Page 38 of A Fine Line

It was genuine. Real. Raw, and a little wobbly, but it was the realest part of him I’d seen in person for me. I’d witnessed this smile, this soft, doughy side of him at a distance with his siblings, when he was cooking, when he was serving customers and sweaty but so grateful.

But I’d never seen it directed at me. And even if it was the smallest glimpse, the tiniest little smirk, I knew it was all for me. And I was going to keep it.

“Alright, Winnie. We can hit the reset button.”

The last week felt like I was in an alternate universe, floating around in some unknown body that belonged to a total stranger.

Winnie and I were…coexisting…and not a single threat had been made in seven whole days. Granted, a majority of that time we only saw each other in passing with prolonged eye contact and a couple quick waves. But the days where we were actually together, cooking in the same kitchen, humming to the same nineties soundtrack I had on shuffle, and watching each other in silent awe were almost…nice.

It was like we both had been fed an entire news story to flip our hatred towards each other on its head and now we weren’t sure where to take it. We were quiet and slow- something neither of us seemed to know how to handle. We didn’t speak much during our ‘practices’, if that’s what you want to call them, beyond the odd ‘Where’s your teaspoons?’ and ‘How do you not own any paprika in this place?’

And yet somehow it felt…comfortable. Like I was wearing a tie with a tight knot around my neck and each day that passed theknot loosened, pulled and adjusted until I could finally breathe again.

I’d spent nearly five years wasting so much energy in forcing myself to hate this beautiful, genius of a woman only to find out the root of all of my hatred was misplaced. Now, instead of seeing her in the light of an evil sorceress with a mask of a cowgirl tossed in the city and all this southern charm mixed with a dash of STEM talk, I saw her as a blank slate. A pretty, red-haired blank slate with freckles sprinkled all over and a nose that I think I might could actually pinch off if I tried.

I assumed it would be uncomfortable the first time we were alone again after everything was spilled out of us like God flipped us both upside down and shook us around until all lose change fell out. Instead it had been almost peaceful. A tad weird here and there. Now when we held eye contact for longer than usual or

And when I changed topics too fast, or didn’t focus on anything well enough, or skipped four steps in the recipe just because I couldn’t get my brain straight she stayed right along with me and if it did bother her she never said a word. I moved around her like a cyclone brushing up against a calm beach. But instead of causing chaos and destruction that I always carried with me ruining the fluidity, Winnie relaxed right next to me. Bowing and moving at my whim. Flowing around my kitchen like I always did never felt uncomfortable when I was alone but the last time I asked my brothers if they wanted to come over for dinner and they watched me cook they said it stressed them out. Adam went as far to say he felt like I was giving him hives as he watched me got side tracked and go from one task to five in a split second.

Winnie stayed quiet. It was a good quiet this time.

Then in her apartment it was the same, but somehow she was the chaos. She was sporadic and wild and crazy eyed to thepoint where I felt the need to check her kitchen for a gas leak somewhere.

When I first came in it was the last thing I expected. In my mind, not that I’d pictured it much, I assumed her kitchen was pink. Covered in flowers, and flour, and wallpaper riddled with hearts and big hand drawn signs that said something like ‘Don’t worry dishes, no one is doing me either.’ Instead, it was…empty.

Not entirely, I mean there were a few appliances and enough essentials that we can get what we need to do. But her knives were cheap and her Kitchen Aid mixer seemed to be on its last leg, practically about to bounce off the countertops. Everything felt cheap and simple and gray but then you looked beyond and it was entirely gorgeous.

Marble countertops, herringbone tiled floors that lead into a massive living room- especially for an apartment in Philly- with floor to ceiling windows leaning over the city.

The noises were worse here. The steady sounds of traffic, the neighbors moving and bumping around their apartments, the sirens and honks and music blaring all around but the view…the view was gorgeous. You could see everything, the skyline stretched on for miles and as small as it made me feel, it was the first time I thought this city was really something incredible. Noises and all.

“You must have a hard time sleeping here.” My breath fogged the glass as I watched a mom pushing a baby in a stroller down the street. She lifted the shade cover and oh- never mind, that’s an old chihuahua, not a baby.

Winnie unpacked her groceries in the kitchen behind me, the rustling bags halted to nothing. “What?”

“You know, the noises and stuff. Traffic.”

“Oh, uh, yeah, sometimes. Mostly hard to sleep because I have a mattress on the floor and my comforter is less of a comforter and more of a very thick throw blanket.”

My eyebrows furrowed together, brain ticking tiny pieces together and shoving them out of my mouth before I could catch it. “You know, you make more money than I do, clearly. Why is everything so empty here?”

I turned back to watch her answer, this felt like an eye contact moment.

“It was his apartment. And I kicked him out and…I didn’t want to be the loser crawling her way out of it. So…”

My skin crawled at the ‘his’. His apartment, where he left her. Where she’d felt stuck and I made it ten times worse for her.

I cleared my throat and suddenly eye contact felt much harder than before. “So you pay an insane amount of rent to stay here but can’t furnish it?”

The laugh that sputtered out of her sounded entirely sarcastic or like she was saying yeah, if only you knew. “Or like eat sometimes, it’s fine, I call it the broke as shit diet. Works almost as good as Ozempic.”

“That… shouldn’t be funny.”

“Probably not.” She turned to her cabinets and pulled out a large bag of all-purpose flour and two separate kinds of sugar next to it. “But it is.”

And just like that, we found our rhythm again. Side by side in the kitchen, moving in tandem around one another for various tools and appliances. Quiet, soft, and slow but also mellifluous. We were a melody, swaying and pushing with her carefully extracted measurements and timers and my ‘watch till it feels right’ or ‘mmm that’s good enough, wait not maybe a tablespoon more’ mindset flowing effortlessly. And for once, I began to wonder why we hadn’t just tried this the entire time. Why hadn’t we just yelled at each other from day one about our issues, my issues really, and moved on? It couldn’t be that simple, right? Communicating…sharing feelings and openness and rawuntouched broken parts was never meant to bring this kind of comfort. Not for me.

My eyes darted back to the clock on her stainless steel stove. We had thirty more minutes before I was supposed to leave and yet we weren’t wrapping anything up.

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