Page 17 of Fearless
Standing, she rolled her shoulders and then she made the breakfast.
She didn’t know how he liked anything and she was too afraid she’d be censured for asking. Pony made the breakfasts and she always made everything the same way: toast lightly toasted, eggs over medium, bacon crispy but not burnt. Hadlee had done breakfasts when Kitty had been staying with them. Breakfasts at Garreth’s house had been toast and cereal with milk. Sometimes fruit. Sometimes donuts. Sometimes oatmeal, because Hadlee did everything she could to avoid the old comfort of routine.
Uncertainty making her sick to her stomach, Kitty copied Pony’s routine to the best of her ability. Unfortunately, the bacon was too thick and didn’t quite cook up the same. She overcooked the yolks and, having no idea what to do with the Vegemite, she put a dollop on top of each egg. She had another mini panic attack before she brought his plate and set it in front of him. Heading back into the kitchen, she quietly panicked in another round of tight, tiny, hand-shaking circles, wondering if she’d done anything to his preference.
He wasn’t eating. Out in the dining room, she heard him turn the page of his newspaper and refold it before continuing to read.
He was waiting for her to come back to the table. It was the only preference he had made clear. If he wanted her to sit and drink with him, he probably wanted her to eat with him too. Had she forgotten anything? Had she brought him everything he might need? Because if he jumped up the minute she sat down again, the stress alone was going to kill her.
Unable to stand the tension, she peeked around the wall far enough to check. But no, he still wasn’t eating. His plate remained untouched in front of him, his eggs getting cold.
Her throat was so tight it was choking her. “Did I do it wrong?”
“Not at all.” He paused his reading long enough to cast a smile at his plate, and then directed it at her. “I’m waiting for you, love. We’ll eat together.”
He winked, then went back to his paper, content to wait her out.
She couldn’t tell if that made the tangling knots in her stomach better or worse. She did, however, know the more she fretted, the more unsettled her stomach became. She rubbed it while she considered what out of anything she’d cooked that she might actually eat and keep down. Toast. She could probably handle toast.
She made a single slice and took it out to the table dry. When she sat down, he promptly stood up, fulfilling her worst-case scenario. She tried to jump up too, but his hand on her shoulder stopped her. Taking her plate, he went back into the kitchen, leaving her to sit at the table. Shoulders slumping, she listened with growing guilt to the calm clatter of a man making another breakfast. The pop of the toaster added another slice to her plate; the crackle of a hot pan and the scrape of a spatula added an egg. She felt scolded and so far, Noah hadn’t said a word.
Ethen would have been annoyed and he’d have banged things so everyone would know it. But then, annoyed or not, Kitty couldn’t quite picture him making her breakfast. He was far more apt to take her plate, throw the contents to the hogs and banish her from the table. He barely made food for himself; she had never known him to fix anything for someone else.
But, Noah didn’t do that. He didn’t bang anything. Once or twice, as she listened to the soft scrap of a spatula in the bottom of the frying pan, she thought she heard him humming. He had a nice hum. It dipped into the low side of tenor. She had no idea what melody it was.
A few minutes later, out he came again and set her plate once more before her. The toast was thoroughly buttered and he’d spread a thin cover of greenish-brown Vegemite all over it.
She stared from her plate to his as he sat down.
Savoring a swallow of coffee, he picked up his fork. “Let’s eat.”
Kitty picked up her fork, but by now his breakfast was cold and she was painfully aware of what she’d done wrong. She’d put the green stuff on his eggs instead of his toast.
“Good job,” he said anyway, savoring his first bite of bacon.
It couldn’t have been that good. It was cold. She picked at her toast, which was still warm, and shredded the crusty edges, too uncomfortable to eat. “I didn’t know the vege-whatever was supposed to go on the bread,” she said. It was all she could do not to cringe because she hadn’t meant for that to come out sounding so pathetically self-criticizing.
“No harm in trying something new.” Cutting into his egg, he plopped a bite onto his toast and bit into it. “Mm.” He chewed, nodded and then looked at her.
Expectantly.
Her stomach knotted again. “What?”
“I’m wondering,” he said, as if that should answer all for her.
Kitty waited for him to elaborate, but he only took another bite. He offered zero complaints and frankly, there was nothing worse than cold eggs. Or lukewarm coffee, for that matter. This was so alien to anything she was familiar with. She was so sure any minute his temper would erupt, it was all she could do to keep up with the conversation. “Wondering what?”
“Whether or not you realize you had choices this morning.” Pushing the newspaper away from his plate, he leaned back in his chair. “There were no wrong answers, you know. If you’d come sat at the table, I’d have gone and made the coffee and the brekkie. You didn’t. In fact, it actually made you uncomfortable when I fixed your plate. Why is that, do you think?”
He may as well ask why the sky was blue. Kitty didn’t know that answer, either. She blinked at him, the silence stretching on into what Ethen would have viewed as defiance, but she couldn’t think what to say.
She shredded her toast too, but she didn’t realize she’d picked it all to pieces until he pointed at her plate.
“Sorry, love. I do want you to eat that. Every single bite. I don’t care how small you make the crumbs first. Nobody starves themselves in my house, at my table. Rule Number Seven.”
She stared at her shaking hands, then tucked them into her lap, clenching them tight because she didn’t understand why she couldn’t make herself stop trembling. “I-I don’t think I can eat.”
“Why not?”
