“Alright, then,” I said. “I’ll keep out some noodles just in case, and we can do them up with the box cheese and stuff. If he hates my stuff, I can make the other kind in a couple minutes.”
“Perfect,” she said.
I pulled out the ingredients I needed and was happy to find some decent cheese in the fridge. Nothing could ruin mac and cheese like bad cheese. I heard Wendy in the dining room telling Olly it was time to wash up, and they shuffled off to the bathroom. Olly was happily singing a song while washing his hands. I couldn’t hear what it was, exactly, but it was at the top of his lungs. When he was all cleaned up, he came to sit at the table, and Wendy made her way into the kitchen.
“Should be just another minute,” I said, stirring the pot that now had the noodles, crispy bacon, and cheese, along with some seasonings. “Let it simmer for a bit, and all the flavors get to know each other.”
“Speaking of getting to know each other,” Wendy said, leaning against the kitchen counter beside me. “Maybe doing some cooking lessons would help us get to know each other.”
I sensed the flirtatious way she said that, and my heart leapt into my throat. I could foresee a lot of cooking lessons where I ended up distracted enough to burn something and I wouldn’t care. A sudden flash of Wendy in an apron and nothing else floated across my mind, and I had to shake the image off, or else my pants were going to be too tight to sit and eat in.
“I’d love to do that,” I said, focusing intently on the meal in the pot so I didn’t grab her and show her exactly how much I wanted it.
“Might have to wait until I have both hands, though,” she said.
“Yeah,” I laughed. “Cooking generally requires two hands, though it can be done. I had a one-armed cook in a fast-food place once. Granted, his method of cooking was dropping things in a fryer or microwaving them, but still.”
“You really love cooking, don’t you?”
“I do,” I said. “It’s my way of expressing myself. I tend to not be all that vocal if I’m not in the kitchen.”
“Not being vocal has its advantages,” she said, and I looked up from the food to see the sly grin cross her face.
“It does,” I said, nodding, “it sure does.”
She reached out, running a finger down my forearm before beginning to hobble back to the dining room. I took another deep breath and focused on the food. The woman had a way of making me forget the rest of the world existed. I didn’t even know if she knew how good at that she was.
We sat down to dinner, and Olly loved the modified “rocky cheese.” I promised Wendy that I would teach her to make it, and we ate happily. When dinner was done, I took the dishes to the sink while Wendy helped Olly get a bath, and then they curled up on the couch. I sat in an easy chair next to them, and we watched a kid’s movie that I’d never seen as he slowly fell asleep.
It dawned on me how much of popular culture had passed me by in the last few years. I worked so often and stuck to listening to older music so much that I hadn’t even noticed the slew of superhero movies and other blockbusters that had hit the scene that I missed out on. It was wild how much the world changed in just a few years.
Then again, things had changed for me a lot in the last few years too. I went from spending all my time working at fast-food places I hated and smaller restaurants just to fill time and do something different, to working at the diner and acclimating myself to a town that I was still technically new to.
Now there was Wendy.
That was new, but just like the diner, it felt good. A kind of new I could, and wanted, to get used to. Sitting in the living room as the evening took over, watching a kid’s movie on a full stomach with the two of them cuddled on the couch, just felt right. Maybe I was getting ahead of myself, but it was hard to shake that feeling.
When the movie was over, I leaned to the side to see Olly’s little eyes shut. Wendy made eye contact with me and smiled, then picked him up gently to carry him to bed.
“I’ll get out of your hair,” I said, making to stand up.
“No,” she said. “You stay.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
She nodded, still smiling as she patted Olly’s back.
“I’ll be right back. I just have to put him to bed,” she said.