Page 38 of Rough Hard Fierce (Chicago Underground 1-3)
She sucked on her crumb-coated fingers, but I couldn’t even be upset about the mess when the state of the entire kitchen smacked me like a frying pan. It was a disaster. The counters were piled with food in varying states of cooked.
I laid the layers of lasagna and stuck it in the oven, then set about cleaning. First I put away all the produce and ingredients. Then I grabbed the pan to wash it and burned my hand in the process.
Ouch. Leave it to some fancy brand of cookware to actually have fewer features than a cheapo knockoff, like say, plastic handles for safety. Probably they were expecting rich people not to be idiots and spring for pot holders. Fair enough.
Bailey watched me curiously as I ran my hand under the cold water, and I realized I’d been making monkeylike sounds in my pain.
A smile slid across my face. “Mommy silly?”
In response she puffed up proudly and presented her hand, covered in crumbs. “Cracker!”
My shoulders slumped. “Right.”
Although I had plenty left to do cleaning my own mess, I figured I’d fix the floor first. For all I knew, he’d take one look at the nuclear wasteland that was his kitchen and order us out into the street. Okay, probably not that drastic, but it wouldn’t be good.
He wasn’t used to living with a kid. Even if he was, graham cracker snowfall was not an everyday occurrence. So I cleaned like a woman possessed. I would not even mention that regular graham crackers did not crumble on touching them. It was probably the grains, being whole as they were, but he wouldn’t hear that from me.
Possibly I was becoming unhinged. A hysterical laugh bubbled up, but I ruthlessly forced it down. I was going to make this work. Everything was going to be fine, and if it wasn’t…well. Well.
I swept up the crumbs, though the wet ones got caught in the broom’s bristles and had to be washed out. Then I went back over the floor with paper towels, but the particles had wormed their way into the grout, as if it could camouflage itself with cement. I scrubbed until my hand was tired, but this called for stronger stuff.
I ducked my head into the cabinet under the sink, rummaging for some harsh chemical shit to wipe those suckers out.
“Uh, Allie?”
In a knee-jerk reaction, I banged my head into the wood above me. A cry escaped me as tears sprang to my eyes. A sense of utter failure assailed me, and I contemplated just how long I could keep my head buried in the cupboard before it got weird. Not very long, it turned out, because Colin dragged me off the floor and into a kitchen chair with such horribly insensitive commentary as “Jesus” and “Are you okay?”
“I made a mess,” I said flatly.
In acknowledgment he gently pressed an ice pack to my head.
I flinched, then let him hold me steady. “I’m sorry.”
“Hey.” That was all he said, his chiding tone tempered with concern.
The tears fell in streams then, making my voice all high and wavery as I tried to explain. ?
?I’m sorry. I know you said dinner, and I tried to make it, but I just didn’t… I didn’t have time, you know? Or the ability to cook, either. I’m so sorry.”
“Stop apologizing,” he cut in.
“But—”
“No, listen. I didn’t mean you’d have to cook. I can cook, or we can go out. Don’t stress out.”
“I am so beyond stressed,” I said, watery.
“Let’s order a pizza.”
The consideration and utter simplicity of the gesture touched me. “Really?”
He handed the ice pack off to me and pulled out his cell phone. “Ordering now. What do you want?”
“But the organic,” I said. “And the grass feeding. I know you don’t just order pizza.”
“Pepperoni with extra chemicals? Got it,” he said to me before he turned to the phone to place a real order.
I swiped at the tears, but they didn’t want to stop. While relief flooded me, I toyed with the empty box of lasagna noodles on the kitchen table. Idly I read the fine print.
