Chapter 6
Ipark the truck three houses down from Maddie’s place and stay there for a good forty-five seconds more than anyone with average nerves should, white-knuckling the steering wheel like it might send me hurtling into orbit if I let go.
Just dinner. That’s the line I feed myself, low and stubborn, aimed at the dashboard. Just dinner, just a normal evening, and I’m just a grown adult with an understanding of buttons, going to have a meal with a woman who once kissed me in a creek and made a noise I’m pretty sure NASA could pick up.
The dash doesn’t offer much commentary, which feels about right.
Maddie’s porch light glows over the stoop and the rose bushes, yellow and steady in the dusk. Drew’s roses. I spot them instantly, the same way you find your own reflection in a crowded room; I helped his mom plant some of those, back when I clocked more hours at Drew’s house than my own.
I take the wine and breathe in, out, in again—the kind of deliberate inhale Thuba would definitely sanction—and climb the steps before I come up with a new excuse to hide in the driveway.
She opens the door before I even get my knuckles ready.
Either she’s been staking out the window or she’s got radar.
She stands there, filling the doorway, in a pale blue apron printed with tiny paintbrushes, the dish towel tossed over her shoulder, her white-blonde hair escaping a knot at her neck.
There’s a streak of something red on her cheek, maybe sauce, and her socks are mismatched: one gray, one blue.
I see this like it’s the only safe thing to see while my brain short-circuits over everything else.
“Hi,” she says, smile bright enough to land a plane.
“Hi,” I manage back, but it comes out weird—not quite a squeak, not quite a proper word either.
She grins, something warmer and more knowing than a regular smile, like she’s looking past everything I’m trying to play cool. “Come in before you vaporize on my steps. I swept them this morning, you know.”
I step inside and the house welcomes me in all the right ways: garlic and tomato, something green and herby bubbling on the stove. The hallway’s dim, but in the kitchen there’s a bright spill of candlelight. Music, soft and thoughtful, floats from a speaker on the counter.
It looks lived in. Not staged, not company-perfect.
Just real. There’s a stack of mail by the door, a mug with a paintbrush sticking out, gardening gloves tossed over a chair.
On the hallway shelf, that familiar photo: Drew and Maddie on their wedding day, both laughing, arms slung around each other.
I see it. I look away. The reflex is old, like stepping around a spot in the floor you’ve nearly tripped over a hundred times.
“You brought wine,” Maddie says, taking the bottle. Her fingers brush against mine, brief and bright, and my skin lights up in a way I pretend not to notice. “And the good stuff. Noelle’s call?”
“Interrogated her,” I say. “She threatened to cut off my oat milk if I showed up with anything below her standards.”
“That tracks.” Maddie sets the wine on the counter, spins back to face me with the dish towel now tangled up in her hands. “You’re helping, just so you know. No spectating allowed. This is a team effort.”
“I’m capable of chopping. My thumb-to-blade ratio is excellent,” I say, deadpan.
She just points me toward a cutting board already loaded with vegetables. “Onions, first. Diced, not chunked. Chunks are a crime.”
She moves around the kitchen with all the comfort of someone at home, reaching past me for a spoon, arm brushing my sleeve, filling the space between us with a hint of jasmine and something sharp and clean.
The onions, well, the onions don’t go great. Not tragic, but not exactly Michelin-level either. Some of the pieces are huge, some the size of pepper flakes. Maddie leans in over my shoulder, chin almost touching my collarbone, and lets out a sound that’s half laugh, half Oh, boy.
“These are... creative,” she says.
“They’re diced,” I argue.
“They’re avant-garde.”
“I’m an artist. Respect the process.”
She snorts, presses a kiss to my cheek, and I feel it everywhere.
She stirs sauce on the stove, her whole focus in the line of her jaw, the way she unconsciously bites her lip when she’s thinking.
I’ve known Maddie’s laugh for years, but somehow it’s different, three feet away in her kitchen, with her teasing me about vegetables.
“Garlic next,” she says, pushing the bulb my way. “Three cloves.”
I nod, digging for words and coming up empty, so I focus on peeling the garlic. The first clove gives me a fight, stubborn to the last. I’m halfway through smashing it when Maddie’s hand wraps around my wrist, warm and sure.
“Like this,” she says, showing me. Her fingers work the skin free, neat and quick. Our hands tangle for a second, neither of us moving to let go.
We drift into easier conversation—the farmers market, Melvin and his eternal beef with the plumbing aisle. Simple stuff, comfortable. And then, because I’ve been carrying the words since the covered bridge, I say it.
“I miss him too.”
Maddie’s hand pauses on the spoon. She doesn’t lift her head.
“But I want you to know,” I say, a little surprised my voice comes out steady at all, “I don’t see you as his widow first. I just see you. I always have.”
She goes still, one hand fisted around the towel. There’s a long pause that says more than words, then she nods, sharp and final, and turns back to the stove. She stirs. When she speaks, her voice is even.
“Garlic’s burning.”
It isn’t, not even close, but the subject is dropped, and I’m silently grateful because my heart is hammering hard enough that I’m sure she can hear it.
Dinner is at the table, two places set, a whole extra chair between us.
We both notice it; we just don’t say anything.
The candles burn lower, pooling wax in little circles, and the sauce is better than anything I deserve credit for.
Maddie tells a story about a guy who tried to return a hammer three years after buying it, swearing “the handle feels different.” I’m laughing so hard I nearly choke on my pasta, which would be a terrible way to go on what Anson has decided qualifies as a date.
There’s easy laughter, then pockets of comfortable quiet.
We talk about the store, about Boston (just for a minute), about the studio in the back that I’d heard about but never seen.
Maddie’s whole face lights up when she gets talking about painting, hands sketching invisible shapes, and for a second all I can think is: This is hers. Not his, not about anyone else. Hers.
The candles sink low, plates empty, wine halfway gone, and the warmth in my chest has nothing to do with alcohol, everything to do with the woman across from me, now licking tomato sauce off her thumb with single-minded focus. I’m not even sure when it happened; I’m a goner.
She sets her fork down, looks straight at me, and in the candlelight her eyes go bluer, softer, like she’s finally letting something show.
“Come with me,” she says. “I want to show you something.”
The hallway is short and dark, single bulb overhead, the kind of fixture that’s probably as old as the house but still works.
Maddie leads the way, socks silent against the floor, the dish towel trailing in one hand.
Apron gone, she’s wearing a t-shirt and loose skirt, those same socks, and the sight of her ahead of me—the shape of her shoulders, hair loose at her neck—is enough to throw my heart into all new chaos.
She stops at the last door, hand on the knob, and glances back at me, steady.
“Just so you know,” she says. “It’s a mess.”
“It’s allowed to be.”
She opens the door and the studio opens up, wide and unexpected.
North-facing windows stretch across the far wall, blue-gray evening light pouring in, the kind Drew planned out just for her.
The floor’s a patchwork of drop cloths, spills and splatters, all history underfoot.
Stacks of canvases against the walls, some framed, some rough-edged, big enough to command their own space.
And the art.
Nothing about it is decorative; none of it belongs above a couch.
The paintings are big, bruised colors and deep shadows: empty chairs in windowless rooms, red doors seen from down long, vanishing corridors, hardware store aisles stretching on and on.
Human shapes, blurred and abstract, like echoes left behind.
I move slowly. My boots barely whisper on the drop cloths. I stop in front of each piece and just look, letting the paint do the talking.
Maddie hangs back by the door, arms folded, not defensive, just steadying herself. She’s showing me something real and waiting to see what I’ll do with it.
I pause at a smaller piece. A figure, a little more defined, standing at a window, one palm to the glass. The brush marks are rough, fast, urgent.
“Who’s watching?” I ask.
There’s a long pause, her eyes on the painting.
“Me,” she says at last, voice soft but certain. “Standing in the kitchen. Watching the garden every morning. Waiting for something to change.”
It lands heavy, real. I let it hang there, no need to say anything else.
She walks across the room, careful, then stops in front of me, closer than she needs to be. The look on her face is open, clear. She doesn’t blink.
And then she kisses me.
Her hand finds my jaw, warm and sure, fingers curling against my skin.
Her lips part over mine, slow and deliberate—not rushed, not greedy, but careful.
Intimate. Like she’s been thinking about this for days and wants to savor every second now that she finally can.
I meet her, matching that measured heat.
My thumbs stroke her cheekbones, my other hand steadying at her waist, anchoring her to me.