Chapter 3 #3
He nodded. It was a short, straightforward gesture like he wasn’t even aware that he had done it. “All right. Do we go now, or…”
The sound of his stomach growling cut him off. He blushed and pressed both hands over his stomach to silence it.
I laughed and stood up, offering him a hand to help him off the floor. “How about we get breakfast first. Then we’ll worry about what to do next.”
Giving me another of those automatic nods, he grabbed my hand and didn’t let go until we were in the kitchen where I deposited him at the table.
“All right. I just went grocery shopping, so we’ve got plenty of options. What do you want?”
I searched through the refrigerator for a moment, reviewing our options, until I realized he never answered me. A heavy silence hung behind me, and I cautiously peered over the refrigerator door.
Ellis sat at the table, staring down at his clasped hands with a pensive look on his face.
“You all right?” I asked.
He jumped and his knee hit the table, knocking over the salt and pepper shakers sitting there.
“Oh, sorry.” He rushed to clean up the mess he’d made. “It’s nothing. Anything is fine. Don’t worry about me.”
When he picked up the fallen shakers, he sprinkled some salt over his shoulder before putting them back in their stand.
The gesture was so smooth, it was clear he hadn’t even thought about it.
Only once both shakers were back in their place did he realize what he’d done and stared down at the salt dusting his shoulder in shock.
“I don’t know why I did that.”
“Knocking over the salt is bad luck,” I explained. “Tossing salt over your shoulder keeps the devil away.”
He nodded again with his gaze still locked on his own shoulder. “That seems right. When I knocked over the salt, I had this overwhelming feeling that something bad was coming for me.”
After brushing the salt from his shoulder, he finally looked back at me with a wide searching gaze.
“I just acted without thinking. So, it must be something I do a lot. That means I must be superstitious, right? But I don’t know why.
Did something happen to make me superstitious or is it just an irrational belief.
” He nodded toward the refrigerator. “It’s the same with food.
I don’t think I like eggs, but I don’t know why.
I don’t even remember what they taste like, but at the hospital I always avoided them whenever they were served. It doesn’t make sense.”
Laughing quietly to myself, I pushed aside the carton of eggs I’d been about to take out and grabbed a packet of bacon instead.
“That could also be because hospital food is terrible. The eggs they serve aren’t even real eggs. Avoiding them is just self-preservation. How about bacon? Do you have any automatic instincts about that?”
He shook his head, curly hair flopping into his eyes, and went back to studying the wood grain of the table while I started making breakfast.
It turned out to be a simple meal. Since Ellis was already confused about his own sense of taste, I didn’t want to overwhelm him.
At first, Ellis just pushed the food around the plate with his fork, contemplating it more than actually eating.
My first instinct was to insist that he eat.
He was still healing from his recent head injury and his body needed fuel.
However, I had to remind myself that I barely knew this man.
Although I’d brought him into my home, we were still relative strangers to each other.
Monitoring his eating habits would be going a bit too far.
Not even a quarter of his food was gone when he suddenly put his fork down.
“You don’t have to do this, you know.”
“Hmm?” I raised my eyebrows at him over the rim of my coffee cup. “Make you breakfast? That’s what I do for most guests that stay at my house.”
“No.” He brushed his hair out of his eyes in frustration. “You don’t need to help me so much. Earlier, when you were talking about visiting the camping supply shops, you kept saying ‘we’ like you just assumed you’d be coming along with me.”
“Oh.” I set my coffee mug down and pushed my mostly empty plate away so I could prop my elbow on the table. “I guess I just assumed… but I can see how that was overstepping. I’m sorry.”
“No!”
In his haste to respond, Ellis’s elbow accidentally knocked into his own glass, spilling orange juice everywhere.
He cursed and jumped up from the table, snatching a roll of paper towels that was nearby to clean it up.
I tried to help, but he shooed me away, leaving me no choice but to sit in awkward silence and watch him.
When everything was clean and he threw the soaked paper towels in the trash, he collapsed back into his chair at the table. Resting his head in his hands, he tangled his fingers in his hair and groaned.
“If it’s not obvious, I’m pretty useless on my own. Can’t even eat a meal without multiple catastrophes. Getting myself to Rynkirk feels impossible, let alone hunting down all the camping supply stores. I hate to say it, but I need help.”
My coffee cup was empty. It was already my second cup of the day. I didn’t need any more caffeine right now, but I really wanted it.
“So, what’s the problem?”
Ellis slumped even farther in his seat, so his forehead was nearly touching the table. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to help me. If I’m just some obligation to you then you’ll eventually start to hate me, and I don’t want that to happen.”
Following my instincts, I placed a hand on the back of his neck. It had helped to calm him down when he was panicking last night, and this time was no different. Almost immediately the tension in his shoulders disappeared and he relaxed.
“You’re not an obligation,” I assured him, rubbing soothing little circles into the back of his neck.
“I agreed to help you. That was my choice and I’m sticking to it.
Once I agree to something, I don’t half-ass it.
I’m seeing this thing through till the end, and that means wherever you go or whatever you do, I’m going with you. ”
He sighed, and the last remaining tension disappeared from him. “If you say so.”
Giving his neck one final squeeze, I let him go. “I do. Now, finish eating, then go upstairs and get changed into some proper clothes. Once you’re ready, we’ll head out and start our search. All right?”
Once again, he gave an automatic nod, and seemed to find comfort in the fact that he didn’t have to think about his response.
Then he picked up his fork.