“I don’t know. Most of the recipes are mine, half the time what I cook is mine. It feels…weird eating it with an audience.”
Vulnerable. That’s what he means by “weird.” It feels vulnerable.
“You’re eating in front of me.”
“Yeah, well…” He gestures with his fork toward my boobs, and I glance down to see a glob of cheese.
I sigh and get out yet another napkin and clean up the mess, although mostly I just smear oil around. “I’m usually very elegant on dates.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him go still, then give me a half smile. “That what this is? A date?”
“Well, not a very good one,” I say, gesturing around us. “There’s no candles and music.”
He reaches out, punches the radio. Nancy Wilson’s iconic “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve” starts playing.
“Better?” he asks.
I smile and dig back into my pasta. “Much.”
We eat in companionable, easy silence. The food’s delicious, the wine’s amazing. The only thing that keeps this moment from being perfect…
I set my plate aside and turn to Mark. “Erika talked to me.”
He shrugs and spears a tomato with his fork. “She’s a bartender. That’s her job.”
“No, I mean, like…cornered me in the bathroom and talked to me.”
Mark’s fork stalls halfway to his mouth. Then he drops his fork and sets the plate up on the dash with an annoyed groan. “I don’t suppose she just wanted to borrow lipstick?”
“I think she still has feelings for you,” I say quietly.
“Yeah.”
I feel a little pang at the easy, matter-of-fact way he says it. “Has she said anything about wanting to get back together?”
“Yeah.”
Another pang, stronger this time. “Have you thought about it?”
He doesn’t say anything, and it feels like a knife in the stomach, even though I know I should be happy for him if that’s what he wants.
“She cheated on you,” I say, because the thought of my friend going back to that sort of relationship…
He takes a drink of the wine. “It’s more complicated.”
“Um, you told me you caught her and Doug in your bed. That’s brutally simple.”
“Yeah, and it sucked, but she and I were…I’d broken up with her a couple days earlier.”
“What?” I turn in my seat to face him more fully. “Why didn’t you mention that the other day when you were bashing Doug’s face in?”
“I already told you I didn’t punch Doug because of what he did to me.”
No. He did it because of what Doug did to me.
“So you and Erika weren’t even together.”
He exhales and rests his head on the headrest. “It’s complicated. I’d told her I wasn’t sure things were working out. She was pissed, asked that I take some time to think about it. I reluctantly agreed, but then the thing with Doug happened, and, well…that made it easy.”