Page 35 of Show Me How to Heal
“And they weren’t?” I asked, cocking my head. This was actually interesting. I’d never been out of the US, so I didn’t have any comparisons.
“No.” Luke let go of my hand in order to grab his fork and knife and… start cutting the sandwich? I blinked a couple of times but decided against saying anything. I didn’t want to make him more self-conscious. I could ask about eating a burger with cutlery later. Instead, I grabbed my own veggie burger — with my hands as one did the correct way — to distract me from the sense of loss that him letting go of my hand had left me with. I took a bite out of my burger, reveling in the taste that exploded in my mouth. Addy was the best. His homemade sauces made all the difference! And no, it wasn’t weird missing the skin-to-skin contact with Luke. It was a normal bodily reaction because I was touch starved. Yeah. That was it.
“This is good,” Luke said between two bites, alternating between his salad and the chicken sandwich.
“Perfect,” I said, feeling oddly satisfied I’d chosen the right dish. “You said there are more differences… like what?”
“Besides everything being so much bigger? Like, I seriously have no idea how I’m supposed to eat all this.” He nodded towards his plate with a… regular sized chicken sandwich. “I spent about fifteen minutes in the supermarket searching for eggs.”
“Eggs?”
“Yes. Eggs. Fresh eggs. I couldn’t find an employee, so I decided I’d get the other stuff first… and then I found the eggs — on the cooling shelf. Because apparently, here, you need to store eggs in the fridge.”
“You… don’t?”
“No! I googled it because I thought,It’s eggs. Whether a chicken laid it here or in Germany makes no difference.And no, it doesn’t. However, we don’t wash the eggs to keep the natural protective layer intact, so they don’t need to be refrigerated.”
“You don’t keep your eggs in the fridge?”
Luke shrugged. “I mean, most people do at home after they buy them because they keep longer if you refrigerate them. But you don’t need to.”
Interesting.
We kept eating while the topic changed from eggs to cooking to work, progressing naturally, and for the first time in weeks, I actually relaxed. Fully relaxed. I literally felt the tension leave my body the more we talked and laughed.
I couldn’t look away from him. Gone was the haunted expression, the agony in his eyes, leaving a smile instead, showing little lines of laughter around his mouth and eyes, telling me he was used to smiling a lot. And his smiles were… wow.Breathtaking. He looked like a combination of boy next door and jock. He wasn’t bulky like Carter. He had more of the physique of a baseball player. However, he was ripped, seriously ripped. And the dark blond hair shaggily falling into his face combined with that smirk and sparkling blue eyes? Yeah, definitely hot.
The evening progressed and suddenly two hours had passed. Our food was long gone, and we’d even had dessert — though we’d shared the pie because Luke had insisted he wouldn’t ever be able to eat a piece by himself.
I knew we needed to get going, but I didn’t want our time together to end. No, I’d not call it a date. It wasn’t a date. It was… boss and employee hanging out after a successful day of work. Didn’t matter that his job hadn’t officially started, yet. It was a work dinner, which meant that I footed the bill. I mean, if it were a date, I could very well be the one paying, too, but it wasn’t.
It was totally normal that we’d gone back to holding hands right after we’d finished eating, wasn’t it?
I knew I was kidding myself, but I couldn’t stop my pulse from speeding up when I thought about this being a real date. Me dating Luke. That’d be one more thing on my plate. The shop, my online shop, my YouTube channel, Instagram, TikTok… how would I fit a boyfriend into the equation? I didn’t have the time, and it wasn’t fair. Me working every day of the week, pulling long hours, spending my evenings editing stuff while he did what? Was he supposed to sit next to me and wait for me to finish working? That wasn’t fair. It’d leave him bored, and with time, he’d get tired of me never having time to do fun stuff.
Maybe in a year, if my plans worked out. By then I should be able to afford a second employee, maybe even a third one, and then I could take a step back.
But not now.
I smiled as I saw him stifle a yawn.
“Tired?” I asked.
He nodded. “It was an exhausting day. A fun one but exhausting nonetheless.”
“So we should probably call it a day…” I suggested, biting my tongue to stop aDo you want to come home with me to watch a movie?from escaping. As terribly tempting as it was, it would be a terrible idea.
“Yeah, you’re right.” He blinked slowly. “Man, I’m beat.” He slapped a hand in front of his mouth while yawning again.
“Is it a long drive till you get home?”
“Huh? Oh,ähm… no. A little? It’s quite a bit outside of town, but not that far,” he said ominously, his cheeks flushing. He averted his gaze.
Was he embarrassed about his living situation? He’d talked about a cabin in the woods… just how cabin-y was his cabin? Were we talking about a hunting cabin with the bare necessities or more of a wood cabin that was basically a house?
I wanted to ask, but his demeanor begged me not to. So I didn’t. I just hoped he was okay. It was still fairly warm, but with fall fast approaching, it wouldn’t take long until the nights got really cold.
GERMANY LOSES AGAINST FRANCE!
