Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
Madison
Tom had been the one who cooked.
That was the thing I kept running up against, standing in my kitchen on a Wednesday night staring at the contents of my fridge like they might rearrange themselves into something useful.
Tom had been the cook and I had been the person who showed up with wine, ate whatever he made, and called that a functional domestic arrangement.
Now Tom was gone, and I was standing here holding a block of cheddar and a vague intention.
We’d hit a wall two weeks ago. Quietly, over coffee, the way things happen between two adults who can see the weather changing before the first drop hits.
He’d nodded and said he understood, and I’d believed him because Tom was the kind of man who actually understood things.
But we hadn't said the word over. We’d just hugged at the door and let the silence take up the space where a plan used to be.
I’d cried a little on the walk home. Not from heartbreak, exactly—more from the sadness of watching something decent drift out of reach. The weight of knowing you had something good and were letting it go anyway.
I’d been fine since. Busy, mostly. Busy was a reliable anesthetic.
I put the cheddar back and found some eggs and the end of a loaf of bread. I decided this was what dinner looked like now: a fried egg sandwich eaten standing at the counter, because sitting down at the table alone felt like admitting a defeat I wasn't ready to name.
The eggs went in the pan. I watched the whites curl and opaque, the yellow centers trembling.
It had been a long week. The apartment was very quiet, and somewhere in the space between cracking the first egg and flipping it I'd thought about Lily.
I wondered if she liked eggs, whether Jack had figured out the school lunch situation—and then I'd thought about the fact that I had more than enough for two, or three, and Lily would probably find a fried egg sandwich completely acceptable, and maybe—
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
That was dumb. That was genuinely, objectively dumb.
Jack Henley lived half an hour away. He had a functioning kitchen and a child who was not my responsibility.
There was no reason whatsoever for me to be standing here calculating whether a five year old liked fried eggs at eight o'clock on a Wednesday night.
I flipped the egg. It hissed, a sharp, accusing sound in the empty room.
My phone buzzed on the counter.
I looked at the screen. Jack's name was right there, which my brain took a second to process because I’d been thinking about him, and brains are cruel like that—they make you feel like you’ve conjured the very thing you’re trying to ignore.
I picked it up.
Don't want to make this weird, but Lily hasn't stopped talking about that dinner. Asked me three times this week when you're coming back. No pressure—just thought I should say.
I stood there with the pan still on the heat and read it twice.
Come to mine, I thought. I'll cook. It was the obvious, easy reply. The kind of thing people who weren't me did on Wednesday nights.
Except I couldn't cook. That had been Tom’s department, and my fridge currently contained eggs, cheddar, half a lemon, and a Tupperware container I was fairly certain qualified as a biohazard. Inviting a five-year-old over for a "home-cooked" meal at my place was an invitation to disaster.
I thought for a second. Then:
Not weird at all. How does bowling sound? Friday evening?
Three dots appeared almost immediately.
Lily's never been. She'll either love it or take it extremely seriously.
Probably both.
Yeah, probably both. Seven work?
Seven works.
I put the phone down and looked at the egg sandwich.
Bowling. That was safe. It was loud, chaotic, and involved rental shoes and primary colors. It was the absolute antithesis of a quiet kitchen sink. There was nothing loaded about bowling.
I picked up the sandwich and took a bite.
It wasn't bad, actually.