So they ate their waffles, every bite an unbelievable burst of golden flavor. She couldn’t remember the last time she had tasted. He cleaned every last crumb from his plate. She ate around her little strawberry heart, until it stood bereft on an island of powdered gold. It felt too wrong for her to eat that heart, like giving the prince’s heart to the wicked witch instead of to the happy, singing princess.
Kurt’s fork speared through heart and waffle both, and he slipped the whole bite into her mouth. Then, while she was still trying to convince herself it was okay for her to chew it, he rose briskly, taking their plates to the sink. Over the running water, he asked, “Would you like to go for a walk?”
Even when Kurt did the cooking—grilling out, maybe—he tended to wash the dishes automatically at the end of the meal. His compulsive mother had probably never allowed dirty dishes to lie around, so probably nurture had something to do with it, but his childhood household had had staff. He wouldn’t have ever had to wash a dish himself, growing up. So Kai had always thought another element besides environmentally-induced obsessive-compulsiveness must contribute to how voluntarily he did any household chores that needed doing: he had an ingrained need to take care of the good things in his life, and her cooking for him was one of the good things.
“In the snow?” she asked.
His half-smile was careful, watchful. “That’s right.”
She had walked so much in the snow up here. But if she added him to the excursion—she was a little afraid of snow, still. Because, well—she had just wanted so damn badly to have their own child with whom to play in it by now. Back in the good old days, she had even imagined that by this age they would have two or three kids; they would talk about it, God, as if this was in their control: “Three might be a lot. We would have to get a bigger house.” “Three seems like an odd number. I think it should be either two or four, so one of them doesn’t feel left out.” “Ha, if you want four, you get pregnant.” That retort had been back early in the first pregnancy, when she just thought it was going to be all vicious nausea but eventually with a happy ending. Or a happy beginning. Whatever you wanted to call it. “Well, don’t you want at least one of each, a little girl and a little boy? I hope the little girl will look just like you.” Stupid conversations like that.
By the third attempt, she would have been desperately happy with just one. And then, and then—she just couldn’t stand to try, not ever again. God, the first baby would have been four this Christmas, if she had lived to be born. Her third baby had actually been due on Christmas Day. Her little miracle baby, she had thought at it in her belly, all through that spring, and tried to believe in the magic of the third try so hard.
Her nostrils stung, the way they did sometimes when everyone else thought she should be over it by now. It had been part of the reason that she had had to get so far away from everyone else.
She took a breath and sighed it out. “Yes, all right. Let’s go for a walk.”
Chapter Six
Kurt focused on the hot water running over the plates, grateful for it. He had never understood it when he discovered that their friends’ couples fought over such stupid things as doing dishes or mowing the grass or making sure someone’s tank was filled with gas. They were all such easy things to get right.
It turned out they didn’t count for much, when the going got tough, but it used to be, when he wasn’t ever entirely sure how he had managed to convince this much sunshine to enter his life, that he found them very reassuring. Little things to keep that sunshine happy. Look at this plate, for example: it had just held the most delicious waffles and hearts for him, and now, instead of leaving it some ugly mess no one would ever want to deal with later, he was cleaning it right up, fresh and shiny and ready for a new start.
When you had a woman who was willing to cook for you, and laugh and tease you while she did it, you didn’t really want to leave any barriers lying around the kitchen that would discourage her from getting in that cheerful, cooking mood again the next evening or even sometimes spontaneously for breakfast. Up until things went so wrong, he had been kind of quietly, contentedly smug about how well this philosophy worked compared to those of his idiot friends.
But then, of course, all of those friends still had their wives, and even kids, now, and complained about them, too. Told him he should be glad, that he didn’t know how much trouble he had escaped.
The fucking bastards.