She went hunting in the drawers for a knife, then rinsed the cucumber under the faucet before returning to my side. She was smiling slightly, as though pondering an inside joke.
“What’s so funny?”
“This,” she said. “Cooking a meal with you. It feels so domestic, but I kind of like it.”
“Better than room service?”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
I laughed. “Did you help your mom in the kitchen when you were growing up?”
“Not really. The kitchen was my mom’s place to relax. She’d have a glass of wine and turn on the radio and do her thing. My job—and my sister’s—was to clean up afterward. My mom hated the cleanup. I didn’t like it, either, but what could I do?”
The timer on my phone dinged, and I removed the potatoes and baking sheets from the oven. Surprising no one more than me, the chicken came out like the recipe said it should. After loading our plates, I brought them to the table along with the salad and a bottle of store-bought dressing. As soon as Morgan sat, she surveyed the table.
“This isn’t quite right,” she said.
She rose and did a quick circuit of the bedroom and living room, returning with the candles and the matches. After lighting the candles, she turned out the kitchen lights.
“Better, don’t you think?” she said as she resumed her seat.
The sight of her face in the candlelight triggered a memory of how she looked the night we’d first made love, and all I could do was nod.
Morgan genuinely seemed to love the chicken, eating two helpings in addition to half a baked potato and generous servings of salad and asparagus. After clearing the plates, Morgan surprised me by asking if there was any wine left over from the other night. Morgan brought the candles to the coffee table, and I took a seat beside her on the couch, glasses in hand. She was scrolling through the photos from the catamaran. I leaned over to study them, as well.
As pretty as Morgan was in person, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised by how photogenic she was.
“Can you text me those?”
“How about I AirDrop them?”
“What’s that?”
She rolled her eyes. “Turn on your phone and hit accept when it comes up.”
I did what she said, and almost instantaneously, the photos were on my phone.
“Do you really not know what AirDrop is?” Morgan laughed.
“If you really understood my regular life, you wouldn’t have bothered to ask that question.”
She smiled before growing quiet. Staring into her glass, she took a deep breath. I knew what was coming. It was a conversation I wasn’t sure I was ready for, the one that had no answers.
“What’s going to happen to us?” she asked, her voice subdued.
“I don’t know,” I answered.
“What do you want?” she asked, her eyes still fixed on her wine. “Don’t you want us to be together?”
“Of course I do.”
“What does that mean, though? Have you even thought about it?”
“It’s all I’ve been thinking about,” I confessed. I tried to see her face.
She finally raised her eyes, a strange fire burning in them. “You know what I’m thinking?”
“I have no idea.”
She put down her wineglass and took my hands in hers. “I think you should come to Nashville with me.”
I felt my breath catch. Then: “Nashville?”
“You can work on tying things up at the farm, take whatever time you need…and then meet me there. We can be together, write songs together, chase our dreams together—it’s our chance. If things work out, then you can hire more people at the farm or make it larger or raise that grass-fed beef like your aunt suggested. The only difference is that you wouldn’t have to be the one actually doing it.”
I felt my head begin to spin. “Morgan…”
“Just wait,” she said, her voice brimming with urgency. “Hear me out, okay? You and I…I mean…I never thought it was possible to fall in love with someone in just a few short days. I’m not romantic in that, like, hoping-to-find-Prince-Charming kind of way. But you and I…I don’t know. From the moment we met, it was like…we fit somehow…”
Clicked like a tumbler falling in a combination lock, I couldn’t help but think.
“It was almost like I knew and trusted you from the very beginning. That hasn’t ever happened to me, and then the way we made music together…” When she paused, her expression was full of hope and wonder. “I’ve never felt so in sync with anyone.” She turned her gaze on me. “You don’t want to lose that, do you? You don’t want to lose me, do you?”