Page 13 of Rent a Masked Duo

Jax catches me around the ribs before my knees can decide to stop working. Mark’s hand slides out of me and settles on my hip, warm and grounding. Neither of them says anything for a long moment.

“Told you we wouldn’t let you fall,” Mark says quietly, into my hair.

“Barely,” I mumble.

Jax laughs—low, warm, more air than sound. He kisses the top of my head. Mark reaches around and shuts off the water.

They dry me off with a towel that is, predictably, floral. Mark re-bandages my heel while I sit on the closed lid of the toilet in a robe that hangs to my ankles. Jax finds me a pair of Mark’s sweatpants that fit worse than the drawstring shorts but are at least dry. Nobody speaks much. It doesn’t feel like the kind of quiet that needs to be filled.

When we come out into the bedroom, I catch sight of the alarm clock on the nightstand and realize it’s almost noon. I haven’t eaten since the grilled cheese last night, and neither have they, and my body has just informed me that it would like to be fed. Loudly.

“I’m hungry,” I announce, though they probably heard my stomach growl.

“I’ll make something,” Mark offers.

“No,” I reply, and it comes out with more certainty than I expected. “I want to.”

Both of them look at me.

“I want to cook,” I clarify. “For us. I noticed the double oven yesterday. I haven’t cooked anything in forever. My mom got sick again, and Dad wouldn’t let me in the kitchen because he said I was going to burn the house down, which, first of all, that happened one time, and second of all, I was nine. I want to cook. Please.”

Jax is watching me with an expression I can’t quite place. Not amusement. Not surprise. Something quieter than either of those.

“What are you going to make?” he asks.

“I don’t know yet. Let me see what you have.”

Mark makes a small gesture that means after you. We go downstairs. Wiggles, from his crate, makes a squeaking inquiry. I let him out onto the kitchen floor to explore while I open the refrigerator and start pulling things out. Eggs, cheese, half an onion, a bell pepper that has seen better days but is still viable. There’s a package of bacon. There’s a loaf of decent bread on the counter.

“Frittata,” I decide. “And toast.”

“You know how to make a frittata?” Mark asks.

“My mom taught me when I was eleven. She liked to use it as sort of a fridge cleanout meal.” I find a skillet in the cabinet under the stove and set it on a burner. “You can put almost anything in one, and it comes out fine. And it’s a way to sneak veggies into a kid’s food.”

“She sounds smart. Reminds me of Penny,” he muses.

“You would like her,” I decide, though I can’t decide as easily whether she would like them. I mean, they did save me from a terrible, disgusting marriage, right? At gunpoint. But a guy’s got to do what he’s got to do.

Am I seriously making excuses for them?

Mark leans against the counter and watches me work. Jax sits down at the table and pours himself another cup of coffee, while Wiggles decides the space under the kitchen chair is his new office. Meanwhile, I crack eggs into a bowl and dice the onion. My hands remember what to do. I haven’t cooked in months, and my hands remember anyway, and something in my chest that has been wound tight since before the wedding starts to loosen. Just a little.

“Tell me more about her,” I say, without looking up from the cutting board. “Penny.”

So they do. No hesitation, either. Like they’ve only been waiting for the invitation to introduce her to someone.

They don’t talk about the sad parts this time. Jax tells me about the year she made them both take piano lessons because she’d read somewhere it was good for the brain, and how Mark quit after two months, and Jax lasted a year and can still, technically, play the opening bars of “Für Elise”. Mark tells me about her cooking, which was terrible, and her singing, which was worse, and the way she used to make them Sunday breakfast anyway because it was the only meal of the week they all sat down for.

I listen while whisking the eggs before pouring them into the skillet. I add the cheese and the vegetables, slide the whole thing into the oven, and start on the toast.

They keep talking. It doesn’t feel like a confession anymore. It feels like people telling stories about somebody they loved. I don’t say much. I don’t need to. My job right now is to feed them, and to listen, because they did something nice for me and treated me like I’m more than a few holes to fill.

When the frittata comes out, we sit down at the table together. Wiggles emerges from under the chair to investigate the smell and is politely but firmly denied a slice. Mark eats three helpings without saying a word. Jax eats slower and watches me eat, and when I catch him at it, he doesn’t look away.

Nobody makes any promises or asks what happens now. It’s enough to sit together and eat.

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