“Okay, I’m out of here.” Britney turns to the door. “Ben wants to grab an early dinner.”
“You mean, you want to grab an early dinner,” I tease, and she blushes.
“I can’t help it if I’m tired and ready for bed at seven p.m. You try carrying around a watermelon in your stomach all day and tell me if you have the energy for anything past that time.”
“Touché,” I acknowledge.
I open the door for her, and she starts to walk out, offering one last smile. But the smile slips, and she hesitates. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I lie. “Why?”
Because I haven’t been okay since I returned to Pittsburgh from Langley two nights ago. I can’t stop thinking about Greer, the incredible time we spent in bed together, and the fact that she sought me out ten years ago.
Why? What did she want? Why didn’t she stay and talk to me?
And why the fuck do I care? I should never have had sex with her, and yet I was powerless to stop it.
Ultimately, I have to accept we’re still incendiary together, but it was a onetime thing. I’ve moved on.
But she will not leave my mind, and to say that all kinds of emotions are stirred up—both good and bad, but mostly confusing—is an understatement.
“I’m fine,” I say to Britney with a confident smile.
“You don’t look fine,” she says suspiciously.
“Would I lie to you?” I reply.
“Yes, you would. To keep me from worrying about you.”
She’s not wrong about that.
“I’m good,” I insist, putting my hand to her back and gently nudging her out the door. “Go eat your early old-woman dinner with Ben. Tell him I said hello, and to give you a back rub tonight.”
Britney wrinkles her nose. “It’s weird that you tell Ben all the tips we learned when we were pregnant with Ethan.”
“It’s weird we’re still friends and you married a guy I happen to like,” I counter.
She returns with a “touché” of her own and grins, then waddles out the door. Her due date is in two weeks, but she was early with Ethan, so we’re all ready for it to happen at any time. Ethan is beyond excited that he’s going to have a little sister.
I yell at Britney to be careful on the roads. She waves back and I shut the door, locking it. I stand there a moment, watching through the glass to make sure she’s safely in the car. When she’s reversing from the parking pad, I turn away.
Poking my head in the living room, I consider letting Ethan know we’re having pizza for dinner, but it’s unnecessary. The kid would eat pizza three times a day, every day, if I let him. I don’t disturb him since his game time is limited on school nights and head back into the kitchen to start dinner. I’ve taken a few days off since returning from El Salvador and had time today to make homemade pizza dough and sauce, which is cooling on the stove. Now I just have to get the toppings ready, which is quite the undertaking since my kid loves his pizza like I do, loaded with everything under the sun.
From the fridge I grab red bell pepper, pepperoni—the good kind, not pre-sliced—ground sausage, a block of mozzarella, and mini portobello mushrooms. Out of the pantry, an onion and a tin of anchovies. Yes, Ethan and I are adventurous eaters, although we both agree ham and pineapple have no business on a pizza.
As I grab a pan to sauté the sausage, I have a moment of sorrow that Fortnite is more important to Ethan than cooking with his dad. It’s something we enjoy doing together, but at this age, it’s not as important to him. Sucks, because cooking together is an amazing way to bond and have great conversation.
I learned to love cooking from Greer.
The pan clatters from my hand onto the stove after I shock myself that she popped into my mind like that.
And not just a mere thought popping into my mind, but a memory of how much we loved to cook together. Sure, there were times we’d pull out strawberries and whipped cream and that alone would be our meal—and it usually ended up with us naked in the kitchen. But mostly it was about using the time to keep our hands busy while we talked about everything from the mundane things that happened during our day to deep philosophical debates. Our duties with the CIA made quality time hard. We didn’t do joint missions, but in between them—which would often be weeks at a time—we spent every moment together.
Cooking became our thing. We’d only been together three months—starting with that amazing night in Colombia—when the nature of our relationship changed from just great sex, affection, and fun cooking into something else altogether.
“Here, slice these olives,” Greer had told me, handing me a bowl of kalamatas. We were on vacation in Santorini, both of us having finished exhausting missions. She’d been in Guatemala, and I’d been in the Czech Republic. Neither was particularly dangerous—just some routine human intel, which was the general gist of what we did for the CIA—but we’d been apart for almost a month. We had three glorious weeks off together, and we chose Greece as our playground.
“What?” I exclaimed with mock offense. “No way. That’s sissy work.”
“How can it be sissy work when you get to use a sharp knife?” she asked as she smashed garlic cloves.
I nabbed the tiny paring knife she’d laid beside the bowl. “This is not a manly weapon.”
“I half expect you to pull a huge blade from behind your back à la Crocodile Dundee and say, ‘Now this is a knife.’” She said it with a convincing Aussie accent and everything. But in the end, she nodded at the olives. “Get to work.”
She started a pot of water for the orzo and chattered about silly things, and I listened attentively while I sliced olives.
It was when she was telling me a story about how she was on a Girl Scout camping trip when she was eleven and in a game of truth or dare one night, she ate some wild mushrooms. Luckily, they were the non-psychedelic kind. Unluckily, while not poisonous, they caused immense “gastric distress,” as she put it, and became the most unpopular girl on that trip.
I chuckled as I continued my task, eyes never wavering from my knife because while it was very small, it had a mightily sharp edge, and I didn’t want to lose the tip of my finger.
When I noticed Greer had gone silent, I paused my slicing and turned my attention to her. As always happened when I looked at her, a rush of attraction blew through me. Her beauty was almost criminal, but mostly I had such a deep, unyielding care for her, it scared me sometimes. I’d never had feelings like this for anyone in my life.
When our eyes met, she stared at me with an intensity I’d not seen before.
“What?” I asked, placing the knife on the butcher block.
“I just told you a really embarrassing, gross story about myself, and you just chuckled and never missed a beat cutting those olives.”
I frowned, not catching her drift. “So?”
“I’ve never told anyone that story. Not even my parents.”
“And?” I drawled.
“You didn’t even grimace. Or say that it was nasty.”
I turned fully toward her, leaning against the counter. “Not sure I understand where you’re going with this.”
“You love me,” she said, as if it was a revelation.