Page 51 of Look Again

16

DEXTER

My phone buzzes early Saturday morning. Text from Joey. I punch the air.

‘I just ate a cookie for breakfast. And by A COOKIE, of course I mean seven cookies.’

She’s texting me about cookies. I can live with this.

‘Sounds like a reasonable way to start your day.’

After only about a minute, this pops up: ‘My natural femininity requires me to clarify that I actually ate only seven quarters of cookies.’

‘So you’re telling me you have some left.’

‘A few. Want one?’

‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’

Record-breaking tooth-brushing, shaving, and showering followed by a casual sprint across the quad.

She answers the door wearing sweats and with her hair piled up on her head. I wish she’d do that with her hair every day. She holds a square of brownie in her hand. “Good morning,” she says. The smile on her face makes me think that it actually is a good morning.

That smile makes it a good morning.

“Come on in and eat a cookie before I finish what I’ve started.”

I follow her through her mostly empty apartment into the tiny kitchen. The box of Val’s treats is significantly less full than when Val packed it.

I point to the crumby mess on the counter. “Do we need to stage an intervention?”

She laughs.

She laughs.

I wish I could rewind time for a few seconds and say it again so I could watch her laugh again. So I could record that sound and have access to it all the time.

“I can quit any time I want,” she says, reaching in for a peanut-butter bar. “It’s just not that time yet.” She takes a bite and closes her eyes while she chews. When she swallows and opens her eyes, I try to pretend I wasn’t staring at her.

“Would you like to know a secret, Mr. Kaplan?” She isn’t whispering. She isn’t batting her eyes or being coy. She simply asks me a question I hope she’ll ask me over and over, every single day for the rest of my life.

“Sure.” It’s all I can manage between heartbeats.

“I hate to cook. But I love to eat.” There is a fleck of peanut butter just to the left of her mouth. If I reach over and brush it off her face, this will change from a casual early Saturday morning cookie binge to something else. I don’t have to search my thoughts too hard to know I want it to change. Something Else sounds like a perfect idea.

But I worry she’ll blow me off. Again.

She has been so weird. So cold. So uninterested in continuing the thing we started.

Not the arts-chair thing. The other thing. The us thing. Is it because of rules? Or because of the man in Boston?

She more than avoids me—she ignores me. She walks away. She stops conversations. She’s pretty clear. This has to be more than adhering to Moreau’s ridiculous “no fishing of the Chamberlain pier” nonsense. She obviously has talked herself into being not interested. Maybe even Capital Letters Not Interested. If I make anything approaching a move, she’ll shut me down, and the Something Else the morning becomes won’t include the two of us in the same room. Or cookies. So I sit back in the chair and watch her eat.

She licks chocolate frosting off her finger and smiles at me. “What?” she says. “What are you looking at?”

I smile back, trying to keep my smile nothing more than friendly. “It’s like science fiction. I’m unused to watching a woman turn into a monster. I like it.”

She leans. Way in. And whispers, in a Much More Than Friendly voice, “I like it too. Thank you for the cookies.”