Page 31 of ClickBack

“No pancakes?” he asks.

“I’m fine.”

He gives the waitress his menu. When the food arrives, I understand the question. Three pancakes take up their own plate beside his breakfast. I concentrate on my eggs for almost two minutes, then reach across and cut a section from his stack.

He looks at my fork. I look at his face. Jarrett goes back to his eggs.

“Excellent choice,” I tell him.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Exactly.”

We talk about Zion’s baseball team. Jarrett wants to know his position, and I explain that he plays shortstop whenever his coach can be persuaded that the other children have had enough opportunity. Jarrett laughs, then asks how long he has been playing. I tell him about a game when Zion hit the ball, forgot everything anyone had ever told him, and ran toward third.

“Did he make it?”

“Fastest child on the field.”

“That’s something.”

“His father was so proud he forgot to turn the camera.”

I laugh remembering Jeremy running along the fence with his phone filming the sky. Jarrett asks whether the video still exists, and I promise him it does. He tells me he keeps evidence of his brother’s early games for emergencies. When I ask what counts as an emergency, he says, “Von getting too comfortable.”

He takes a strawberry from my plate. I move the rest toward the center of the table.

I learn he plays golf badly and intends to keep doing it. He learns I own craft supplies for projects that may never progress beyond the buying of supplies. He wants to know what I planned to make. When I tell him, he asks a question about the process that I can’t answer because I have not opened the machine yet.

“So you own a box,” he says.

“With possibilities.”

“Expensive box?”

“Eat your breakfast.”

He laughs, and I am still smiling when he looks at me across the table and says, “I like you, Giselle.”

I put down my fork. It is one thing to be wanted in a bedroom, where the wanting supplies its own explanation. He is saying this over eggs, while I wear shorts that belong to him and admit to wasting money on an unopened machine.

“I like you, too.”

He looks pleased. I had expected him to know, but apparently saying it matters. We eat for a little while, and I let myself enjoy having said it.

Two women pass the window. One recognizes him and slows, saying something to her friend before they continue. Their eyes take me in. I glance at my reflection in the glass and wish, too late, that I had worn my own clothes.

“That happen everywhere?” I ask.

“Some places more than others.”

“I’m trying to picture going out for breakfast and finding out later that somebody posted it.”

He follows my glance to the window. “It happens.”

“I know what those pages are like.”

“You spend much time on them?”