Page 52 of 50 Ways to Win Back Your Lover

She grabs an avocado, turns it over in her hand. “I think you’re partly why I have my shop.”

“Not sure how you figure that,” I say, repeating her retort.

“I baked sporadically growing up, but you’re the one who made it fun, always telling me what I baked was the best you ever tasted, goofing off when we cooked together. I think, unconsciously, baking after you left was a way for me to stay connected to those better days.” She slices her knife through the avocado, making a clean circular cut. “To stay more connected to you.”

She doesn’t glance at me, but her admission spreads heat through my chest.

We settle into a comfortable silence as she cooks and sways her hips to the music. I catch the singer’s lyrics and recognize Jack Johnson’s “Better Together.” Feeling like it’s a sign, I make a mental note to add this song to the road trip playlist I’m already planning. I’ll insert it before “Pillow Talk” and after “I Want to Know What Love Is.”

Ricky’s wedding can’t come soon enough.

“So.” I smack the counter and stick my nose up in the air. “From what I can deduce, something most definitely died in here. Of the rodent variety. Good thing I came with my own personal dead-rodent detector.”

I round the island counter into the kitchen and open all the lower cabinets. Yep, something died in here. The smell’s worse than my Eternity bomb, and it’s way stronger with the doors open.

“I’ve already searched the cupboards,” Delilah says. “Taken everything out. No dead rodents.”

“You didn’t have Candy Cane with you when you did that, did you?”

She shoots a soft look to my girl, who’s panting on Delilah’s couch. “I did not.”

I whistle and click my tongue. On cue, Candy jumps off the couch and trots over. Instead of coming to me, she follows the death trail, shoving her cute nose into the cupboards. In five seconds she’s nosing a box, whining and pawing at it. I follow my brilliant dog’s lead and pull out what looks like a boxed fondue set. “Did you have a fondue party with a rat?”

“Actually, I did.”

The annoyance in Delilah’s voice has me pausing until I realize her double meaning. She ate fondue with that belittling rat, her ex-fiancé Hugo. Best to stay on subject. “Let’s investigate, shall we?”

When I place the box on the counter, Candy whines louder, clearly intent on our mission. Delilah joins our investigative team, her brow furrowed as I open the lid and blast us with a stronger stench of decay.

The second it’s open, Delilah says, “Oh my God,” of the I-can’t-believe-it oh my Gods.

I curl my lip. “What is that?”

What it is not is a dead animal. What it is, is a baggie filled with some kind of noxious brown liquid.

“Oh my God.” She covers her face with her hands and cackles so hard Candy runs to the safety of the couch.

I grab Delilah’s wrists and remove her hands from her face. “Explain yourself, Mars.”

“I . . . we . . .” She’s laughing too hard to talk. The sound’s so unabashed and contagious that I laugh too. The harder I laugh, the harder she laughs, until she’s losing it so thoroughly she tips forward and presses her forehead into my chest. I hold her like that, the two of us shaking, my cheeks sore from smiling. It feels as perfect as you’d imagine.

Eventually I pull back and brush a giddy tear from the corner of her eye. “Tell me honestly, Delilah. Did you poop in a baggie and forget it in the fondue pot?”

She half cackles again but reins herself in. “We took the pot to Avett’s for dinner months ago—a double date with him and Naomi—”

“Naomi James?” While we didn’t socialize in the same circles, Naomi sat beside me one year in math and helped me pass the class. She also had no issues calling me out for not wearing deodorant as often as I should have, and she loved teasing me for eating peanut-butter-and-potato-chip sandwiches. I like the idea of her dating Avett and giving him a hard time.

“Yeah,” Delilah says. “They hooked up a few years ago, took off on a wild backpacking trip for, like, eight months. They’re married with a kid now.”

“No way.”

“They’re so cute together.”

Jesus Christ. I missed so much.

“Anyway,” Delilah goes on, “we made beef fondue and I brought my set, and we had some leftover raw meat. I guess I forgot Avett packed it in the pot for me to take home. It’s been in there for four months.”

Apparently, after four months, raw meat at room temperature turns into a toxic liquid. Apparently, after ten years, a person misses all the important stuff in everyone’s life. But I won’t dwell on all I’ve missed. There’s too much, and my time with Delilah is too precious.