“Then he doesn’t show up,” she said with a smile. “From the reactions of the people so far, fish and chips apparently wasn’t a bad idea.”
“Isn’t that the truth? Several people have been through and just had fish and chips, instead of a mixed plate full of some of it all.” When she looked up the next time, Keith walked in the cafeteria door on crutches. He was moving slowly, holding on to the crutches, but also taking several steps without them. When he reached the cafeteria line, she smiled at him. “That’s another stage of progress.”
“A little scary though,” he said. “This is Shane’s idea.”
“It seems like a good idea,” she said. “It’s too easy to become so accustomed to having wheelchairs and crutches that we forget we were never meant to use them.”
“But falling is not fun,” he said, “so it’s nice to have something, at least until I have a little more confidence in my legs.”
She smiled. He took one look at the food and said, “Fish and chips, huh?”
Such joy was in his voice that Dennis reached over and nudged her. “Just for you,” Dennis said in a low voice.
Keith flashed a bright smile at Ilse. “And I certainly will make good use of this opportunity.” He quickly reached for five pieces of fish and a few chips.
She laughed. “Hey, we’re always looking for good menu ideas,” she said.
“Well, you can repeat this anytime,” he said. And obviously not able to stop and talk because a crowd formed behind him, Keith flashed her a quick smile and whispered, “Thanks.” Then he headed over to a table. When he’d gone by her again to grab coffee, he glanced back and asked, “Join me?”
She looked over at Dennis, who smiled and said, “Go. And take some fish and chips with you.” He quickly served her up a dish with the fish, but she stopped him from putting chips on too. Instead she grabbed a Caesar salad and a fork.
Then she headed out to the cafeteria table to spend some time with Keith. He looked up when he saw her and laughed. “I’m pretty stoked to try this out,” he said, gesturing to the fish and chips.
She sat down beside him, content that at least she’d managed to put that smile on his face.
“It’s delicious,” Keith said warmly.
“Good,” she said. “All I ever wanted to do since I was little was cook.”
“That’s not the most normal career path for a child,” he said, “but I’m grateful you did so well because this is awesome.”
“This is simple,” she said. “The stuff you have to learn in culinary school? That’s a whole different story.”
“Well, I, for one, would much rather have a plate of real food like this,” he said, “than all that fancy stuff any day.”
She said, “You look a little bit better today.”
He nodded. “Another one of those mind-bending twists,” he said. “I think I even made Shane happy today.”
“Is he a taskmaster?”
“He is, and apparently I haven’t been completely showing up for the job.”
She was surprised that he even mentioned it, and she looked at him in shock. “What does that mean?”
“Apparently I’ve been holding back, out of some internal fear that truly giving it my all wouldn’t get me the results I wanted,” he said. “So I’ve been dogging it, giving myself a fallback excuse.”
“Ah, got it,” she said. “I did that in school.”
He looked at her in surprise.
“I was afraid to challenge those I considered the better students in the class. So, instead of getting grades in the nineties and one hundreds, I would do solid seventies and eighties. It was enough to get me through everything, but it wasn’t enough to make me a top student.”
“Wow,” he said. “I guess that’s kind of the same thing. I just hadn’t considered that other people were doing it.”
“I think it’s a self-defense thing,” she said. “If I was at the top of the class, everybody would look at me and would judge me that much harder because I would be the best. Turns out everybody wanted to be the best, but nobody wanted to be held to that much higher standard and also be criticized constantly.”
He nodded slowly. “And did you finish school that way?”
“No,” she said. “My mother told me what I was doing. She showed me how I was doing it and said that maybe, just once, it would be nice to achieve something for myself and that I should put in 100 percent of my effort, not just seventy. The next year I graduated at the top of the class,” she said with a laugh, “and I timed it just right, so I could leave in the number one spot, but I didn’t have to deal with all the students behind me in the rankings who hated me.”
He laughed. “I love it,” he said. “That’s cool. I guess maybe I’ve been doing that too. It’s a sobering thought though. Using a baseball analogy, if you never take that giant swing at a pitch, you avoid some embarrassing strike-out scene, but you give up the opportunity for that grand slam home run.”
“As long as you’ve learned that lesson,” she said firmly, “it doesn’t matter now. So, how’s the relationship with your sister going?”
“Perfect,” he said. “They’re making wedding plans. Apparently I’ll walk her down the aisle and hand her over to Iain.”
“I think that’s lovely,” she said. “I hadn’t heard yet.”
“Hey, I just heard it yesterday,” he said immediately. “I know she’s got a big list of people to invite.”
Ilse shrugged. “We’re friends, but she may have a lot of other friends too. I don’t know.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said, wondering if he’d accidently crossed some invisible line here.
She laughed and said, “No, don’t worry about it. Robin and I are good.”
With relief, he attacked the fish again. “I’m so glad to hear that.”
“What do you think of Iain?”
“Well, he was at the top of the class, so I hate him,” he said cheerfully. Then he watched in joy as she started to laugh, then got the giggles and couldn’t stop. He leaned forward and said, “Not really. Obviously I don’t hate him. My sister loves him, so that’s good enough for me. Iain already knows that, if he does anything to hurt her, I’ll be right there, and it’s me he’ll have to face. Besides, what I’ve seen of him so far, I like him.”
“Typical protective brother,” she teased.
“Absolutely, but it’s also a good thing,” he said. “He may have a line on some work for me.”
“Cybersecurity?”
He nodded. “Somebody who’s looking at setting up a security company needs a couple pros, one in the cybersecurity field,” he said. “I was thinking about setting up my own company, but I’m probably better off to start with somebody else first.”
“So does this guy have the money to bankroll this endeavor?”
“Don’t know. His name is Gunner,” he said with a frown. “I’m not exactly sure about the rest of it, but apparently he’s heavily involved in all kinds of things.”