Page 13 of Breaking Point
“You’re…cooking, aren’t you?I’ve heard that some people like to cook things from scratch.I’ve never seen it done before.”
“Cooking is soothing,” he said.“I learned how after…” He frowned into the container.“After the accident.”
After his tankball playing days ended.
He looked to his right.“Crunch!”he called.
From an open doorway well beyond the big counter, a mobile bot rolled into the room.
“Sit down, Luciana,” Brice told her.“Crunch has a glass of wine for you.I’d carry it over to you myself, but I’d end up wearing more of it than the glass would have left in it.Crunch, the wine.”
“Where should I sit?”Luciana asked, because there were many seats in the room.
“Right there, where you can watch, if you like,” Brice said.“You like stools, I recall.”
She spotted the stools pushed under the overhang of the counter.She pulled one out, sat and arranged her dress.The bot rolled right up to her and a compartment on the top opened to reveal two glasses.
“Would you prefer red or white?”the bot asked.
“Oh, definitely red,” she said, and picked up the glass with the ruby red liquid in it.“Um…thank you?”
“You’re welcome, Luciana.”It rolled away almost silently.
“You’re not used to domestic bots,” Brice observed.
“No.What are you cooking?”
“Spaghetti sauce.”
That seemed…simple.And the red sauce the printers produced didn’t seem as though it would need all these vegetables.
She sipped the wine.It was one of the wines she liked.She sipped it.She wanted a clear head.She put the glass down on the edge of the counter, the only space that was left.
Brice made a sound of satisfaction, put a lid on the steaming container and moved around the counter so he was standing at the end of it.“It shouldn’t be too much longer now.”
“You just let it…cook?”
“Boil.The sauce is already done.That’s just the pasta.I put it in the water when I saw the taxiboat land.”He rested the cane against the counter and looked at her.“I shouldn’t have gone to your house after the soiree.”
She drew in a startled breath.“You meant it when you said it’s just dinner and you wanted to talk in private, didn’t you?No pleasantries, straight into it.”
“I didn’t think you’d want the pleasantries.”He rested his hand on the counter.“I shouldn’t have gone to your house, and you shouldn’t have gone to my office, but we did, and it can’t be undone.And I’ve spent two days thinking about it, and I’m not sure Iwantit undone, anymore.”
She rubbed her forehead.“Oh, holy cow bells,” she breathed and reached for the wine.
“You haven’t been sleeping,” he added.
Her heart jumped a bit at that.“You hacked my biorhythms?”
“I didn’t have to.You’ve got shadows forming under your eyes, you’re rubbing the tension away from your forehead, and you can’t lie convincingly to save the ship.I believed you as much as you believed me when you said you were sleeping just fine, this afternoon.”
She dropped her hand.“It was two good nights, Brice.That’s all.I mean, two…occasions.That’s it.I don’t know what you mean by you don’t want it undone, because there’s nothing to undo.You and I…we’re incompatible.We move in two different worlds.”
“There’s only one world on the Endurance.”
“Is there?Then how is it that despite our ages, until the soiree, we have never met in person?There are only five thousand people on the ship at any one time.We should have at least seen each other across a room, yet we haven’t.That speaks volumes all by itself.”
“You rarely move out of the Capitol,” he said.“That explains why we haven’t met until now.”
