Page 15 of Rhodes

"This afternoon. You were messing with your bike in the garage, and I didn't want to bother you."

I shut the fridge and go for the coffee. I reach for the same shelf it's lived on for three years, top right, above the toaster. My hand goes there without even looking, and it lands on nothing but a ring of dust where the bag used to sit.

"Where's my coffee stuff?"

"Cabinet by the coffee maker on the second shelf." She points with her fork, calm as anything. "Made more sense to keep it near the machine. You had it clear across the kitchen from the coffee maker."

"It worked fine."

"It worked, sure. Fine's a stretch." She stands, plate in hand. "You had cans of soup stacked three deep in front of stuff you forgot you owned. I needed somewhere to put groceries. Figured helping you organize your kitchen was the least I could do, seeing as you're babysitting me and all."

"Tallulah. Stop with that. That's not what this is. You're between leases, and your brother gave up his place. That's it. So knock it off with the babysitter shit, already."

I open the cabinet by the sink. My coffee, my filters, my grinder, lined up neat where none of it has ever been, and beside them her tea and her honey and some kind of oat something.

"And thank you for the reorg, by the way. This makes a lot more sense."

She crosses to the sink and rinses her plate. "Happy to be of service."

I don't offer to put it in the dishwasher, or tell her where the dish soap is. Hell, she probably knows better than me, anyway.

She didn't ask me where to shop or which bags to haul up from the car, didn't ask what she should eat or where a single thing went. She just did it, all of it, before I even registered what she was doing.

She dries her hands, picks up her water glass, and heads down the hall to her room.

Yeah. We're going to have to get past the weirdness fast, or it's going to be a long semester.

It's a couple of hours before I hear her in the kitchen again, water running. Then I hear a cabinet closing. The disposal grinds, and the pitch drops into a straining hum, metal on metal, then it's stuck.

I know that sound. I set my book on the arm of the couch and I'm on my feet before I finish deciding to be.

"That's jammed," I say, coming into the kitchen. "Kill the switch before you burn out the motor."

"I already turned it off."

She's standing at the sink with her hand hovering near the drain, not in it, and I'm momentarily impressed with her willingness to try to fix it. Of course she is. She's Tallulah, more capable than most of the guys I know.

"Don't reach in there. I've got a wrench for it." I go to the junk drawer by the stove, dig past the tape measure and the screwdrivers, and come up with the little hex wrench that came with the unit.

When I turn around, she's already under there.

The cabinet doors stand open, and she's flat on her back on my kitchen floor with her head and shoulders up inside the cabinet. Her knees are bent, both feet planted on the tile. The hex socket is on the underside of the disposal, so there's no other way to do it. Knowing that doesn't remove the improper thoughts going through my head.

I look at the backsplash and count tiles until it passes.

When my eyes come back down, they land on her knee. The scar from her surgery is there, a pale line down the front of it and two small round ones on either side of the cap.

She grabs the plug and pulls it clean out of the outlet. She didn't stop at the switch. She cut the power.

"Do you have the wrench?"

I want to tell her to get the hell out of the way, to let me fix the damn thing, but I hand it to her instead. She grabs it without even looking, turns the wrench in the flywheel slot, and the motor cranks free with a gritty little pop.

"Hey, let me," I start. "Just slide out and I'll⁠—"

"Turn on the water and flip the switch," she says, her voice muffled under the cabinet. I do it, and the disposal roars perfectly. Whatever it was chews down the drain.

She backs out from under the sink and stands, the plug already reseated, and wipes her palms down the front of her shorts.