The utilitarian kitchen seems smaller with Emily in it. I can’t decide whether to clear the table for her, stand out of the way, or help her with the bread.
She moves with easy confidence, as if she’s used to being inside Kyle’s space.
She shakes her hair back without a care for how it spatters the countertop. “Sit. You look ready to topple over.”
My knee throbs in perfect sympathy, but pride keeps me on my feet. “You didn’t have to drag yourself through this weather.” I limp around the table. “It’s practically a monsoon.”
She snorts, unlatching containers and setting them beside the bread. “I’ve worked on roofs in worse.”
As she pries off the lid, steam rises in the chill air, filling the room with garlic, thyme, and chickenstock from the soup inside. Even after hours of being in the bag, the soup is warm.
“Are you hungry?” She rips a chunk of bread from the loaf and hands it over before I can answer.
“Of course.” I tear into it, the crust crackling and crumbs dusting my palm. “But you should have called. I’d have met you halfway.”
She peers at me over her shoulder while she pours soup into two mugs, and arches an eyebrow. “One, that’s ridiculous. The footing out there is treacherous for someone with two good legs.”
Her blunt practicality should irritate me, but instead, it loosens a knot inside me. She sets the mugs side by side on the table, then slips off her jacket, leaving it hanging from a dining chair.
Her paint-stained shirt clings to her shapely form, and heat rushes to my cheeks before I look away.
I clear my throat. “And two?” When she cocks her head to the side in question, I add, “You said ‘One’, which implies there must also be a ‘Two’.”
Her brow clears. “Oh. Well, two, we’ve never exchanged phone numbers.”
“That can’t be right.” I shuffle to the counter, where I left my phone next to my laptop. “After all this time, we must have…”
But as I scroll through my contacts, I discovershe’s right. “Well, I’ll be damned. We should remedy that.”
“I’m obliged.” She takes my phone from my fingers and adds her contact.
When she holds it back out to me, though, and I reach to take it, she doesn’t release it.
Instead, her silver gaze holds mine. “But don’t think I’ll be using it to invite you out in bad weather and risk setting your healing back.”
“We live in the Pacific Northwest. Bad weather is eighty percent of the year.” I tug my phone from her grasp. “Are you saying you won’t invite me out eighty percent of the time?”
One corner of her lips quirks. “No, I’m saying I’ll be coming to visit you about eighty percent of the time.”
The easiness of the statement leaves me flustered. I’ve never had anyone besides Chloe be so vocal about wanting my time, and my bestie always summoned me to her apartment next door. She never got her butt out of her writing chair to come see me.
“Sit,” she repeats, thunking the mugs onto the table and going back to the counter to slice up the rest of the bread. “You’re not scaring me off with that stormy expression.”
I sit because she tells me to and lift the soup tomy nose, inhaling the fragrant steam while she stacks slices next to my elbow as if she expects me to eat half the loaf by myself.
She drops into the chair across from me, the tabletop wobbling with every shift of her weight. “Don’t just sniff it. Eat before it cools.”
Steam drifts from my mug and fogs my glasses. “Let me enjoy the experience. This smells wonderful.”
She purses her lips, but a light blush blooms in her cheeks, returning some of the color to her pale complexion.
The bread crunches as I tear through the crust. Garlic, rosemary, and a warm hint of yeast bloom across my tongue, sweeping away the cold-tea bitterness that lingered from earlier. I scoop up soup with a hunk of bread, letting it drink in the golden broth, and burn my fingers, but I don’t complain.
For a minute, the only sounds are the chaos of the storm outside and the softer rhythm of us eating. Emily spoons soup with quick, efficient movements, always clearing the rim before each bite so nothing drips on the table.
“This is amazing,” I say around another spoonful, warmth spreading from my mouth to my cheeks and down my throat.
“It’s leftovers from Monday, so don’t get too excited. I threw in some extra garlic this time. My gran used to swear it kept off the winter crud.”