Allie assessed him for a moment, head tilted, hair fluffing all over her shoulders.
“Come on back.” She stepped aside and extended one arm toward the kitchen with a flourish. “I recommend the waffles with peanut butter, syrup, and Hershey’s. They’re crazy-delicious.”
When Ben went into the kitchen, he found May’s father at the table with a cup of coffee and the newspaper. Her mother stood by the stove, poking at a frying pan full of bacon while a closed waffle iron steamed on the counter next to a bowl of batter. May had positioned herself between the table and the counter in what Ben thought of as his macaroni salad spot. She was smiling at something her mother must have said and holding a very familiar cleaver.
He’d left his knives here.
Amazing. He hadn’t even missed them.
When she saw him, her smile dropped at the same time the cleaver rose.
“Careful,” he said without thinking. “That’s sharp.”
“But if I attacked you with it, I could become notorious,” May returned. “ ‘First The Forking, then The Cleavering. Who will she emasculate next?’ ”
The cutting board in front of her contained half a bar of baking chocolate and a pile of chunks. “That’s the wrong knife for chocolate.”
And this is the wrong way to try to make up with the woman whose heart you cleavered yesterday, asshole.
“Touchy about our knives, are we?”
Ah. That explained what she was doing with it. Abusing his knives—a small “fuck you” at absent Ben. Was it sick that it pleased him she would even bother?
“Are you making cookies?” he guessed.
“Chocolate-crinkle chocolate chunk cookies. They have pretzels,” she said. “Hangover special.”
May looked like she’d come through last night’s debauchery better than Allie, but just barely. She wore her hair in a sloppy ponytail, an oversized pink T-shirt advertising her participation in a charity walk—or possibly Einarsson’s participation, given how far the shirt hung down her thighs—and red pajama pants with little white hearts all over them. She had dark circles under her eyes.
“I like your pants,” he said.
“Thank you. They’re my sad-panda pants.”
“For when some dickhead screws her over and then dumps her without an explanation,” Allie chimed in.
“Allie,” Nancy said chidingly. “Language.”
Nancy looked like she always did. Big hair, sweatshirt with necklace, dress pants.
“Sorry, Mom.”
“Hi, Mrs. Fredericks,” he ventured. “Mr. Fredericks.”
May’s father grunted.
Nancy said, “We didn’t expect to see you again.”
“I owe you an apology,” he told her. “I’m sorry I was so rude to you before I left. I’m not sure if anybody told you this yet, but I don’t work for Dan’s agent. That was a lie. I don’t know Dan at all. I’ve never been antique shopping with May, either.”
“I’ll admit, I had some doubts about that.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Sorry. I actually am a beekeeper, though. For what that’s worth.”
“That part would’ve been tough to fake,” Allie said.
“So how did you—that is, how did you come to be driving May back from New York?”
“I’d spent most of the week with her.” He glanced at May, unsure what she’d told her mother and what she wanted him to say. The truth? Some part of it?