Page 97 of Business Casual
“What sort of fruit did you get me?”
“Strawberries,” I answer. I saw them in her fridge two nights ago, only three left in the bottom of the carton. She wanders her way to the fridge and cracks it open, peering inside. “I got you some cantaloupe and grapes too.”
She ducks farther into the fridge. “Did you cut the grapes?”
I did. I saw a video while I was scrolling endlessly on my phone about how to cut grapes into tiny hearts. I wish I could go ahead and take that back though.
“They came like that.”
She glances at me over her shoulder. “Did they?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Interesting.” She grabs the fruit tray from the bottom shelf and sets it on the table, then drops into the chair next to me and stretches out her legs with a groan. She picks up a piece of strawberry and bites into it.
I can’t stop looking at her.
“How are you feeling?”
She shrugs and pokes at another piece of fruit. A piece of cantaloupe I cut into a star. “Okay. Fuzzy. It always takes some time for me to come back online after a migraine.”
“Any pain?”
She pops the star into her mouth and chews slowly.
“Some,” she says quietly. “But it’ll pass.”
She sits and eats her fruit, and I sit and watch her, a single beam of golden light traveling slowly across the hardwood floor of the kitchen. She seems to like the silence, her knee nudging mine beneath the table. After a few moments where she doesn’t ask me to leave, I open my laptop again and scroll through my work email, answering the more obnoxious ones and putting together a list for the week.
It’s quiet and still in a way I don’t usually allow myself to be. She extends her leg so her ankle is crossed over mine beneath the table, and I try not to smile at an email about interest rates.
“Charlie,” she says, after all the grapes are gone and half the strawberries. She’s saving the cantaloupe for last, I notice. Mentally I’m doing a victory lap.
“Hmm?”
“Could you open that for me?” She nods her head toward the window above the sink. “I like the fresh air.”
“ ’Course I can.” I stride across the kitchen and open the window two inches, evening air that smells like dried leaves rolling into her kitchen. Her shoulders relax another half inch, and I reclaim the chair next to her.
“Thank you,” she says when I sit.
“Careful there, Nova girl.” I scoot my chair in and her legs tangle around mine again. “All this polite talk and I might start to think you like me.”
She rolls her eyes, a smile ticking up the corner of her mouth. With her messy hair and that ridiculous robe, it’s lacking its usual heat.
“I do like you,” she says simply.
Warmth ping-pongs around in my chest. A bright, ferocious burst of it. It’s a stupid reaction. We’ve been sleeping together for weeks. I should hope she likes me, at least a little. But here, like this, with the sunset painting her hair lavender and her socked feet tucked between mine, it feels more like a shared secret.
“I like you too.”
She pops another piece of fruit into her mouth, watching me with her chin in her hand. “Do you like me enough to kiss me?”
“Are you…well enough for that?”
She snorts. “I don’t have consumption, Charlie. I can manage a kiss.”
“Consumption. Listen to you, Doc Holliday.”
