Page 69 of Nowhere to Hide
“That wasn’t helping,” he protests. “That was eating.”
“No anything,” I say. “Your job is to sit and be looked after, exactly how I say.”
He pulls his hand back, but not fast enough to hide the confusion — like he doesn’t quite know what to do with someone telling him to sit down and be taken care of — and it’s so honest that it hits me right in the feels.
I keep cooking and start talking instead. Nothing heavy, nothing about the team, nothing that needs fixing. “You’re not going to believe what Ivy did yesterday,” I say.
“Oh no.”
“She borrowed a car from a girl on our floor. I don’t know the girl, and I don’t think Ivy knows the girl, but Ivy somehow got her to agree…”
He’s smiling already.
“So she runs her errands, and then she tries to parallel park it back on our block.” I pause. “And there was a fire hydrant.”
“She hit it,” he says, voice laden with a lifetime of experience with his sister.
“She didn’t hit it.” I pause for dramatic effect. “Shegrazedit. There’s a difference, and Ivy was extremely clear with me about the difference.”
He’s properly laughing now, and I keep going, stirring the peppers and tomatoes into the garlic and butter. With my other hand, I drop some penne I found in his pantry into the now-boiling water, and glance at the clock so I can track eleven minutes.
“So the campus security officer pulled up, and Ivy told him, with complete confidence, that the parking lines were painted crooked. Then she got out of the car to show him.”
“No.”
“Yes,” I say. “And the security officer, who I genuinely think was just trying to go home, looked at the lines, looked at her, and said, ‘Ma’am, I’ll make sure this gets fixed.’”
“He was just brushing her off,” Rowan says.
“Obviously,” I say.
Then I let it sit, not even looking at Rowan. I just finish grating the cheddar, stir the sauce, and check the time. The pasta is done, so I drain it, keeping a bit of the starchy water in the pot. Then I put the pasta back in and mix in the sauce.
All through it, I feel him needing to know how it turned out. But I don’t give it to him, because the whole point is to get him to think about something else for a few minutes, and it’s working. So I plate the pasta and push his bowl across the counter.
“The lines were repainted on Monday,” I say. “Ivy sent me a photo an hour ago. Fresh paint, new lines, the whole block.”
His fork stops halfway to his mouth. “She actually?—”
“She changed the infrastructure of Halden, Rowan.” I put a forkful of pasta in my mouth. “With confidence and pointing.”
He’s gone. Head back, eyes closed, laughing in a way that uses his whole chest. The sound fills his kitchen, and I let myself stand there and watch it happen, because the lines around his eyes are back and I’d forgotten what they looked like.
When it settles, the old Rowan is back, for just a few moments. The guy who, while still always alert and reserved and looking for burdens to carry, at least looks a little more relaxed doing it.
He takes a bite, then another, and keeps eating the pasta while I lean against the counter across from him and barely touch mine. I wasn’t that hungry, but that wasn’t the point of me cooking for him.
He clears the bowl and pushes it toward me. “That was good.”
“When did you last have an actual meal?” I say.
“Defineactual meal.”
“Something that required a cooktop or an oven.”
He thinks about it for long enough that the silence is the answer.
“That’s what I thought,” I say, then switch topic. “How bad is it really, Rowan?”
