5
CHRIS
ESSE AND I were sitting in the parking lot in my car with my dogJ outside the surgical center waiting for Mike and Xavier.
Mike was getting his wisdom teeth removed. He was thirty. Jesse had been making fun of him for a week.
I was doing well. In a better mood than I’d been in months. I think it was the dog.
He gave me someone to hang out with when I didn’t feel like hanging out with humans. He was friendly and sweet.
He did this thing every morning where he’d wake me up by army crawling his way across my comforter with his legs dragging behind him.
You wouldn’t think that getting teabagged by a Yorkie at 7:00 a.m. would be good for morale, but it was so funny it cracked me up every time. I don’t think I’d ever met a quirkier dog. He was a tiny mountaineer. He liked to climb up onto the kitchen counter to surf for snacks, so I had to move all the bar stools, and he had an insatiable prey drive that he liked to use to bring me dead things. The first time I let him out in the yard, he killed a mouse, then brought it in and left it on the bed. Two days later I found him eating a rabbit head on the couch. I think an owl dropped it onto the lawn? He prowled the yard like a tiny velociraptor. I liked him.
Unfortunately, I didn’t think I could keep him.
He wasn’t housebroken and I wasn’t home enough to teach him. He couldn’t hold it when I was gone all day, he shredded pee pads and diapers when left alone, and crating wasn’t working. He’d do his business outside if he was walked regularly, but that wasn’t realistic with my shifts. I didn’t know what I was going to do.
He sat on my lap, his paws on the steering wheel scanning the parking lot in his Doglet Nation shirt and a diaper, growling at people who walked
by.
“Nice of Xavier to tap in,” Jesse said, typing a text on his phone.
“Yeah.”
“What do you think of flying out to see him?” I asked, looking over at him.
“Sure. In the winter though. In January, I’ll get the hell out of here any chance I can get.” He glanced up. “So what’s Larissa like? Heard you hung
out with her last week.”
I shrugged. “She’s nice. I like her.”
“Becca likes her too. I think Mike’s sprung.”
“I think you’re right.”
“Heard he paid like, two thousand bucks to get her car out of the shop.”
“Yes, he did.”
“He said he had to snake toilets at Mall of America for like three hours to do it.”
“And he has not shut up about it,” I muttered.
As long as he didn’t bitch about it to Larissa.
I liked her too. She was funny and smart and interesting—and different
from the women Mike usually dated.
I wondered if that was the point.
I’d never actually seen him this into someone—and now that I knew her, I got it. I really did.
The automatic doors opened to the building and Jesse sat up. “Here they come.”
Xavier was pushing Mike out in a wheelchair. Mike’s jaw was wrapped and he had gauze hanging from his mouth.
I got out and opened the back passenger door. “How you feeling?” I asked.
Mike looked at me like he didn’t know who I was. “Why are you here?”
he slurred around the cotton.
“Like I’d miss this?”
He was so out of it he could barely stand. Xavier and I had to practically lift him from the chair to the car.
“Where’s Laritha?” Mike asked while Xavier and I helped him into the back seat.
“You told her not to come, remember?” Jesse said, twisting to talk to
him from the front seat. “You said you don’t want to look like a chipmunk in front of her.”
Xavier chuckled and closed the door. He handed me Mike’s bag of medications. “Thanks,” I said. “You coming over?”
“No. I’m taking lunch to Hank.”
“You’re missing the good part.”
He huffed a laugh.
“We’ll record everything,” Jesse said.
“When do you go home?” I asked.
“I’m staying another week,” Xavier said, looking at his watch.
“Okay. We’ll get together for dinner before you leave.”
I said bye to Z. When I got back in the car, Mike was sleeping against the door with his mouth open and my dog on his lap. He was drooling on himself and Jesse was taking a picture.
“Damn, they fucked him up,” Jesse said, sitting back in his seat.
“I forgot how bad that surgery is,” I said, putting my seat belt on. “How many did they take out?”
“Three. How much anesthesia do you think they needed to knock his big
ass out?”
“A lot.”
Mike was a large guy. Six three to my five ten, and buff. He was a personal trainer.
“They probably hit him with an elephant tranquilizer,” Jesse said. “Hey,
Mike!” he shouted.
Mike bolted up, looking confused.
“You ready for the marathon?” Jesse asked him.
Mike squinted around. “What?”
“The marathon. You signed up months ago. We’re running in twenty minutes.”
“We’re running a… I don’t have my earbuths.”
“You’re gonna have to do it without them,” Jesse said. “The orphans are
counting on you.”
“Orpanths?”
“The orphans!” Jesse yelled. “All the proceeds go to the orphanage! Get
it together!”
I was trying not to laugh.
My cell phone pinged as I was starting the engine. It was Larissa.
How’s Mike?
The last message from her was Thanks after I’d given her my streaming password. Her mom asked for it. It was kind of weird.
I keyed in a reply.
Me: Fine. Asking about you.
Larissa: He won’t let me come over Me: He’s pretty messed up. We’ll take care of him.
“Who’s that?” Jesse asked.
“Larissa.”
“Aw, sweet, send her a picture,” Jesse said.
“We are not doing that,” I said, setting my phone in the drink holder.
“What? Dude, what fun is it if we can’t fuck with him?”
“He didn’t want her to see him like this, so she’s not gonna see him,” I said, starting to drive us home.
Jesse made a disappointed noise. Then he twisted in the seat with his cell phone on record. “Say hi, the marathon’s televised.”
Mike looked glazed.
“Knock it off,” I said.
“Do you think sheths gonna be proud of me?” Mike asked from the back
seat. “Because of the orpnaths?”
Jessie snorted.
“Who?” I asked, looking at him in the rearview. “Larissa?”
“Yeah.”
“She will if you run fast enough,” Jesse said.
“I have to streth,” Mike said around his gauze.
“Yes, definitely stretch. We can’t have you pulling a hammy,” Jesse said.
“You’ve been training for this moment your whole life.”
“Laritha’s gonna be there, right?” he asked.
“Oh yeah,” Jesse said. “Everyone’s gonna be there. Even the pope.”
Mike nodded like this made total sense.
“Mike?” I said, glancing at him in the rearview. “You in any pain?”
“I don’t thinth so.”
“I’m playing this at his wedding,” Jesse said, still recording.
“You thinth sthe’ll marry me?” Mike asked. “I like her stho much. Do
you guyths like her?”
“Larissa? She’s great,” I said.
“Too good for you,” Jesse said.
“Fuck you,” Mike slurred from the back seat.
“Should we get him something to eat?” Jesse asked, looking at me.
“I got him stuff. He can’t have anything he has to chew.”
Jesse twisted in his seat again. “Mike, you want some baby food?”
Mike raised a single middle finger and Jesse laughed and sat back again.
When we got Mike to the house, Jesse helped me get him in bed, then he left to meet Becca for lunch. I was initially planning to leave, too, but I decided to stay. He wasn’t in pain but he was out of it. I wanted to make sure he was in a place to take his medications when he had to, especially the first few hours after sedation when he might be too zonked to take things on a schedule. I wish I’d thought of this ahead of time, because there wasn’t anything to do while I waited. Mike’s place was spotless like always, there was nothing to clean. I was sitting in his living room with the dog on my lap flipping through Men’s Health, the only reading material in the whole house.
I could have used one of those books Larissa had offered right now.
There was a sweater draped on the back of one of his dining room chairs. A woman’s sweater. Hers probably. I wondered how much time she spent here.
It’s funny because in my mind, she existed independent of him. I’d spent hours with her when he wasn’t there. I knew they were dating, but it didn’t fully compute because I’d never really seen them together and I couldn’t really imagine it either.
Mike and I never had the same taste in women. To be honest, Larissa was more my type than his.
She liked to read, he didn’t. She was artistic, he wasn’t. He probably couldn’t impress her with the stuff that he usually used to impress women— and those things were impressive. Mike took racing medals. He could
bench-press her. Hell, he could bench-press me.
Mike typically went for athletic women. Sylvia, his longest relationship before Larissa, had been a dance instructor. The last woman he introduced us to taught Pilates. He liked people he could bike with, train with, who could run the same races as him. Larissa didn’t strike me as a turkey trot person. The two of them together seemed weird.
But he liked her. A lot. And I could definitely see why. I could see why she liked him too. Who didn’t?
Mike was the charismatic one of our group. If he had his sights on someone, nobody else stood a chance. Especially me.
I wasn’t charming or confident like he was. In even the most ideal circumstances, I was never going to be the best at selling myself and my rideshare services to a beautiful stranger—and definitely not against him. I wasn’t magnetic. I didn’t light up a room. And that night I’d been sad and tired and yes, a little cranky. By the time I was standing in front of her at that concert, I was worn out and I just wanted to go home. But I had wanted to drive her.
I hated that “irritable” was her first impression of me. I’d been like an ogre or something, scowling at this beautiful barefoot girl.
I don’t know why it bothered me so much.
I closed the magazine and tossed it on the cushion next to me, debating whether I should take a nap when someone started trying to open the front door.
I got up thinking it was going to be Donna or maybe Mike’s sister
Janessa coming to check on him.
It was Larissa.
“Oh. Hey,” I said, blinking at her.
She stood there with Mike’s spare key from the planter and an overflowing brown paper bag full of groceries.
“I didn’t know you’d still be here,” she said, hoisting the bag on her hip.
“Let me get that,” I said.
She let me take the groceries and came in behind me, my dog yapping excitedly at her feet.
“Did he text you to come over?” I asked, heading to the kitchen.
“No. I just didn’t feel good leaving him home alone,” she said, closing the front door. “I didn’t know you’d be here.” She smiled down at her feet.
“There he is!” The dog was bouncing, and she picked him up. “Oh, look at you! So handsome with your new haircut.”
She laughed while he licked her face and I smiled.
She held him out. “Why the diaper?”
“He’s not housebroken,” I said, setting the groceries on the counter.
She pulled him in and cradled him like a baby. “That’s okay because you’re so smart and you’re gonna learn. Yes, you are.” She looked up at me.
“What are you naming him?”
“Nothing. I can’t keep him.”
Her face fell. “Why?”
“I work all day, and he needs to be walked regularly if he’s going to get
housebroken.”
“Can’t you crate train him?”
“I tried. He poops in the crate.”
“Try a smaller one.”
“I got one he can barely turn around in. He was probably left in one for long periods. He doesn’t care if he stands in it. I think he’s used to it.”
She looked worriedly at the dog. “Where will he go?”
“I don’t know. I have to find someone. It might have to be the shelter.”
“Did you ask Mike?”
“Donna doesn’t like dogs in here. I only brought him ’cause I had to,” I said.
She chewed her lip. “Well, what if I helped? Could you keep him with help? If you’re comfortable with it, I could come over after work to walk him. I get off at noon. I can be there at twelve thirty. That’s about the middle of your shift, right? And I can take him on my days off. My apartment doesn’t allow dogs, but if I’m just watching him for a day or two,
they won’t notice.”
“I can’t ask you to do that—”
“It’s no problem. I love dogs,” she said quickly. “I’d have one if my landlord let me.”
She and the dog peered up at me with puppy eyes and I don’t know what it was, but I didn’t think I could say no to her.
“What about if we do a trial run,” I said. “We try it for a few weeks.”
Her whole face lit up. “Really?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
The way she was smiling made me feel like I’d won a prize.
“So what do we call him?” she asked.
I scratched his ear. “I don’t know. Garbage Goblin?”
She scowled playfully at me.
“What about Woofarine?” she asked.
“Woofarine,” I deadpanned.
“Yeah, he’s kind of tough.”
“I could be okay with Woofarine.”
She beamed.
I watched her kiss the dog happily and realized I felt relieved.
I didn’t want to give him up. As much as the accidents in the house were driving me up the wall, I had to admit he’d pulled me out of my funk this last week. It was hard to be depressed when someone was so happy to see you—even if they were shitting everywhere.
Larissa gave Woofarine one more snuggle and then put him down.
“So how’s Mike?” she asked.
“Sleeping,” I said. “Convinced he has to run an Iron Man today.”
She laughed. “What? Why would he think that?”
“Jesse.”
“Ahhh. He couldn’t resist, huh?”
“No, definitely not.”
She took off her jacket and draped it over the sweater already on the chair. “I should probably go check on him,” she said.
“Uh, actually I don’t think he wanted you to see him like this,” I said.
“Huh. Well, you’ll have to tackle me to keep me out of there, so…”
Then she walked around me and made her way to his room.
I smiled after her. I had to appreciate her tenacity.
She came back a minute later.
“He is really knocked out,” she said.
“Did he say anything to you?”
“Something about carb loading before the race?” She put her thumb over her shoulder. “I was going to make him some soup. Are you hungry?”
“From scratch?”
“Yeah.”
Technically I could leave now that she was here. I really liked soup though.
“Sure.”
She made me chop onions.
“What kind are we making?” I asked, crying.
“Vegetable beef,” she said over the carrots she was cutting.
“Does it usually need this many onions?”
“No. I’m making a triple batch. I freeze some for later, and I sell the
rest.”
“To who?”
She shrugged. “A lady in my building. A guy who used to come into my old restaurant, a few friends. If I’m doing the work, I might as well cover the cost of the groceries. Make a little extra for bills.”
“Do you do this often?” I asked.
“At least once a week. Whenever I cook. Do you want me to take over?”
“What? The onions?” I said, wiping my eyes with the back of my sleeve.
“Yeah, you’re being pretty dramatic over there.”
I scoffed. “You gave me the hard job.”
“I didn’t think you could julienne carrots.”
“I can’t.”
“Well, then.” She gave me a playful look. Or I thought she did, I couldn’t see very well.
“I bet this soup’s gonna be great,” I said, squinting at my cutting board.
“Salted with suffering.”
She laughed.
“So you cook a lot?” I asked, sniffling.
“I do. It’s cheaper than eating out and easier with my allergy, less risk.”
“Have you had bad experiences at restaurants?”
“Oh yes. Very bad. I can’t even work anywhere that serves nuts,” she said. “Makes it hard to find jobs.”
God, I couldn’t imagine trying to navigate that. Food, trying to kill you.
“Speaking of restaurants that don’t serve nuts, guess what I brought for
the soup,” she said.
“What?”
“The ass bread from that one place.”
“The pumpernickel?”
“Yeah. I froze all the bread when I got home. My mom won’t eat the pumpernickel, so I brought it. It’s perfect for this.”
I agreed. And I was somehow even more excited for lunch now.
“You know, you should have taken some of the bread home,” she said, talking to me but looking at her carrots. “I felt bad that you left me everything. They’re expensive.”
I shrugged over my onions. “It’s just me in the house. It was too much.”
It wasn’t. I would have loved to take some of it home, but I’d wanted her to have it. After she told me how much she was struggling, I’d wanted to help her—even if it was just bread. Hell, I would have bought her a sandwich or something to take home that day if it wouldn’t have been weird to do it. I’d settled for sending her home with five mostly uneaten loaves of bread and strong-arming Mike into paying for her car repairs instead.
As if thinking his name summoned him, Mike shouted groggily from the
other room. “McNougattttt!”
Larissa tilted her head. “McNougat?”
I put my knife down and went to wash my hands. “It’s my nickname.”
“Your nickname is McNougat…” she said.
“Look, you don’t pick your own nickname.”
“The nickname picks you?” she said, clearly amused.
“Or your fucked-up friends do.” I dried my hands on a paper towel and went to see what Mike wanted.
“Hey, what’s up?” I said, walking into his room.
He was sitting against the headboard looking slightly more coherent than earlier. “My mouth is killing me…” he rasped.
“Okay.” I looked at my watch. “We can do a pain pill and some Advil.” I turned to get him a water, but Larissa was already coming in with it.
“Hey,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed with the glass.
“Awww, shit, why’d you come?” he groaned. “I didn’t want you to see me like this.”
“Oh, stop. I don’t care,” she said gently.
His face was swollen. He’d taken the gauze out of his mouth and it was sitting on the nightstand in a soggy pink wet ball. I grabbed some tissues and picked it up before she saw it.
When I came back from the bathroom, she was holding his hand.
“He feels a little hot,” she said, looking at me.
I put a hand on his forehead and he swatted at me. “Get off me, dick.
You smell like onions.”
I rolled my eyes. “He’s fine. The Advil will help.”
“Do you want some ice?” she asked. “For your face?”
“No, I’m just gonna go to sleep,” he said.
She squeezed his hand. “I’m making you lunch. Let me know when
you’re ready.”
Gratitude moved across his expression.
I know he said he didn’t want it, but I could tell he was glad she’d come.
Like she’d passed some test he didn’t know he was giving her.
I gave him the pills and he lay back down.
“We’ll be out here. Holler if you need us,” she said.
He nodded into his pillow and we returned to the kitchen.
“So McNougat…” she said, going back to the carrots.
I picked up my knife. “We couldn’t just let that go, huh?”
“Definitely not.”
“I like nougat candy,” I said, resuming my onion torture. “I got a big bag of them once on the way up to the cabin.”
“So they call you McNougat just for that?”
“That’s all it takes,” I said.
“Do the other guys have nicknames?”
“Yup. Jesse is Fisticuffs.”
She laughed. “Fisticuffs?”
“He got into a fight in the ninth grade.”
“Did he win?” she asked.
“No.”
She was cracking up.
“Xavier is Z,” I said.
“Why does he get the cool nickname?” she asked, scooping carrots into the stockpot.
“That is very Xavier of him, believe me. Completely on brand.”
“And Mike?” she asked.
“The Toilet Prince.”
She burst into laughter.
“It used to be Toilet Boy in grade school. Nobody but me and the guys
were allowed to call him that.”
“I bet,” she said, still tittering.
“So what was Mike like in school?” she asked.
“Popular,” I said. “Prom king, popular. He played, two… three sports?”
She smiled. “He did?”
“Oh yeah. Got scholarships and everything.”
“But he didn’t go?” she asked.
“No. He tore his ACL in his senior year.”
“Oh. I didn’t know that. When I asked him about school, he just said he was a troublemaker.”
“He wasn’t. He was a good guy. He still is.” I smiled a little at my
cutting board. “He used to protect us.”
“Protect you?” she said. “From what?”
“Anything? Anyone. He was the oldest. He took that job very seriously.
Once Xavier snuck out with his dad’s car and picked us all up. He was fifteen, only had his permit. He crashed into a pylon at a drive-through at one a.m. Mike told Xavier’s dad that it was his idea to take the car and that he was driving. Tony made Mike lay pipe all summer for that.”
She shook her head. “Why did he do it?”
“Take the blame? Because Xavier’s dad was strict. It would have been worse for him. He probably would have sent him to military school.”
I watched her face go soft.
“I like that Mike did that,” she said.
I liked it too.
We finished the prep. The soup was on the stove simmering, so we went to sit on the sofa.
“There are no books here,” I said. “We have to watch TV.”
“Perfect. I have someone’s streaming password,” she said. Then she lolled her head to smile at me. “Sorry about that. My mom lacks
boundaries.”
“Oh, I didn’t care,” I said honestly.
“You never came to go through those paperbacks,” she said, picking up Woofarine and putting him on her lap. “I texted you twice.”
“I got busy,” I said, not wanting to explain my real reasoning.
“Oh. Well you should come. I don’t have anyone to talk to about them.
They’re so old there’s not even online reviews. I just finished this novel from the nineties about a guy in Anchorage who gets famous on one of the first reality shows. It’s so convoluted and I have nobody to complain with.”
“That does sound rough,” I said, trying to figure out the remote.
“If only there was someone who can read a book in three hours. Unless you made that three-hour book thing up.” She cocked her head.
“I didn’t make that up,” I said.
“No? Because I have the book in my purse. I already read most of it.
You could read it now.”
“Is this a test?”
“It is not not a test.” She smiled.
“What are you gonna do while I’m reading?”
“Read something else on my e-reader.”
I took a dramatic breath and turned off the TV. “Fine. Give it to me.”
Two and a half hours later we were arguing.
“I don’t buy it,” she said. “You can’t convince me that he’s been living in the Alaskan woods with no running water, no toothbrush, and he gets not one but two gorgeous women to fall in love with him? He only showered once a week. I’m calling bullshit.”
“He was a homesteader,” I said. “A really good one.”
“So these women were impressed with his root cellar? Is that what I’m supposed to believe? That circumvents personal hygiene?”
“How do you know the women had good personal hygiene? Maybe they didn’t shower and brush their teeth either.”
“One was a producer on the show covering him and the other one was a model he met during the week he was in LA to film the reunion episode.
I’m going to guess they both own toothbrushes. See, this is why I can’t deal with books that try to add romance to check a box. Half the time I can’t suspend my disbelief. You can’t just say to the reader, ‘These two are in
love.’ You have to make us believe it.”
“I believed it,” I said.
“Then you have never fallen in love.”
I fake gasped. “That is an assumption. That is wrong.”
“Who’s the last person you were in love with?” she asked.
I made a show of thinking about it. “Kendra Watson.”
She gave me a look. “You just told me someone from grade school, didn’t you.”
I blinked at her. “How’d you know that?”
“Because you came at me with her first and last name? That is so third grade.”
“You don’t tell people you’re dating Michael Maddox?”
“No. I say ‘I’m dating a guy named Mike.’ Like a grown-up.”
“You know, technically Kendra and I are still together. We never broke up. She just ghosted me after recess one day and then I saw her wearing Liam McGillicutty’s Ring Pop at snack time. I was devastated.”
She was laughing. “Okay, so maybe you have fallen in love.”
I smiled.
Mike was still knocked out.
We’d eaten the soup an hour ago. She set some aside for him and put the rest into containers for her customers while I blew through her paperback.
She was right, it was a convoluted book. But I argued with her about it anyway just to play devil’s advocate, and because I liked debating with her for some reason.
She made a clicking sound with her throat.
I eyed her. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, my throat’s a little itchy. I think maybe there was some peanut butter on the sponge I washed the cutting board with,” she said. “Mike makes those peanut butter banana protein shakes.”
“Your allergy’s that bad?” I asked, watching her dig in her purse for
Benadryl.
“Yeah. It sucks.”
“Where’s your EpiPen?” I asked.
She handed it to me. I checked the fluid. “The soup was really good, by the way. I can see why people want to buy it,” I said, handing the medication back to her.
“Yeah. I need all the income I can get,” she said, putting the pen back in her purse. “I’m paying the minimums now on two extra credit cards I didn’t know I had.”
I stopped to look at her. “Wait… there’s more?”
“There were three,” she said. “The big one that took my tax return and two other ones for five thousand each. I found them when I ran my credit.”
I blinked at her. “Are you getting the money back?”
She drew in a deep breath. “Maybe? I filed a police report, I locked down my credit, and I disputed the charges, but he listed himself as a joint
user on the accounts.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that it appears that he had permission to use the cards. So I need a lawyer, which I can’t afford. I have to at least pay the minimums while I try and figure it out so my credit doesn’t get worse than it already is.
Realistically I’m probably going to end up paying the whole thing.”
I sat back into the sofa. “Damn.”
“Yeah. My dad is a very good criminal, unfortunately.”
“Has he ever gone to jail?”
“Never for as long as he should have.” She nodded toward Mike’s room.
“Should we check on him?”
I looked at my watch. It was two thirty. “He’s not due for his medication for another hour and a half. I say we just let him sleep.”
“Okay.”
I studied her while she took her Benadryl. “So what should we do now?”
I asked.
“Well, I could run home and get my box of books,” she said, closing her
bag.
“That’s not a terrible idea.”
“Are you going to take some home?” she asked. “You have to. Seriously.
We’re using your streaming services, it’s the least I can do.”
“Well, if it will make you feel better.”
She scrunched up her face. “I’m sorry if my mom sent you any more
weird texts.”
“She didn’t send me anything weird.”
“Are you sure?”
“Wait, come to think of it, she asked me for my Grocery Rewards
number—”
She gasped.
“I’m kidding,” I chuckled. “She’s fine.”
She smiled. “Oh! You know what else I’ll bring?”
“What?”
“The bread pudding I made from the sourdough you gave me. I froze it.”
I lit up. I loved bread pudding.
“I bet Mike can eat it too. It’s soft,” she said, getting up.
“He’s not gonna eat that,” I said.
She looked at me weird. “Why?”
“He’s more of a protein and steamed vegetables kind of guy.”
“Oh,” she said, shrugging on her jacket. “Right. The training. Okay, well, more for us, McNougat.”
“You don’t get to call me that,” I said.
“You don’t get to choose your nickname,” she said, slinging her purse over her shoulder. “That’s not how nicknames work.”
I was smiling at her and she had her hand on the knob when Mike appeared behind me in the doorway of his room. I knew this because Larissa’s face brightened. “Oh, hey,” she said, coming back in and setting her purse on the table. She made her way to the doorway and slipped her arms around his waist. “How are you feeling? Are you hungry?” she asked.
“I could eat,” he said weakly.
She looked at me. “Do you think we should blend it? It’s got the beef in it. You think that might get stuck in his gums?”
“Probably.”
“Okay. I’ll puree it.”
She let him go and Mike came around the sofa and dropped onto the cushion next to me while Larissa went to the kitchen with Woofarine trailing behind her.
Mike rubbed his forehead. “Am I tripping or did Jesse get video?” he said, his voice rough.
“He did. I deleted it off his phone while he wasn’t looking.”
“Thanks.” He leaned his head back on the sofa cushion and closed his eyes. I could hear Larissa moving around in the kitchen.
“Do you know what soup she made?” he whispered. “I’m not eating anything with pasta.”
“I thought you wanted to carb load for the race,” I said quietly.
“Dick.”
I laughed dryly.
“She made it from scratch for you,” I said, my voice low. “It doesn’t have pasta, but even if it did, you should eat it.”
He groaned.
“She was cooking for over an hour. Also, it’s good.”
“Fine,” he mumbled, like he was making some huge sacrifice.
I pressed my lips together. Maybe it was just the way we were raised, but it wouldn’t even cross my mind to turn down something like that, no matter what was in it.
Mike was the only boy in his family, and Donna spoiled him. She cooked things he liked and he didn’t eat what he didn’t. I on the other hand, did not have parents who cooked. Mom and Dad were a lot of things, but chef was not one of them. They were always so busy I ate most of my meals growing up between Jesse’s, Xavier’s, or Mike’s house—mostly Mike’s.
And as a guest, you said thank you and you ate what was given to you, and you acted like you liked it, even if you didn’t. It was what was polite.
That aside, the soup was delicious. And it was thoughtful too. Larissa didn’t have to come over at all, especially because he told her not to. It’s not like they’d been dating very long, nobody expected her to step in.
I liked that she had.
I leaned over the coffee table and picked up the book Larissa and I had been reading and looked at the cover while the blender started up around the corner. I still had a few more chapters. I was going to read them while she ran home, but suddenly I just didn’t feel up to it, like there was no point now. The book wasn’t good. The fun part was talking about it with her.
Now that Mike was here, we couldn’t exclude him by discussing a book he
hadn’t read.
So now I was a third wheel.
I stood. “Hey, I think I’m gonna cut out.”
Mike didn’t open his eyes. “Okay. Thanks, man. I appreciate you.”
“Yeah. Eat the soup,” I said.
“I will eat the soup.”
I waved goodbye to Larissa before she could turn the blender off, took my dog, and I left.