The Ex Talk(72)

“Wait. You are?”

“Yeah, because I’m not a monster who wants to obliterate the flavor of restaurant food with a microwave.”

“Cold pizza, sure. But you’re telling me you would willingly eat, like, cold lasagna? Or a cold plate of enchiladas?”

“I would, and I have.”

I open up the bag. “Is this Thai? From Bangkok Bistro? All is forgiven.”

“You mentioned a couple weeks ago that it was your favorite takeout,” he says with a shrug, like it isn’t a big deal.

He brought food for me. For us. It’s sweet, maybe too sweet for whatever this fuck buddies situation is. Then again, maybe my desperate text already blurred that line. Right now, I’m too hungry and emotional to care.

We head into the kitchen, and I get us plates and silverware while he unpacks chicken pad thai and green curry and tom yum soup.

“I could bathe in this soup,” I say. “Thank you for doing this. I’m starving.”

He grazes my arm with his fingertips as I stack plates near the takeout containers. “It’s no problem.”

Since the food is still hot, I give Dominic a quick tour of my house, pointing out all the cozy spots Steve has claimed as his own. Dominic leans against the doorway of my bedroom while I show him the walls I finally decided to paint mint last weekend, looking so natural there that I can’t bring myself to meet his eyes.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” I ask, steering him back to the kitchen. “Water, beer, wine? I’m afraid I don’t have any Charles Shaw. A little too classy for my tastes.”

He offers a half smile in response, but he appears unsettled. “Water’s fine,” he says. “And this is a great house. You should be proud of it. You own a house in Seattle, and you’re not even thirty. The housing market is—”

“I am proud,” I say, cutting him off before he treads too close to any of Ameena’s talking points. As I pour him a glass of water, I realize that it’s true: I’m proud of this place I’ve managed to make my own.

We carry our plates into the living room, where I collapse onto the couch next to him. His presence makes me feel a little less heavy than I did with Ameena. It’s too easy to kick off my shoes and cross my legs so my knees are touching his. And I wonder if it’s easy for him to place a hand on my knee, his thumb brushing back and forth. I wonder if he even knows how soothing that is.

“Is Steve okay?” he asks. He gestures with his fork to where Steve is standing on the other side of the living room, locked in a staring contest with the wall.

I stop myself from inhaling my soup. “Oh. That. He’s been doing this thing where he, like, glitches. That’s the only way I can think to describe it. His leg gets stuck in midscratch and he stares out into empty space for a while. Or he goes into the bathroom and stares at the wall for ten minutes. It’s absurd.”

“Weird little dog.”

“Perfect weird little dog,” I correct, and then call Steve over. He snaps out of his trance and jumps onto the couch between us, practically pushing me out of the way to get himself some of Dominic’s superior head scratches. Disloyal weird little dog.

“Are you okay?” Dominic asks me between scratches. Now Steve is in a new kind of trance. “We can talk, if you want. Your text seemed a bit . . .”

“Panicky?”

“Well . . . yeah.”

I take a long sip of water before setting it down on the coffee table. “You know how some schools do those senior superlatives? Biggest flirt, best dressed, and all that?”

Dominic sheepishly rubs the back of his neck. “I was, uh, voted most likely to succeed.”

I whack him with a pillow. “Oh my god, of course you were. Well. So I told you my dad died senior year of high school. And unofficially, but officially enough for me to know everyone was talking about it, I became the Girl Whose Dad Died Senior Year. That’s how everyone from high school remembers me, with that sad story. I know I’m not the only person who’s ever lost a parent, but it feels like I’ve never been able to shake that label.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I can’t pretend to know what that’s like. But why is this coming up now? What happened?”

I explain what was supposed to be Ameena’s celebration dinner, and he sucks in a long, slow breath.

“She can’t blame you for that,” he says. “You know that, right?”

“Logically, yes. But . . .” I take a breath, uttering what I’ve been worried about since Ameena brought it up, or quite possibly for longer than I’d like to admit. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m too close to radio. In case you haven’t realized, it’s kind of my whole life.” It doesn’t feel like work, though, when I’m prepping for our grief show, scheduled for two Thursdays from now.

He’s quiet for a moment. “You love hosting, though. And you’re good at it.”

“You’re already sleeping with me. No need to butter me up.”

“I wasn’t buttering. You really are. You have this great way of thinking on your feet, and you’re funny in this effortless way, and you’re just—you’re fun to listen to.”

I want to bask in those compliments, but I’m stuck back at the bar with Ameena and TJ. “I do love being on the air. It’s not so much hosting as it is the fact that I’ve had the same job since I graduated from college. Is that even normal?”