Now That It's You

by Tawna Fenske

  Meg laughed, and he watched her shoulders relax a little. She leaned back against the wall, her posture more casual now. “And here I thought you’d gotten all classy and refined now that you’re no longer a starving artist.”

  “How do you know I’m not starving?”

  She shrugged. “I can’t vouch for your eating habits, but your career seems to be going well. You’ve been on the cover of every arts publication in the galaxy this past year.”

  “In several other galaxies, too. Those Martians can’t get enough of mixed metal.”

  He hesitated, then leaned against the wall beside Meg, his shoulders at the same level as hers. There were still at least eighteen inches between them, but there was something intimate about it. Something that left him feeling much more connected to her than if she had invited him inside to sit with her on the sofa. If he lifted his hand, his fingers might graze hers, but he stayed still and let the old familiarity flow between them, washing away some of the awkwardness.

  Kyle cleared his throat. “Confession number two: Last month I tried to email a photo to a client to show the progress of a sculpture they commissioned,” he said. “Instead, I accidentally attached an image of a tortoise penis.”

  Meg laughed. “At least it wasn’t your penis.”

  “Good point, though maybe I could have passed that off as art.”

  “Doubtful. Let’s hear your third confession.”

  Her smile hadn’t faded yet, and Kyle fished for one more gem to keep it from disappearing. “I accidentally clogged the toilet at a fancy gallery party last year and was so embarrassed I slipped out the back door and never told anyone I was leaving.”

  She snorted. “God, Kyle.” She shook her head, her eyes still bright with laughter. “Those were good, I’ll give you that. Color me impressed.”

  “The fact that you’re impressed by my ineptitude seems like a sign one of us has a screw loose.”

  “It’s probably you.”

  “I won’t disagree.” Kyle cleared his throat. “So is it your turn?”

  “I guess.” Meg bit her lip. “You were right that I was thinking something I didn’t want to say out loud, but it wasn’t really like the stuff you just shared.”

  “Do you want to tell me?”

  She sighed and closed her eyes, the back of her head still resting against the wall. “I was just thinking how weird this feels. There’s a part of me that’s still really, really angry with Matt for the affair,” she said, her words coming out in a frenzied rush now. “Like so angry I want to kill him, and then I feel guilty for even thinking that, and then I also feel really, really angry with myself for walking out the way I did instead of making a clean break or having the respect to talk things over with you or with your family, and then in the middle of all that anger I think about how Matt’s gone forever and now you’re standing here in my living room and I can’t decide if the sick ache in my gut is because I feel guilty or because I feel sad or because I missed our friendship so much these last two years.”

  She was breathless by the time she got all the words out, and her eyes were still closed. Kyle noticed her lower lashes were damp and he watched a single tear slip down her left cheek. He ached to reach out and swipe it away, but he stayed rooted in place.

  Meg opened her eyes and took a deep breath. She rubbed the back of her hand over her cheek and gave a sheepish shrug. “And now I feel like a total dumbass.”

  “You’re not a dumbass.”

  “I kinda wrecked the jovial vibe you had going.”

  “Under the circumstances, I think it’s okay not to be jovial.”

  Meg gave a tiny little half smile and blew a curl out of her eye. “I should have made up a story about having toilet paper stuck to my shoe.”

  “I missed you, too.” Kyle swallowed, still not daring to move closer. “As a friend, I mean.”

  “Friends.” Meg nodded. “We were good friends, weren’t we? I mean before everything—” She waved a hand, encompassing everything with one small gesture.

  As if that could be enough.

  “Yeah.” Kyle’s throat felt tight, but he cleared it and kept going. “Matt and I always had a hard time relating unless it was over some bullshit testosterone-fueled competition. Then you came along and—” he swallowed again, sidetracked by the memory his first glimpse of Meg, with the sunlight in her hair and bare feet in the grass and her hand linked with his brother’s. “You connected us,” he said at last. “Matt and me.”

  Meg nodded. “I’m glad.” She blinked hard. “I just wish . . . never mind.”

  He watched her left hand start to lift, but she dropped it back to her side. He wondered if it had been en route to her earlobe, and felt bad for making her self-conscious.

  “I wish things hadn’t ended the way they did,” she said at last.

  “With you and Matt?”

  “That, too. I shouldn’t have cut and run. But I also regret losing friendships. I know that’s how breakups go, but it was still hard. Having your family punish me by cutting me out like a bruise on a pear. I guess my family did the same, punishing Matt for cheating in the first place—”

  “You took it as punishment?”

  “Of course. How did you see it?”

  Kyle shoved his hands in his pockets, not sure how they’d gone from lighthearted banter about tortoise penises to adultery and forgiveness and death.

  But maybe this conversation was long overdue. Two years overdue, to be exact.

  “I guess I saw it as making a choice to have my brother’s back.” He swallowed, remembering the dark spiral of depression that gripped Matt after the breakup. Kyle had promised he’d never breathe a word about it to anyone, and he hadn’t. He still wouldn’t, not even now.

  He cleared his throat and met Meg’s gaze again. “Being there for your family is important, even if that comes at the expense of another friendship.”

  The words hung there between them for a moment, and Meg studied him so intently he had to fight the urge to look away. He watched her digest the words, and he braced for an argument or a flash of defensiveness.

  But that wasn’t Meg’s style. It never had been. When she finally spoke, it was a single word. “Interesting.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I’m not sure what else to say.” She wiped her hands down the legs of gray yoga pants that hugged her thighs, and Kyle tried not to imagine that softness against his own palms. “How about a peace offering?”

  He nodded at the flowers. “You mean besides secondhand daisies?”

  Meg smiled. “Did your mother really ask you to bring them?”

  “Not in so many words. But she asked where I was taking them, and when I told her, she said it was a good idea. And she did tell me to take these ones, instead of the ones in a tacky plastic pot. Does that count?”

  “Close enough,” Meg said and turned away. “Follow me.”

  Kyle would have followed her off the end of a dock with his pockets full of rocks, but he guessed that wasn’t her plan. He wasn’t surprised when she trudged toward the kitchen, her bare feet making a soft slap against the wood floors.

  He was surprised when she spun around with a red flowered apron and began tying it around his waist. He looked down, conscious of Meg’s hands fluttering near his belt buckle.

  “Your idea of a peace offering involves dressing me in ruffles?”

  “Doesn’t yours?”

  Kyle smiled. “What are we making?”

  “A coconut lime tart. It was Matt’s favorite.”

  Kyle nodded, annoyed with himself for feeling jealous of a dead guy who still had the power to dictate dessert from beyond the grave. “What can I do?”

  “Wash your hands first,” she said, moving past him toward the kitchen sink. “Then I’m going to have you grind up those graham crackers for the crust.”

  He watched her flip the water on, then grab a plastic bottle of dish soap to lather her hands. “Why don’t you use that little built-i
n soap dispenser thing next to the faucet?”

  “It’s broken,” she said. “Hasn’t worked since I moved in.”

  “Let me see.”

  He put a hand on her waist and nudged her aside, then dropped to his knees and crawled under the kitchen sink. “Do you have a screwdriver?”

  “Flathead or Phillips?”

  “Phillips.”

  “No.”

  “Flathead?”

  “No.”

  Kyle rolled his eyes. “How about a butter knife?”

  She handed one under the sink while Kyle fiddled with the soap dispenser.

  “Sorry,” she called from above. “I left all the tools with Matt when we split, and I never got around to buying my own.”

  “It’s fine.” Kyle twisted the knife into the screw head, careful not to bust the tip. He pried off the dispenser, checking for air leaks and clogs. He adjusted one of the valves, then used his shirt-sleeve to wipe some goopy green residue from the mouth of the bottle. He screwed the whole thing back into place and crawled out from under the sink, wiping his hands on his pants before giving the dispenser a good pump.

  “Holy cow, it works!” Meg turned to him, beaming. “Thank you.”

  “No sweat.”

  She bit her lip. “That’s one thing I always liked about you.”

  “That I fix soap dispensers with a butter knife?”

  She laughed. “No, that you don’t give me a chance to argue that I don’t need help or I can do it myself. You don’t shout at me from the couch asking ‘Need help?’ in that way most guys do when they’re hoping the answer is no. You just jump right in and make yourself useful.”

  “Wow.” Kyle ran his hands under the water and worked up a good lather. “That’s a whole lot of psychoanalysis for a soap dispenser.”

  “It’s a compliment, jackass. Take it like one.”

  “I will. Thank you.”

  “Sure.” She handed him a dish towel. “Really, thanks. To be honest, I forgot that thing didn’t work.”

  “Glad to help.”

  Kyle turned his attention to the graham crackers while Meg began digging through the fridge. They worked in companionable silence for a while, with Kyle grinding graham crackers in the food processor and Meg moving close beside him to splash in some melted butter.

  “So tell me about this cookbook,” Kyle said. “The one Matt took pictures for?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I remember hearing something about it that year before the wedding, but that’s when I was living part-time in Montana.”

  He kept his voice even, hoping she didn’t ask about his year out of state. About the reason he’d looked for the first excuse to get out of town the moment she and Matt announced their engagement.

  “Right.” Meg blew the curl off her face again and sighed. “You weren’t around to witness the whole fiasco.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Meg shrugged and began squeezing lime halves in a funny contraption. She was doing it with more force than the job seemed to require, but what the hell did he know?

  “It was stupid, really. I had this big dream to put out an aphrodisiac cookbook with all these cool recipes I created and a lot of fun stories about ingredients that boost libido.”

  Kyle felt himself getting a little dizzy, but he focused on pressing his graham cracker crust into the tart pan she’d handed him. “So what happened?”

  “Zilch. None of the agents or editors I queried had any interest in the project.”

  “Fools.”

  “Thank you.” Meg sighed. “Anyway, I decided to self-publish it.”

  “Ah. So that’s why Matt took the photos?”

  “Yeah. A friend of mine who’s a graphic designer laid the whole thing out in exchange for me doing the catering at her wedding, and Matt volunteered to take all the food pictures.”

  “Volunteered?” He thought about his mother’s accusations and wondered how Matt might tell the story differently.

  “We were a few months from getting married,” Meg said. “It wasn’t a big deal for my photographer husband to take photos for my cookbook any more than it was a big deal for me to volunteer to cater his office Christmas party. It’s just the sort of thing couples do, you know?”

  “But then the wedding didn’t happen.”

  “Right. And the book sold a whopping twelve copies, three of which were to my mother.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. It was a dumb idea anyway.”

  The sadness in her voice made Kyle turn to look at her, but she kept her eyes averted, focusing now on beating an egg with enough force to set her whole body in motion, which wasn’t unpleasant to watch. But the rigid set of her jaw gave him a stronger urge to hug her than ogle her.

  Neither seemed like the right thing to do, so he settled for pressing the butter-damp graham cracker crumbs into the edges of the tart plate. “I remember that feeling,” he said. “Back when I was starting out as an artist. I’d have this awesome, spectacular idea for a sculpture and I’d stay up all night for weeks on end getting it just right, only to have one gallery owner after another tell me it wasn’t what they were looking for.”

  “Probably didn’t help having a brother who was this super-famous sports photographer making it all look so easy.”

  “You’re right,” he agreed. “Though commercial photography was always a lot different from the sort of art I wanted to create.”

  Meg nodded. “I remember you talking about that. Everyone kept telling you to give it up and go get a desk job.”

  Kyle laughed. “Yeah, I probably should have listened. Would have spent a lot less time eating Ramen noodles and sleeping on friends’ couches.”

  “But look at you now.” She looked up and smiled, curls falling around her face. “You have your own gallery and sculptures in rich people’s houses all over the world.”

  “You’ve been reading too many art magazines.” He felt oddly self-conscious, so he slid the tart plate in front of her. “Does this look okay?”

  Meg nodded. “Could you stick it in the oven and set the timer for ten minutes?”

  “Yep.” Kyle turned to the stainless-steel monstrosity on the other side of the kitchen and opened the door to slide the crust into the pre-heated depths. Something caught his eye on the bookshelf overhead, and he pushed the oven door shut so he could take a closer look.

  “Is this your aphrodisiac cookbook?”

  Meg turned and glanced at the glossy book he’d pulled off the shelf lined with all her other cookbooks. Her cheeks went a little pinker as she nodded. “Yeah, that’s it.”

  She sounded a little shy about it, but Kyle flipped the cover open anyway and began to skim. Food descriptions and photos lined each glossy page, with a beaming picture of Meg chopping parsley catching Kyle’s attention more than it ought to. “This is amazing.”

  “Yeah. I know sports photography was his thing, but Matt used to take pretty great food photos.”

  “I meant all these recipes. ‘Blood orange-roasted asparagus with blackened Anaheim peppers and pine nuts?’ That sounds incredible.”

  Meg smiled. “The capsaicin in the peppers gets the blood flowing and stimulates nerve endings, and the vitamin E in asparagus can help boost testosterone, while—”

  “You came up with all of these recipes?”

  She nodded, using a spatula to point to a page he’d just flipped to. “That section with the lavender is my favorite.”

  “Can we make some of these?”

  Meg raised an eyebrow. “Right now?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  There were a million reasons why not, and Kyle damn well knew it. But he waited anyway, hoping maybe she didn’t see it the same way he did. Or maybe that she did.

  “You want to make dinner together from my aphrodisiac cookbook?”

  “Sure.” He closed the book, and set it on the counter. “Whenever you have time, I mean.”

  “No
w’s good.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. It can be like our own memorial to Matt or something.”

  “Absolutely,” Kyle said, though that wasn’t at all what he’d had in mind. He picked up the book again, turning more slowly past the photos. They really were beautiful. His brother had been a damn fine photographer, though it was Meg’s words that grabbed him. Her descriptions of succulent lamb and avocado drizzled with honey were making his mouth water, or maybe that wasn’t the food at all.

  He looked up at Meg and knew damn sure it wasn’t the food. “Let’s do it.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Meg couldn’t believe she was standing shoulder to shoulder with her former-future-brother-in-law in her kitchen, the two of them making dinner together like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  It used to be. How the hell had two years gone by?

  “Does this look right for the mango?”

  Meg turned to see Kyle with a smear of something orange on his sleeve. She peered around his shoulder, flummoxed by the size of him. It had been a long time since a man—any man—stood at her counter chopping tropical fruit.

  “Maybe a little smaller,” she said. “We want to be able to tell it apart from the papaya.”

  She dumped a few chopped sprigs of fresh mint and lavender into the bowl, grateful the little herb garden on her back patio was still giving up the goods even though October had spit frost on her windshield two mornings this week. She checked the timer on the pork loin in the oven and thought about how nice it felt to have an excuse to make a meal like this.

  She ran her finger over a photo in her aphrodisiac cookbook and tried to remember the night she’d come up with the recipe. New Year’s Eve day. She could picture it clearly, even though it was nearly four years ago. She remembered drizzling the blood-orange olive oil over the basil-wrapped scallops and carrying the whole thing into the living room on a bright blue plate.

  “I’m thinking of writing a cookbook,” she’d told Matt as she set the tray on the coffee table and curled up beside him on the sofa.

  “What’s that?” he’d asked absently, plucking a scallop off the platter as he flipped to the next page in his favorite photography magazine.