Chapter 17 #3
From the top of the refrigerator, which General Tso had reclaimed, a low growl confirmed that this assessment was accurate.
Beyoncé, still on the counter, purred.
We spent the rest of the morning editing photos at the kitchen island, the three of us shoulder to shoulder over Mia’s phone, debating which shots to use.
Peter, whose opinion I’d expected to be purely clinical (“clear image, accurate representation of the animal, adequate lighting”), turned out to have a surprisingly sharp eye for composition.
“That angle makes her look scared,” he said, swiping past a shot of Solange. “Use the one where she’s looking directly at the camera. That’s the real her.”
“Since when do you have opinions about photography angles?” I asked.
“Since I’ve been looking at bad adoption photos for eight years and watching good animals get overlooked because someone took a picture of them under fluorescent lights on a white sheet and made them look like inmates.”
Mia and I exchanged a glance.
“Did you just admit your clinic photos are bad?” I said.
“I admitted they’re standard, like bad real estate photos taken by a house’s owner rather than a professional photographer.” He swiped to another photo. “Besides, you’re the one who said they were bad. I’m simply acknowledging that you may have had a point.”
He scrolled to another photo. “That one. Use that one of Kelly.”
“I thought you wanted that deleted,” Mia said.
“I changed my mind. It’s a good photo. It shows her personality. It shows that she bonds with people.” He paused. “Don’t use it on TikTok.”
“Just the adoption listing?”
“Just the adoption listing.”
Mia smiled, her gaze drifting from Peter to me, then back.
We finalized our selections over lunch, which Peter made because Peter was in the kitchen, and Peter in the kitchen meant food was happening whether anyone planned it or not.
He made grilled cheese sandwiches with a surgeon’s precision, actually measuring the thickness of the bread before slathering it in precisely the same amount of butter on each side.
Because he’s Peter.
“Most people make grilled cheese because they’re hungry and just want to eat quickly,” Mia said.
“Hunger is not a justification for thermal inconsistency,” Dr. Loupier replied.
“Thermal inconsistency? Did you really just use the phrase ‘thermal inconsistency’ about a sandwich?” she asked, blinking rapidly.
“The phrase applies.”
“You’re insane.”
“The sandwich is perfect,” I said.
And the sandwich was perfect. I ate it in four bites and considered asking for another one but didn’t because asking Peter for a second sandwich felt like it would cross a line that I couldn’t identify but that definitely existed somewhere in the territory between “roommate” and “person whose sandwiches I will think about later.”
Which was weird.
And strangely heartwarming.
Mia ate hers in small, deliberate bites while looking between Peter and me with a bemused grin that told of shit-stirring to come.
“These are really good,” she told Peter.
“Thank you.”
“Benji says you’re a good cook.”
“Benji says a lot of things.”
“He says you leave him plates in the fridge with Post-it notes describing the contents.”
Peter looked at me.
I looked at my sandwich, which no longer existed because I’d eaten it, so I looked at the plate instead.
“I make extra when I cook,” Peter said. “It’s efficient.”
“Efficient. Huh,” Mia repeated in the exact same tone she’d used when I told her the twelve-minute shower timing was about acoustics.
“Okay,” I said, standing up. “Mia, don’t you have somewhere to be?”
“I absolutely do not.”
“You have plans, important plans, plans that require you to leave this apartment immediately.”
“My plans are watching you eat grilled cheese and turn red.”
“I’m not turning red! I’m warm. It’s warm in here. Peter, is the thermostat up? The thermostat feels up.”
Peter, who had returned to the stove to make a third sandwich that no one had asked for but that I was absolutely going to eat, said, without turning around, “Thermostat’s the same as always.”
“Then it’s the ring lights. The ring lights are generating heat. It’s a ring light situation.”
Mia stood up, kissed me on the forehead, kissed Peter on the cheek (which produced a visible system error on his face), and collected her equipment.
“Upload the photos tonight,” she told me at the door. “I’ll build the campaign around them. The Beyoncé air photo leads, General Tso reaction as the second slide, and then the individual portraits. I want this posted by tomorrow morning, and I want it everywhere.”
“You’re terrifying,” I said.
“I’m effective. There’s a difference, though I’ll admit it’s subtle.
” She looked at Peter one more time. Her face did something warm and complicated that she usually aimed at me.
It was something that said, “I see what’s happening, and I’m happy for you, and Benji and I are going to talk about this later in excruciating detail. ”
When the door clicked shut behind her, Peter and I stood in the kitchen with a third grilled cheese between us and the quiet aftermath of a morning that had contained more laughter than any morning in this apartment since I’d moved in.
Based on the evidence, it might’ve been more laughter than this apartment had heard in a couple of years.
“That was fun,” I said.
Peter looked at me.
His face was back to its usual state of careful neutrality, the walls rebuilt, the drawbridge up, but his eyes hadn’t quite caught up with the rest of his face.
His eyes still had the warm, slightly dazed quality of a man who had laughed until he’d cried over a kitten riding a cat and who hadn’t fully returned from wherever that laughter had taken him.
“It was,” he said.
He pushed the plate with the third grilled cheese toward me.
“Eat,” he said. “You’re too thin.”
“I’m not too thin. I’m aerodynamic. There’s a difference.”
“Eat the sandwich, Benj.”
Unable to process this first nicknaming, I ate the sandwich.
It was, like the first one, perfect.