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“You gonna cook for me, Valentine?” Liam leaned past me to grab a bag of apples, his arm brushing mine. Our eyes met and held as he pulled back.
“I will if it means I don’t have to eat chicken and veggies every single night.”
“You’ll eat late during the season if you wait for me,” he said.
Risking a quick glance in his direction, I noted that his eyes were steadfastly fixed on the display of bananas. Regular season was still about three months away, training camp just around the corner.
The assumption there was that we’d still be living together.
I didn’t correct him.
“True,” I added quietly. “You have Tuesdays off, right?”
He nodded. “I’ll be in for a bit, though. No one really gets any days off during the regular season. Fridays I’m done early.”
These were things I knew from living next to Chris and Amie for so long. I always had extra time with Amie when Chris was in the thick of his busyness. Once Mira was born, it was tough for her in a different way.
“I can save you leftovers,” I said. His gaze cut over to mine. “For when you get home late.”
Liam didn’t answer right away. His jaw tightened, and he finally conceded a nod. “That’d be nice.”
This wasso weird. I’d been dropped into an alternate reality where we spoke nicely to each other. We had polite conversation. He wasn’t dropping f-bombs every other word.
Oh gawd, we were, like ... friends now?
I gave him a quick once-over out of the corner of my eye. Chris was the only man I’d ever considered to be my friend, and he came with a wife, so this was a situation where I was wholly out of my element.
None of my friends had ever looked like Liam. Or had ever had crushes on me.
“You like to cook?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t love it, but I’m good at it. Charles always liked a big home-cooked meal waiting for him when he walked in the door.”
Liam’s brow furrowed. “You worked full-time too, yeah?”
“I did.” And then some. During tax season and the end of each quarter, I’d fall asleep on the couch with a stack of papers on my chest.
“Why couldn’t he make the dinners?” Liam asked.
“An excellent question,” I said lightly. “I stopped with the fuss of a fancy meal after a few years. I was too tired.”
“Did he help?”
I smiled. “Depends on your definition. If by helping, you mean make passive-aggressive comments about the lack of effort I was putting into our marriage, then yes, he was incredibly helpful.”
Liam’s mouth opened like he was going to ask something else, but then he closed it.
“Just ask,” I said, nudging him lightly with my shoulder. “I’m not the one with the limit.”
He set some bananas in his cart, face bent in thought.
Mira tapped my arm. “Can I have a snack?”
I tweaked her nose. “What else?”
“Please,” she said dutifully.
“Go ahead,” I told her. Immediately, she dug into the front pocket of my purse and found an applesauce pouch and a small bag of Goldfish.
