Chapter 6
The bread dough had already doubled in size by the time Kate texted that she’d arrive at seven-fifteen.
She hadn’t called dinner a date. Neither had I. I’d sent her a text at four-seventeen: I have food. You can come over if you want. No agenda, no mandatory questions.
She’d taken eleven minutes to reply.
Kate: What kind of food?
Me: The kind that doesn’t come with instructions about your future.
Kate: That narrows down the restaurant options considerably.
Me: That’s why I cook.
Kate: I’ll be there at seven-fifteen. It’s not a date.
Me: Seven-fifteen. Not a date.
The exchange hadn’t made me any less aware of the clock. By six-thirty, I’d checked the tomato sauce three times, set out a bottle of sparkling water she might not even want, and shoved the research notebook from the dining table into a drawer I wouldn’t need to open.
The house smelled of toasted garlic, warm bread, and damp cedar.
From the kitchen, a sliver of the lake showed through the trees, slate-gray under the April sky.
Rain drummed against the metal roof of the shed, streaming down the gutters in steady torrents.
I put on low music. Swapped tracks twice. In the end, I shut it off.
I wasn’t making an elaborate dinner. I was cooking pasta with vegetables and a loaf of bread that would probably turn out too dense because I’d kneaded the dough with more force than it needed.
The doorbell rang at seven-seventeen.
I set the knife on the cutting board, wiped my hands on a dish towel, and opened the door.
Kate had her hair down, dark against the collar of her wool coat. She wore black slacks, wet boots, and carried a brown paper bakery bag tucked tight against her ribs. The porch light carved faint shadows under her eyes. Her watch was gone.
“You’re early,” I said.
“It’s seven-seventeen.”
“Yeah. I like setting achievable expectations.”
“That explains a lot.”
She lingered on the threshold for a second. The drizzle had left tiny droplets across the shoulders of her coat. Behind me, the oven timer began to beep.
“Are you going to let me in, or is this the part of the evening where you audit my punctuality?” she asked.
I stepped aside. “Come in. Before the bread burns on principle.”
Kate stepped inside and hung her coat on the same hook she’d used in March, without asking where to put it. Her eyes tracked down the hallway toward the bedroom before cutting back to the kitchen. Then she pointed at the metal toolbox taking up half the table by the window.
“That wasn’t there last time.”
“The house has lost discipline since your last inspection.”
“I never passed the first one.”
Kate’s smile appeared and vanished before it reached the rest of her face. She set the paper bag on the counter.
“I brought bread.”
I glanced at the oven. “I made bread too.”
“Well. At least we’ve confirmed neither of us knows how to estimate portion sizes.”
“We can always feed Marcus.”
“Your friend who wanted to know why the world is small?”
“That’s the one.”
Kate slipped off her boots by the mat. I didn’t carry them over to the closet. Not because they were heavy. Because if I took her coat, her boots, her bakery bag, and her dinner before she even crossed the kitchen, I’d turn straight into the man she was braced for.
I pointed to the boot tray against the wall. “You can leave them right there. There are clean socks in the bathroom drawer if you want them.”
Kate looked down at her dark trouser socks, damp at the heels. “You keep guest socks?”
“I own an absurd number of socks. Rugby demands a heavy rotation.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“They aren’t guest socks. They’re survival socks.”
Her laugh came out quiet. It made me want to say something better. I bit my tongue and turned back toward the stove.
“Mind if I finish this up?” I asked.
“Dinner? Seems like a reasonable proposal.”
The crust had browned nicely around the edges. I pulled the loaf out with oven mitts and set it on the wire rack. Kate stepped over to the counter, stopping two feet away. The pot of water boiled with an insistent rumble. Outside, a tree branch scraped against the back patio glass.
“Smells good,” she said.
“It’s a distraction tactic.”
“Is it working?”
“I don’t know. I never cook for difficult people.”
Kate rested her hands against the edge of the granite. “Pity. You’re missing out on a massive demographic.”
I opened a drawer and pulled out the serrated bread knife. She watched me pick it up, watched me test the edge against the pad of my thumb, her gaze dropping to my hands.
“Can I do anything?” she asked.
“Yeah. You can tell me if you want sparkling water, tap water, or an emergency exit.”
“Sparkling.”
“Emergency exit is that way.”
“Noted.”
I poured two glasses. I set hers down beside the cutting board, leaving it within reach rather than sliding it toward her. She took a sip and turned back toward the rain.
“I didn’t remember hearing the lake from the kitchen,” she said.
“Last time, we weren’t spending much time listening to the water.”
“That was by design.”
“Yeah.”
The word had no sharp edge, but it left both of us looking elsewhere. I dropped the asparagus into the skillet. The oil sizzled. Kate picked up the bakery bag and unrolled the top.
“I bought rye,” she said. “I didn’t know you were baking your own.”
“My mom sent flour from Yakima last week. If I don’t use it, she calls to ask why.”
“Your mother tracks your flour consumption?”
“My mother tracks far stranger metrics.”
“That explains even more.”
I caught her profile out of the corner of my eye. She had a crumb on her thumb, and her coat hung neatly over the back of the entryway bench. For the first time since she’d walked in, she wasn’t scanning for an exit.
“How was your day?” I asked.
“Overwhelmingly full of people who use the word ‘synergy’ without incurring any financial penalties.”
“A broken system.”
“Priya got Tessa to sign off on medical interpreters for community days. Joel is compiling youth center data. Diane wants a pilot proposal by Monday, because apparently her calendar was drafted by someone who views weekends as a moral failing.”
“What do you want?”
Kate leaned her hip against the counter. She didn’t answer immediately. That alone was progress.
“I want it not to be just a way to slap your faces on a poster.” She tipped her chin toward the window, in the vague, impossible direction of Georgetown.
“I want someone to answer the phone when a patient leaves a hospital with a bag of meds and a discharge sheet they can’t read. Nothing glamorous.”
“Sounds pretty damn important.”
“It is. And it’s exhausting trying to explain that in a room full of people who only want to talk about brand reach.”
“I liked hearing it.”
Kate set her glass on the counter. She didn’t deflect with a quick punchline. The silence held long enough that the sauce needed stirring.
“Thank you,” she said.
I drained the pasta and tossed it into the skillet. Steam curled between us, rich with tomato and basil. When she stepped closer to look, her shoulder brushed my arm. She didn’t pull away immediately. Neither did I.
“Do you always cook like there’s an audience?” she asked.
“Only when I know I’m being graded.”
“I never said I was going to grade you.”
“You brought backup bread.”
Kate let out a laugh that made her shoulders dip. Then she looked down at the skillet, her expression settling into something quieter.
“I wasn’t hungry this morning,” she said. “Priya noticed.”
“Are you hungry now?”
“I don’t know. But I can try.”
I nodded. I didn’t turn it into an assignment. I plated two servings, sliced a couple of pieces from her loaf of rye, and carried the plates over to the table.
“If you hate it, we can order takeout.”
“There is no pasta emergency severe enough to justify delivery.”
“Good to know your standards hold up.”
We sat across from each other. The low pendant lamp cast a warm circle over our plates. Kate had chosen the chair with clear sightlines to both the back door and the hallway. I didn’t overthink it. I just logged it.
She took two bites in silence. I did the same. The rain kept up an easy rhythm against the large windows.
“This is good,” she said finally.
“Your tone suggests you’re trying not to give me too much confidence.”
“Don’t mismanage it.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Kate set her fork down. She ran a finger along the rim of her plate, catching a stray speck of sauce that was in no danger of dripping.
“Priya knows,” she said.
“You texted me.”
“Yeah, but we didn’t talk about it.”
“It’s fine.”
“You don’t sound like it’s fine.”
“I sound like someone who’s being told something he needed to know, and I appreciate it.”
“I didn’t want you to feel... sidelined.”
The word made me look down at my plate. It wasn’t the word I would have picked. Priya was her best friend. I was a guy she’d met a month ago, sharing a possibility that didn’t even have a name yet.
“Kate, I’m glad you’re not dealing with this alone.”
She took a drink of water. The glass made a soft clink when she set it down.
“You aren’t very good at making things easy.”
“I don’t think easy was an option on the table.”
The line slipped out before I could filter it. I waited for the recoil. Kate didn’t smile, but she didn’t shut down either; she just looked down at her hands.
“No,” she said. “It wasn’t.”
The lamp gave a faint hum overhead. The house held sounds I never noticed until someone went quiet in it: the refrigerator shifting cycles, rain rustling through the fir needles, the hollow thud of the dock knocking against the water when a wake rolled in from across the lake.
“How did it go with Priya?” I asked.
“She hugged me. I asked her not to tell a soul. She offered me soup and a terrible movie.”
“What movie?”
“A rom-com where everyone makes catastrophic financial decisions and winds up married anyway. I think it was a veiled threat.”
“Sounds efficient.”
“I told her I get to pick the next one.”
“Does that count as planning for the future?”
Kate set her fork down. The metal clattered against the stoneware.
“The next movie?”
“Yeah. Bad joke.”
“Right.”