breakfast bar that separated the kitchen from the main living space of the cottage, and she sat. He opened a cabinet and peered in. He wasn’t sure what he expected to see. It wasn’t like there was going to be a Hawaiian pizza in there. “I need to make a grocery run.”
“Jake Ramsey, are those Lucky Charms?” She sounded disproportionately delighted.
“Uh, yeah? You want some?”
“Yes!”
He needed to feed her something more substantial, but he got the box down. “I should probably say something about how these were left over from Jude—”
“He was too young for solid food.”
“Or Clara likes Lucky Charms.”
She rolled her eyes.
“What can I say? I’m a fan.” He shrugged. “I don’t know, those little dry marshmallows really do it for me.” He passed her the box and collected milk, a bowl, and a spoon. “Help yourself, but you also have to eat something more substantial.”
Which, at his house, meant fish. He opened his freezer.
“Is that fish? That you caught?”
“Yeah. I hate feeding you frozen fish, but I’m pretty much out of everything else. This is the emergency trout stash.”
“Emergency trout stash!” She sounded delighted again.
The problem was, there wasn’t very much of it. One medium-size fillet. He popped it in the microwave, and as it defrosted, he inspected the fridge again. Hmm. Did he have…Yes. There was still a hunk of gouda that had been part of a gift basket the Toronto douchebag had sent when they’d shipped the canoe.
“I’ll go home tomorrow,” she said through a mouthful of cereal.
“Tomorrow’s New Year’s Eve,” he said, trying to project a casualness he did not feel. “Well, today, technically.”
“It is? Man, I’ve totally lost track of time.”
He had, too, which was why he was making trout melts at three in the morning. They’d been floating for who knew how long in a bubble of grief and sex and zombies.
“Eve and Sawyer and Clara are having a big bash at the Mermaid,” he said.
“Oh. That sounds…” She wrinkled her nose.
“Horrible?”
She laughed. “Yeah. I mean, I love them. I just don’t feel like a party.” She cocked her head. “I feel like the opposite of a party, actually. I’ll hide in my room, though.”
He fired up the stove and plopped some butter into a frying pan. “You could just stay here.”
He wanted to keep floating in the bubble a little longer, was the thing.
“I think I’ve imposed on you long enough.”
Nora had a certain way of talking. She always sounded confident. Decisive. Even, he had learned, when she wasn’t. Here, though, her I think I’ve imposed on you long enough was a little bit less resolute than the way she usually would have said it. You had to know her to hear it.
He knew her.
So he pushed back. Casually.
He hoped, anyway. It occurred to him that if he could tell when there was a chink in her decisiveness armor, maybe she could tell when his casualness wasn’t 100 percent sincere.
“I don’t want to go to that party any more than you do. Stay here. You can go back tomorrow. The clinic opens on the second, right?” He wasn’t sure why he was asking. He knew that. He and Eiko had already conspired to cover the whole day, receptionwise, since Clara was headed back to school.
“Yeah. Back to the grind on the second.”
“So stay. I’ll run out for food tomorrow. I’ll take Mick—he could use a walk. We’ll do New Year’s Eve here. Or not do it, more like. We’ll eat and watch movies and…”
“See if that world’s-longest-orgasm thing was a fluke?”
Yes. He had her. “Exactly.”
She smiled as she nodded at the slices of bread he’d placed in the pan. “What are you making?”
“Trout melts.”
“Trout melts? Cheese on fish?”
“It’s like tuna melts, but with trout. Just you wait.” She flashed him an affectionate smile and, figuring that he’d won her over to both the sandwiches and staying for New Year’s, he said, “Make a list of what you want, and I’ll get it tomorrow.”
“Will you do me a favor?”
“Of course.”
“I’m parked behind your truck, so unless anyone happened by and recognized my car, no one knows I’m back in town. I’d like to keep it that way. I’m just…not ready for people.”
“You got it.” He was secretly pleased that he apparently didn’t count as “people.” He worked in silence for a while, breaking up the fish, scattering it on the bread and grating cheese over the whole mess. He glanced at her, wrapped in his mother’s quilt. “You know what? We never