No relief he was claiming credit for. How does it feel? She looked at her kitchen. At the counter where she'd started keeping actual food, not just coffee, but real food, things that required preparation. At the one framed photograph she'd put up last week, a photo she'd had on her phone for months.
Ava at the farmers market holding up the darkest jar of honey with an expression of pure scientific authority. It feels like I made a decision instead of a calculation, she said. Yeah. His voice was quiet. That's a different thing.
It's a very different thing. She leaned against the counter. Richard Harwick told me that founders who figure out they're a person first tend to build better companies in the second half. Smart man. He has his moments.
A pause. Come over Thursday. Ava has school Friday. I know. Come over Thursday anyway.
I'll cook something. I'm practicing. You're practicing cooking. I bought a cookbook. It has photographs.
I'm taking it seriously. He was quiet for a moment. What are you making? I'm deciding between three options and I'm going to make the one that has the fewest steps where I could go badly wrong. That's a reasonable strategy.
It's how I approach most problems. Natalie, what? I'm glad you're staying. She pressed her hand against the counter. I know, she said.
Me, too. Thursday dinner was a qualified success. The pasta was slightly overcooked, which Natalie noted, and Caleb ate with complete enthusiasm and zero acknowledgement of the issue, which she found more touching than she expected. They sat in her apartment larger than his, quieter, filled with the good furniture that still didn't quite feel like anything, and ate at a table that did not wobble. And she found herself missing the wobble.
"It needs something," she said, looking around. "The pasta? The apartment?" He looked around with the practical eye of someone who assesses pay spaces for a living. "It's a good apartment.
It's a very good apartment. That's the problem." She turned her wine glass slowly. Everything in it was selected for quality. None of it was selected because it meant something.