Page 17 of Back in the Saddle

All right then.

I wasn’t going to argue that, so I didn’t.

Outside of that exchange, we barely spoke. Most of what was said was Eric telling me what to slice, dice and chop. Therefore, I sliced, diced and chopped while Eric did the rest.

I also concocted an on-the-spot Thanksgiving cocktail of gin, lemon juice, ginger beer and apple slices, which we both sipped as we cooked (I might not have much food in my house, but I had everything on hand to whip up a cocktail).

Oh, and I cleaned up after him when it was clear he was done with a station, leaving only a few bowls and a single pan beside the sink needing to be washed. The rest of the space was neat as a pin. All we needed to do when we were finished eating was rinse our plates and cutlery, put them in the dishwasher, andboom, done with the shit of Thanksgiving.

This wasn’t what was freaking me out, though.

What was freaking me out was that the silence that had settled between us wasn’t weird. It wasn’t awkward.

It just…was.

He did his thing. I did my thing. Separate and together. And we just lapsed into it like climbing on a bicycle we hadn’t ridden in years and taking off.

I’d never ridden Eric.

Ahem.

But I wasn’t that much of a talker, and I could get exhausted around people who needed to fill silence and blabbed all the time.

Sometimes silence was good, and it didn’t need to be filled.

It would seem Eric subscribed to that same philosophy.

But right then, I was eating and feeling strange, because making Thanksgiving dinner with Eric felt like we fit. It was natural.

Right.

And…

Safe.

It was only at that moment occurring to me, this wasn’t great. I didn’t need more things about Eric to feel safe and right. I had enough of those, thanks so very much.

He broke the silence, and it’d gone on so long, I jumped when he did.

“Two questions.”

I stopped shoveling his ridiculously delicious mushroom, sausage, and fresh sage stuffing in my mouth and looked to him.

I raised my brows for him to go on.

“You don’t cook,” he noted.

“That doesn’t sound like a question,” I replied.

He smiled, and I wished he didn’t (yes, his smile was that attractive).

“It wasn’t,” he agreed. “This is the question. If you don’t cook, why are you totally set up in the kitchen?”

Slowly, my head turned toward my kitchen, but I didn’t have to look at my shiny counter appliances or the All-Clad pot by the sink. Nor did I have to bring to mind the expensive food processor and juicer I had tucked in a cabinet. I also didn’t have to recall how I’d socked away tips and sacrificed on other stuff in order to afford all of it.

Last, I didn’t have to cipher why, not only my kitchen, but my whole apartment, every inch, was perfectly perfect, precisely me, my nest, my safe space.

My home.

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