This meant I would have to stay in her room because I didn’t own any of the furniture in my apartment.
And I had an even sweatier butt crack by the time I was done, and I’m relatively certain I had the beginnings of diaper rash or something, too.
Fucking great!
I doubt there was a greetings card that extolled the virtues and relief of having a clean and non-sweat-ridden butt crack, but there should be. And as soon as it was created, I wanted to buy them to send out to the guys at the department in the summer when I knew they’d understand what I meant.
That’s how I felt as I pulled on a pair of sweats and a clean t-shirt an hour later. Bex had taken one look at me as I’d gotten out of my truck and had known immediately what I needed. Granted, that might’ve been because of how I was walking, but still.
“Dinner’s almost ready,” she called through the door, making me trip.
Seven years was enough time for someone to learn how to cook, right?
That had me thinking back over the meals we’d had together since she’d been back. Had she ever cooked?
I took the stairs slowly as I contemplated how I was going to word the question. Diplomacy was a virtue that people needed to employ more.
Unfortunately, I also forgot that mantra when I saw the plates of food.
“Am I going to die if I eat this?”
Okay, I had issues with hot food going cold, food being reheated in case it gave me food poisoning, and also dying from her cooking. I could admit to my faults—even though they were rational in my mind.
Bex, who’d been putting two bottles of beer on the floor—which was our temporary dining table, apparently—froze and looked over her shoulder at me, then back down at the plates. The way she immediately started chewing her lip didn’t put my mind at ease, either.
“As in—did I reheat it? No,” she answered hesitantly. “But I did cook it.”
My reaction would’ve been a hasty step away from the plates, but I managed to hold myself in check. “Uh…” An excuse, any excuse at all, not to eat it would’ve been great at that moment, but in my panic, my mind went blank.
“I can cook a couple of things now, and this is one of them.” The uncertain tone of her voice said otherwise, and then she added, “But I haven’t made it in a long time.”
Now, my parents didn’t raise me to be rude, especially given how much she was doing for me, so I bit my tongue and sat down in front of one of the plates and smiled at her.
“Sounds good!” There, that was polite, right? And science and medicine had come along in leaps and bounds for things like e-Coli, salmonella, listeria, and shit like that—I hoped.
“You don’t even know what it is yet.”
Staring at it, I tried to take a stab at what I thought it would be. “Beef stew. I love beef stew.”
“It’s chicken in a cream sauce.”
I wasn’t quick enough to hide the body jerk away from it this time. “But the sauce and meat are brown? How’s that chicken and cream?”
Crossing her arms over her chest, she glared down at the plate on her side of the floor space as I carefully reached around the plate to get my beer. “I don’t know. Wait, maybe I used beef by mistake.”
I’d just taken a mouthful of my beer and choked on it. There’s no way you could mistake chicken for beef.
By the time she came back from checking in the kitchen, I’d managed to get air into my lungs and was starting to breathe normally again.
“No, it’s definitely chicken, so I’m not that dumb. I just don’t know why it’s brown?”
Because it’s death on a plate?
Looking down at it and then back up at her, I made a choice. I was going to be grateful, and probably have a funeral next week because I was trying it.
Reaching out a shaky hand, I picked up the fork and scooped up a piece of ‘chicken in cream sauce’, praying she’d take pity on me before it reached my mouth.
I had my eyes closed, so when it finally touched my bottom lip I flinched but opened wider to put it in my mouth.
“Wait, no, don’t do it. If I killed you, I’d feel guilty for the rest of my life. Hell, I can’t even bring myself to eat it, and I cooked it. I’ve got the stuff for subs in the fridge and a good selection of chips, we’ll have that.”
The second I heard the word ‘wait,’ I dropped the fork back onto the plate and picked up the napkin to wipe my mouth.
“Thank Christ. I’m sorry for being rude, and I totally would’ve tried it, but the last time I ate what you cooked, I swear I glowed in the dark.”
The way she picked the plates up and held them as far out from her body as she could didn’t help my nerves, either. That was when I remembered that whatever was on them had touched my lip, so I jogged to the kitchen ahead of her and went about washing it as thoroughly as possible.
“I was going to suggest you did that,” she sighed behind me as I was ripping off a piece of paper towel to dry my face. “I don’t know why I suck so badly at this. I made dinner for Mom and Dad two weeks ago, and it tasted great.” When I looked at her over my shoulder, she added, “And nobody got sick.”
“Maybe the cream was off?” I offered weakly. “And the chicken.”
“Maybe,” she muttered, shaking the plates to try and get the shit off it and into the garbage. No amount of shaking was moving it, though. “What the hell?”
After using a spatula to scrape
