“Yeah, kind of like when your mother openly insults everything about me and you say nothing,” I say waspishly. “That sound she makes when I say yes to dessert. Tut-tut. Looking down on me because of where I work, and the fact that I only have a high school diploma. A million other things.”
I gaze miserably out my window, but all I see is the reflection of Nicholas, stretched and rounded. The lights of Beaufort are far behind us, and now we’re traveling through a black expanse of nothingness until we reach Morris.
Talking has gradually relaxed my body. Coming down from the high of going full Ricky Bobby running from nonexistent fire has left me with a headache that I’m not making up this time.
“My mother’s difficult,” he says. “It’s hard to stand up to her; she’s had my nerves twisted since childhood. I don’t know how to do it alone.”
I feel for him, I really do, so I stroke my thumb over the back of his hand. Just once. “I know it must be hard to have her as a mom sometimes. She runs off all your girlfriends and then gets on your case for not being married with five kids already. You’re not alone in that, either. Imagine being the poor daughter-in-law who’s supposed to supply those five kids.”
A passing car’s headlights illuminate Nicholas’s smile. Another car following right behind flashes by, and by then the smile has vanished. I know he’s wondering if I’ll ever be Deborah’s daughter-in-law. I’d have to be crazy to voluntarily marry into his circus, and he knows it. If this goes bust like we both anticipate, he’ll need a mail-order bride. I’m the only woman in the country dumb enough to try my luck with Deborah’s offspring.
My mind keeps rerouting back to the incident at the stoplight. I see myself through Nicholas’s eyes, standing on the other side of the street, hands over my face. Knees bent. A royal mess-maker. I hear what he’s going to say during our next argument so clearly, it’s like it already happened.
You cut off your nose to spite your face. Got rid of a decent car, willingly, and now you have to drive around in this piece of junk you don’t know how to operate. You’re so backward, you’d try to catch honey with flies. Wow, you sure have stuck it to me.
Real Nicholas hasn’t said any of this. But Imaginary Nicholas is an amalgamation of realistic predictions based on callous things he’s said to me in the past, so I easily hear his voice shape those words. It’s not fair to be hurt or angry over something he didn’t even say, especially since the words I put into my own head are all true, but knowing he potentially could say it—and probably will—is enough to make me sink into a dark silence that I don’t rise from for the rest of the ride home.
Since neither of us had dinner, we both head straight to the fridge when we get home. Or some version of home. I’m still thinking of it as Leon’s place, just with our stuff in it.
The bare shelves of our refrigerator wink back at us.
We each rush to blame the other. “Did you not go to the store?” he says, like it’s to be expected. “You forgot to go to the store,” I say, as if we’d already decided he’d make a grocery run and he’d neglected to do so. Then we frown at each other. Our methods aren’t covert anymore. Our bullshit radars are fine-tuned.
He checks the microwave clock. “There’s still time for you to run to the gas station for frozen pizza.” He hands me his keys.
“I’m all pizza’d out.” I hand the keys back. “When you go get us some burritos, I want the chicken and cheese, not beef and cheese.”
We commence a fierce stare-down. I’m doing him a big favor by staying here with him in this house that’s probably haunted, saving him from miserable dinners with his mother where she’ll criticize every single restaurant employee in the most devastatingly personal way possible. “Go get the burritos and I’ll be nice to you forever,” I say.
“Go get them yourself and I’ll be nice to you forever.”
Not worth it. “Nah.”
“Don’t you want to see how the Jeep drives? You’ll like it better than the Saturn.” His lips twist. “Much, much better than the … ah … what kind of car did you trade it for?”
“It’s a monster, and I love it like it’s my child. Besides, I can’t go anywhere because I’m still shaken up.”
I’m not shaken up, because being far removed from Deborah has revitalized me. He can tell.
“Fine.” He relents, performing another inventory of our fridge. “I’ll fix something for myself, then.”
“So will I.” I open the cupboards and hope to god there’s an entire Thanksgiving meal up there. “For myself.”
He gets out bread crumbs and eggs. I’ve seen this pattern before: he’s making mozzarella sticks. They sound amazing.
My first thought is to make spaghetti. He doesn’t like my spaghetti? Then I’ll cook enough for a banquet and let it overflow from every Tupperware container we own.
Nicholas watches me retrieve a box of spaghetti noodles. “I see you’re still mad about the spaghetti thing.”
“Not mad.” Just holding on to it forever.
“Sure, sure.” He smiles, because the idea of successfully pissing me off makes him just as gleeful as I’m going to feel when he realizes I ate all the mozzarella cheese.
I scavenge for a big jar of tomato sauce and come up with nil. I do find a leftover plastic tub of marinara from Benigno’s and plenty of ketchup, so I say what the hell and squirt it into a saucepan. I find that the spaghetti box only contains four noodles, so I have to supplement with half-empty boxes of gluten-free fettuccine and organic brown rice farfalle. I put them on to boil and wish I lived with someone less nutrition-conscious when it comes to carbs.
“What are you making?” he snickers.
“Farfaccine.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“It’s my favorite food ever. I talk about it all the time; not my fault you don’t pay attention.”
He rolls his eyes and turns to root through the fridge. My body coils tight like a jack-in-the-box, waiting. Finally: “Have you seen the mozzarella?”
“Nope.”
His gaze falls onto the trash can. He pops the lid and sees the crumpled mozzarella stick wrappers. Busted.
“Darned Leon,” I say. “I bet he kept a spare key and snuck inside last night. We should change the locks.”
Nicholas glares, then dumps his prepared breading into my saucepan.
“Hey!”
“It’s going to suck, anyway.”
“It is not.”
“Your pasta’s overcooked. And you forgot to stir.”
“Fudge.” I hurry to drain it. There are clumps stuck to the bottom of the pot. Gluten-free anything is already atrocious. Boiling it just makes it worse. While I’m fussing with the pasta, the marinara-ketchup combo starts spitting. I rush back and stir, then throw in some seasoning. I’m a regular Alex Guarnaschelli.
“Interesting choice.”
“Huh?”
Nicholas taps one of the spice bottles I just used. Cinnamon.
“Oh. Yes.” I stand tall. “It’s the secret ingredient.”