12. Gianna
— ? —
Gianna
I woke up from my nap to the smell of something that had boiled over.
Not a disaster, exactly. But definitely the smell of someone who didn’t know what they were doing attempting to cook something on a stove.
I pulled myself out of bed, still groggy, still adjusting to this strange new reality where I actually slept more than two hours at a time. My body felt looser. Like I’d been clenched into a fist for weeks and was finally starting to uncurl.
The kitchen was a disaster.
Orion stood at the stove, surrounded by a chaos of pots and cutting boards and what looked like an entire package of hot dogs scattered across the counter.
He was stirring something in a pot with intense concentration, his brow furrowed like he was solving a complex business problem instead of making… whatever he was making.
“What are you doing?” I asked from the doorway.
He jumped. Actually jumped, like I’d caught him doing something illegal.
“Nothing. I mean, cooking. I’m cooking.” He gestured vaguely at the stove. “Obviously.”
“What are you cooking?”
He hesitated. That was when I looked, really looked, at what was in the pot.
Orange noodles. Slightly overcooked, if the mushiness was any indication. And in the pan next to it, chunks of hot dog, unevenly sliced, some rubbery and some barely warmed through.
My breath caught in my chest.
“How do you know about that?” I asked, and my voice came out thin.
Orion set down the wooden spoon. He turned to face me, and there was nervousness in his expression.
“You told me,” he said. “Our first month together, remember? We’d had that fight about nothing, I don’t even remember what it was about, and we made up, and we were lying in bed afterward talking about random things.
You said when you were broke and living with your college roommate, she used to make this for you whenever you had a bad day. ”
I remembered that night vaguely. One of those early conversations where you tell each other everything, all the small details of your life before, all the things that made you who you are.
I’d mentioned it once. A throwaway comment. Three years ago.
“You said it tasted like comfort,” Orion continued. “Like everything would be okay. You said you hadn’t had it in years because it felt silly to make it for yourself. Like the point was having someone else make it for you.”
My throat was tight. I couldn’t speak.
“It’s not great,” he said, looking back at the pot. “I think I overcooked the noodles. And I couldn’t figure out the right ratio of hot dogs to pasta. And the cheese packet was confusing, there were instructions but they didn’t make sense, so I just kind of…”
“You remembered,” I said.
He stopped talking and looked at me.
“You remembered something I said once three years ago.”
“I remember everything you told me.” His voice was quiet. “I just didn’t pay attention to it when it mattered. I heard it all, and then I filed it away somewhere and forgot to actually do anything about it.”
I crossed the kitchen. The linoleum was cold under my bare feet, and the overhead light was too bright, and the whole scene was ridiculous. A billionaire in my tiny apartment making boxed mac and cheese at midnight because I’d mentioned it once during pillow talk three years ago.
“It looks terrible,” I said. “The noodles are definitely overcooked.”
“Too mushy.”
“And those hot dogs are a mess.”
He almost smiled. “I’ll do better next time.”
I sat down at my tiny table. The chair wobbled slightly. I kept meaning to fix it and never did. Orion brought over a bowl, set it in front of me. The mac and cheese looked exactly like what it was, a sad attempt by someone who’d never cooked a meal in his life.
I took a bite.
It was terrible. Mushy noodles. Cheese sauce that was somehow both too thin and too gloppy. Hot dogs that were crumbly in some places and crunchy in others.
But underneath all of that, it tasted like something else.
Like my old apartment in Atlanta with the radiator that clanged all night.
Like Renée making this for me after I bombed my first big interview.
Like being twenty-two and broke and terrified and somehow still believing that everything would be okay.
My eyes were burning. I blinked hard, trying to keep it together.
“How is it?” Orion asked. He was still standing by the stove, watching me with an expression that was almost anxious. Orion Barnes, anxious. About mac and cheese.
“It’s awful,” I said honestly.
His face fell.
“But you made it,” I continued. “You remembered. You actually remembered.”
“I should have been remembering all along.” He moved to sit across from me, folding his tall frame into my other wobbly chair.
“You told me so many things, Gianna. About your life before. About what you wanted. About who you were. And I just… I let it all go in one ear and out the other. I was so focused on what I was building that I forgot to pay attention to what I already had.”
I pushed the noodles around the bowl. Not eating, just moving. Trying to process.
“It doesn’t fix anything,” I said. “A bowl of bad mac and cheese doesn’t make up for missing our son’s birth.”
“Yeah.”
“It doesn’t make up for two years of making me feel invisible.”
“It shouldn’t.” He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I’m not trying to fix anything. I’m just trying to show you that I’m paying attention now. That I see you. That I remember.”
I looked at him across my tiny kitchen table. This man I’d loved. This man I’d lost. This man who was sitting in my cramped apartment at midnight, dark circles under his eyes, milk stains on his shirt, trying so hard to be someone different than he’d been.
“Thank you,” I said quietly. “For remembering.”
He nodded. Didn’t push for more. Didn’t try to turn it into something bigger.
“I should have been remembering all along,” he said again. And then he stood up and started cleaning the disaster he’d made of my kitchen, and I sat there eating terrible mac and cheese and wondering if this was what hope felt like.