Page 26 of The Bright Side of Brooding
If you don’t want to fight with him, maybe you should chill out.
The inner voice spoke loud and clear, and I couldn’t deny the fair point. I had been the one to make things worse. So, maybe I could just enjoy him today. If I fed him, we’d be even, or close, for the shoveling. I wouldn’t owe him, and we could be friends.
“Come in, come in. Wow, it’s somehow colder than when I went out there,” I said, chuckling inanely, anxious energy pressing at my lungs.
“Probably the missing coat.” He halted just inside the door and leaned down to untie his laced boots. After stepping out of them, he pulled off his jacket and hung it, leaving him in only a black waffle knit shirt, utility pants, and black socks.
I shouldn’t have been so affected by the sight of him, but I was. And it seared embarrassment onto my skin. I felt sensitive and sweaty, and suddenly my head had gotten too big for my body.
“Summer?”
I blinked up at him, disoriented. “Uh, yes? Did you say something?”
“I asked if you rested well last night. Are you okay?” He dipped his head to inspect me.
My cheeks burned, so I whipped around. “Come on in. Sorry, just still waking up.”
Yeah right. Just busy mapping the magnificence of your shoulders in that shirt.
In the kitchen, I pulled down a mug, then turned to find him lingering in the doorway.
“Come in.” I waved him forward. “Do you like espresso, or brewed coffee?”
“Both. Either.”
I laughed. “How definitive of you.”
His eyebrows popped up and one side of his mouth rose in a slight smile.
I felt like running around, hands up screaming at the top of my lungs.GOALLLLLLLL!My lungs did a do-si-do and my head started beatboxing. Just that tiny little lift and I was completely and utterly twitterpated. No need to worry about antagonizing him. If he’d give me little mini-smiles like that, I wouldn’t be able to think clearly enough to start a fight.
“You’ll have to decide. Or, well, of course you could have both, if you want—”
He held up a hand and stepped closer. “No, no, just brewed coffee is fine.”
I swallowed, my nerves an absolutely ridiculous riot this morning. We’d been in this same room together not twelve hours ago. He’d sat at my table all night. Granted, he hadn’t spoken much, but still.
Before I had to come up with something to say, the oven beeped. I grabbed an oven mitt and busied myself with retrieving the muffins, thankful for a reprieve from him. In the meantime, I gave myself a talking to because this could not continue. I’d invited him for coffee, and I needed to thank him.
And kiss him.
Whoa, baby. That’s a leap.
And like the little devil she was, my mind raised its little eyebrow with an attitude and gave me a look that said she knew I wanted to.
Cause yeah. I did. I wanted to get close to him and see what it’d feel like. Plus, it’d been two years since I’d been kissed, so I should probably plan to break that streak, right? That fleeting thought sent lightning bolts of nerves through my belly.
“Let me put these on the cooling rack real quick, and then I’ll get it for you.” I popped the muffins out and set them on the rack, doing my best to avoid the steam. They smelled so good—earthy and cozy from the bran with a little bright blueberry sweetness topping the scent.
Still not looking at him, I grabbed a mug and filled a cup. When I finally turned to face him, he stood slightly hunched over the cookbook I’d left out on the counter. I always got out the book I’d use to cook dinner so I could read through the recipe at breakfast and make sure I had everything. It wasn’t a perfect system, but after years of cooking for myself, I’d discovered this to be the best way to keep my excitement up. If I planned too far ahead, I got bored, but I did make meal plans around what I found on sale when possible.
Of course, when I had others to feed, that necessitated planning ahead, and I did my best to work in recipes with affordable ingredients. I loved hosting people and sharing food, but it cost money. Food made up a huge portion of my budget, and a not-small part of me relished spending money on food forotherpeople. That would’ve enraged my parents—they’d see it as a luxury or even as being taken advantage of, which was a sin second only to the trespass of accepting help.
It’d taken me a long time to embrace the side of me that wanted to be financially stable because it was so opposite of how I was raised. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but even things like my luxury car and hosting people for regular dinners were ways I could beoppositethe stingy bitterness that had marked most of my childhood memories. One more way getting the new job would contribute to my happiness and my quality of life—a pay raise. Simple, and not particularly noble, even, but true.
Anyway, I meal-planned. But for myself, I liked diving into the recipe the morning of.
That it also provided me an unconscious comfort during the day added to the appeal. As a kid, I’d get breakfast and lunch at school during the year, but rarely dinner at home. I was always hungriest at night, and some part of me had started promising myself dinner as soon as I had the means to make it happen. This habit, the reading in the morning what I’d eat that night, was a small reminder of that. It was a promise I made to myself—I wouldn’t go hungry, and neither would anyone I cared about.
