yes, I am.” She pulled a piece of pepperoni off her slice and popped it into her mouth. “So how does a pizza kind of guy meet a spicy Thai kind of girl?”
Over another slice, Brett told her all about the car accident that brought him and Kerri together and how he hadn’t known there was such a thing as feeling “too” safe.
“Oh my God,” Ellie laughed. “You were a hoverer!”
“No, I wasn’t.” But then he chuckled and shrugged. “Okay, yeah, maybe a little bit.”
“She still should have been honest with you right from the start, instead of letting you think everything was fine and moving all the way out here with her.” When silence was the only thing she got back, Ellie stared back at him wide-eyed. “No!”
A slow, guilty grin spread across his face. “Yeah, she might have mentioned she wasn’t super happy a time or two before we moved out here.”
“No!” Howling, Ellie pushed her glass away so she didn’t knock it off the table. “You’re such a loser! She told you, and you still followed her out here? What were you thinking?”
“Apparently, I wasn’t,” he laughed. The sound reverberated through the kitchen, settling over Ellie and warming her from the inside out. “What does that even mean, anyway? What’s the difference between safe and too safe?”
Ellie pulled her feet up on the edge of her chair and wrapped her arms around her knees.
“ ‘Safe’ is when she knows you’re there for her, not necessarily physically there but ‘there,’ you know? Available when she wants to talk about anything from, I don’t now, the state of the financial markets to the jade earrings she just sold. It’s when she knows that even though you might be super pissed at each other, you’re still going to rip the head off the first person who calls her a bitch. It’s when you make her laugh at things that shouldn’t be funny and when you smile at her with that little something you only ever show her.”
She should have left it there, but the words just kept spilling out: “It’s when you bring her bike back all covered in reflective strips.”
Silence hung between them for a while, until Brett finally shrugged.
“Well, that’s just common sense,” he said, his voice thick. “Safety first and all that.”
Ellie smiled back at him, but it took