“Save room for dessert.” He forked another piece of sauce-laden chicken and a mushroom into his mouth.
“What did you get for dessert?” She started to close her box lid.
He reached over and pierced the last piece of veal from her box and brought it to his lips.
“Italian cream cake,” he said around the flavors in his mouth. As he ate the last bite of chicken, he suddenly realized something. For the last few weeks, he’d eaten when his gut hurt from hunger, but he hadn’t tasted or savored food. Hell, he hadn’t tasted or savored life.
And while he didn’t quite understand it, he sensed the change had something, or rather everything, to do with her.
~
After eating two small bites of dessert, Cali, still sitting on her side of the bed, set the cake down beside her and started gathering up the to-go boxes. When she looked over at him, he was watching her.
“You not going to finish that?” He pointed his fork at her and gazed at her cake.
“No. I’m full.” She passed him the Styrofoam box with her half of cake in it and she watched him devour it in three bites.
When he looked up, he flinched to see her watching him.
“What?” he said around the cake and covered his mouth. He swallowed. “Did I break some manner thing?”
She grinned. “No.” She’d actually been thinking she liked how he ate with enthusiasm.
“Then why are you looking at me like the manner police?”
“I’m not looking at you like the manner police,” she said.
“Bull crap. I’ve seen the way you eat, all proper-like. You used your knife and did that roll thing with your fork and pasta.” He pointed at her with the fork. “And you put your napkin in your lap.”
Her mouth dropped open a bit. “Wait. Are you accusing me of making fun of how you eat, or are you making fun of the way I eat?”
“I’m not making fun of you. I’m just saying you eat like you’re at some richified dinner party.”
“I do not,” she said, not really insulted, because of the humor she saw in his eyes. He didn’t smile nearly enough. “I just eat the way my mother taught me to eat.”
“Which is richified,” he said and chuckled. “And then there’s all the pleases and thank yous you hand out.”
She rolled her eyes. “Since when did being polite become a bad thing?”
“I didn’t say it was bad. It just makes you different.” He continued to grin at her, then scraped the bottom of his Styrofoam make-shift plate and slid the fork into his mouth to savor the last of the icing. He pulled the fork out of his mouth slowly. “I’ll bet you wouldn’t have done that,” he said.
“I do that all the time.”
“You don’t cuss.” He pointed at her again with the fork. “When you were mad the day you couldn’t find your keys, you said ‘darn it.’” He laughed again. “Do you know what I say when I lose my keys?”
She frowned. “I can imagine. Anyway, I don’t use bad language because I’m a teacher.”
“Teachers don’t cuss?” He repositioned himself lower on the bed, and looked at her through his thick lashes.
“If I cuss outside the classroom, then I’m likely to cuss inside the classroom. And the last thing a teacher needs is a student going home and telling their parents that Miss McKay used bad language.”
He rested his hand on his flat stomach and continued to look up at her with his smirky grin on his face. “I bet you couldn’t say shit if you had a mouthful of it.”
“I can say dickhead.”
He tilted his head back and laughed. “You know I’m just teasing you.”
“Right,” she said and still was only half-annoyed. What was it about him that made her feel lighter?
“Seriously, you’re perfect.” His smile faded to something softer, something that reminded her of how he looked before he’d kissed her.
He kissed just like he ate, as if he really enjoyed it.
“Don’t change a thing,” he said.
He picked up the remote and flicked channels until he found a movie.
Sneaking a peek, she found him watching her and not the television. She stood up. “I’m going to brush my teeth. Are you going to make fun of me for doing that, too?”
He smiled. “No.”
She started for the bathroom.
“But can I borrow your toothbrush when you’re done?”
She swung around. “No!”
She heard him laughing as she shut the bathroom door. When she looked up at her reflection, she was smiling. She almost didn’t recognize herself. Maybe he wasn’t the only one who needed to laugh more.
~
When she walked out a few minutes later, she grabbed a pillow and stretched out with her head at the foot of the bed. Pillow tucked beneath her, she latched her arms around it and pretended to watch television.
“You have to work?” she asked without looking back.