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She slides the bite past my lips and pulls the spoon free slowly. Then she feeds me another, and another, and each time she waits for me to open before she offers. She never lifts a single bite to her own mouth. When a smear of cream catches the corner of my lip, she wipes it away with her thumb and inspects it before cleaning her hand on a napkin.
“Needs salt,” I manage.
“You always need something to complain about,” Heather says.
“You keep coming back.”
“Yes,” she says. “I’ve been coming back for you for weeks.”
Mara calls goodnight on her way out. Luis passes behind us and tells me not to burn the place down, and I start to answer him, but the joke dissolves before it reaches my mouth. The kitchen empties until all that’s left is the refrigerator hum, the dishwasher sighing through its final cycle, and Heather scraping the last streak of cream from the plate and feeding it to me off the spoon.
I reach for the burn on my wrist and miss it. I try again and land two inches wide. I’ve been on my feet since noon and haven’t eaten anything that wasn’t standing over a prep counter, which can make a man feel like shit. It shouldn’t make him miss his own fucking wrist.
Heather catches my hand and laughs. “Look at you.”
She turns my wrist toward the light and presses her thumb into the center of the burn. The pain limps in late and hollow. I stare at her thumb on my skin. She presses harder and watches my face instead of the wound.
“Good boy.”
I open my mouth to tell her the fuck I am. The words won’t line up in the right order, and Heather smiles at the silence as though it’s the answer she wanted.
“On your feet. It’s time to get you home.”
I stand because she told me to. My palm slaps the counter and the spoon jumps. Heather collects my apron, removes my keys and my knife roll, and slips both into her bag.
“I have a car.”
“You had a car.”
“Mara expects me at noon.” The words come out thick and slow.
“Mara,” Heather says, “is going to have to learn to yell at someone else.”
The walk to the door takes forever. I hit the table and cling to the back of a chair. Heather peels my hand from it, hooks two fingers through my belt loop, and keeps me moving.
“I don’t do this,” I tell her. My voice sounds as if it’s coming from the next room.
“Do what?”
“Whatever the fuck this is.”
“I know. The others didn’t either.” She opens the passenger door. “You’ll learn faster. You already like being told when to stop.”
She settles me into the seat, lifts my hands one at a time, and arranges them in my lap. She adjusts the angle of my head against the headrest and studies the result, then tips my chin a quarter inch to the left. She buckles the belt across me and smooths my collar. Then she takes my phone from my back pocket, powers it off, and slips it into her coat beside my keys.
By the time she’s behind the wheel, my fingers have gone somewhere far away. I try to lift one and watch it twitch as though the message got lost on the way down my arm.
“Heather.”
She looks over and takes her time about it.
Fear finally tears through the fog. “Something’s wrong with me.”
Heather reaches across the console and lays her hand over mine. “No, Simon. You’re perfect.”
CHAPTER 25
Heather
