"It's just pasta," he said, looking at me now. He hesitated, and for a second, he looked exactly like the person I’d known twelve years ago. "I mean—only if you wanted to. You don't have to."
Lily watched us both, waiting.
"I'd have to check my—" I started.
Lily's expression didn't change. She just waited for me to arrive at the only logical conclusion. Jack was looking somewhere slightly to the left of me, his hand resting on the handle of the shopping cart.
"Okay," I said. "Friday."
Lily nodded, satisfied. To her, this had never been in question.
I looked at Jack. He looked at me. And despite the long shift and the strange weight of the last two weeks, I smiled. I couldn't entirely help it.
Jack caught my eye over Lily's head. "Thanks," he said. "For the list. And the fish finger tip."
"Anytime."
I got in my car. The drive home was ten minutes and I didn't think about it once. Or I thought about it the whole way and told myself I wasn't. One of those.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Madison
He was sitting on the floor outside my door with his back against the wall and a bag of groceries beside him. It was so entirely Tom that I stopped in the corridor for a second, just looking at him.
He looked up when he heard me. "Hey."
"How long have you been there?"
He shrugged. "Not long." He stood and picked up the bag. "Figured I'd cook."
I looked at the bag, then at the groceries I was carrying. "I just bought?—"
"I can see that." He eyed the premade pasta bake on top of my bag. He had the diplomatic expression of someone who held strong opinions but was choosing to keep them to himself. "Mine's better."
"Yours is always better."
"Yes," he said simply. He waited while I found my keys.
Inside, he took over the kitchen the way he always did: quietly and without fuss. He found things in my cupboards he’d located months ago and never mentioned. I changed out of my work clothes and came back to find him already at the stove, with a glass of red wine waiting on the counter for me.
"Sit," he said.
I sat.
It was a good evening. That was the thing. Tom was easy company, the kitchen was warm, the wine was the good kind and there was enough of it. He told me about a conference in Denver he'd been asked to speak at, something about a paper he'd co-authored. I listened and asked the right questions. By any reasonable measure, I was present.
"Oh," he said at some point, plating up. He said it like he'd just remembered it, which meant he'd been waiting for the right moment. "Went ahead and booked the wine tasting."
I looked at him.
"I know you've had a rough few weeks." He set a plate in front of me. "Figured you could use something to look forward to. The lodge had a cancellation so I grabbed it." He sat down across from me and smiled. "Friday."
The word landed flatly in the middle of the table.
Friday.
"Tom—"