microwave door opens and shuts, then Nick is walking toward me. “I brought extra for Don, and I already dropped it off. Here.”
Nick fluffs the pillows behind me so I can sit up comfortably. “You have . . . so many pillows.”
“I have a reasonable amount of pillows,” I say, sniffling.
Nick shakes his head. “I’ve never seen this many pillows in my life. Why do you even need this many?”
“Um, aesthetics,” I say. “And also for situations such as this one, when someone brings me soup and I must be propped up like an elegant lady.”
Another Nick smile, the one that means he thinks I’m funny. “Oh yeah? Do you have a lot of people bringing you soup?”
I lift one shoulder. “Now and then.”
“Eat,” Nick says. Thankfully he doesn’t attempt to spoon-feed me.
As I take a bite, he turns to look at the television. “Uh, why are you watching ’70s television?”
“Good Lord,” I say. “This soup is amazing.”
“Yeah?” Nick turns to me and smiles, the smile that means he knows he’s great. “You like it?”
“Nick.” I nudge his hip with my foot under the blanket. “This is so good. This should be on the menu.”
“I don’t think soup really fits in with our menu of coffee and pastries.”
“Okay, wow, wait, your comment about ’70s TV just registered. Have you never seen Rhoda?”
“Who?”
I’m holding the bowl with both hands, so I nod toward the TV. “Rhoda. As in, Mary Tyler Moore’s best friend who got her own spin-off sitcom.”
Nick shakes his head.
“She’s wacky and she wears so many scarves.”
“Do you ever consume any pop culture from this decade?”
“Not unless it’s about murder. Why, what do you watch? Oh, wait, you think TV is beneath you, right?”
Nick’s silence says it all.
“Let me tell you,” I say. “You’d be a lot happier if you watched sitcoms from the ’70s and ’80s.”
“What even is this channel?” Nick asks as Rhoda goes to commercial. “Antenna TV?”
“It’s exactly what it sounds like and it primarily shows old sitcoms and also it rules,” I say. “I think its viewership consists of retirees and me.”
Nick nods. “I’m plenty happy.”
“What?”
“You said I’d be happier if I watched old sitcoms. But what makes you think I’m not happy?”
“Uh, your whole . . . thing?” I scrunch up my face in my best approximation of a Nick glare. “The whole grouchy, cranky, grumpy—”
“I get it,” Nick says. “I’m bad-tempered.”
“It’s not even that, it’s just . . .” I take another bite of soup and let out an involuntary moan. “Ugh. This is good.”
“Hey.” Nick pats me on the foot. “Stop talking. You’re supposed to be resting.”
“This is how I relax. By bothering you.”
Nick looks around my place, taking everything in. He’s been here before, of course, but only to work on projects or to do things like help me move the refrigerator when I was sure there was a mouse hiding behind it (there wasn’t, which led me to believe there’s still a mouse loose in my apartment). But he’s never been here on a purely social call.
“You’re good at this,” he says, looking at the walls.
“At . . . being sick? Eating soup? Watching Rhoda?”
He shakes his head and gestures around us. “No, at . . . this. Making a place look nice. Cozy. Giving it a personality.”
My place is objectively cute—the soft blue walls, the colorful picture frames, the twinkle lights I hung in the kitchen because they made all of my baking experiments look cheerful, even when I didn’t feel that way on the inside. And the slanted roof may make it small, but it also makes everything seem warm and pleasant—even this conversation with Nick.
“Thank you, and may I remind you, Nicholas, that I have offered to do the same thing for the coffee shop.”
“Yeah.” He meets my eyes and smiles at me, the smile that says I’m right and he’s wrong. “Okay.”
“Okay what?”
He shrugs like this is no big deal, like it’s not something we’ve been arguing about for literal years, him telling me the shop was fine the way it was and me insisting that it could be better. “You can redo some things. Paint stuff. Bring in that artwork you’re always going on about.”
I almost spill my soup. “Are you serious?”
He points at me. “Let’s start small, though. The bathroom. Make whatever cosmetic changes you want to the bathroom, and then we’ll move on from there.”
“This is perfect. I know a great wallpaper guy, and I have this mirror I’ve been saving in my