Precious And Fragile Things. Megan Hart

didn’t miss the irony of his concern. “Yeah. Thanks.”

      By the time she walked across the living room and entered the kitchen, her stomach had begun to grumble like thunder. The last thing she’d eaten was half a granola bar Arwen had begged for and then refused because it had raisins in it. Gilly swallowed against the rush of saliva.

      “Hungry?” A cigarette hung from Todd’s mouth and wreaths of smoke circled his head. He lifted a spatula. “I’m making breakfast. Take your coat off. Stay awhile.”

      Gilly wrinkled her nose at the stench of smoke and didn’t laugh at what he’d obviously meant to be funny. With her stomach making so much noise she couldn’t pretend she wasn’t hungry, though she didn’t want to admit it. “I’m cold. What time is it?”

      Todd shrugged and held up a wrist bare of anything but a smattering of dark hair. “Dunno. I don’t have a watch.”

      Her stomach told her she’d slept well past eleven. Maybe even past noon. It grumbled again, and she pressed her hands into her belly to stop the noise.

      Gilly looked around the kitchen. The propane-powered appliances were old, like the chairs on the porch, straight out of the 1950s. Green flowered canisters labeled Flour, Coffee, Sugar and Tea, and a vintage table and chairs set stuck off in one corner prompted her to mutter, “You could make a fortune on eBay selling this stuff.”

      Todd swiveled his head to look at her again. “What?”

      “Nothing.”

      From the stove in front of him came the sound of sizzling and the smell of something good. A wire camping toaster resting on the table held two slices of bread, a little browner than she preferred. Her stomach didn’t seem to care.

      “Toast,” Todd said unnecessarily. He pointed with the spatula. “There’s butter and jelly in the fridge.”

      All this as casual as coffee, she thought. All of this as though there was nothing wrong. She might’ve woken at a friend’s house or a bed and breakfast. She shuddered, stomach twisting again. She fisted her hands at her sides, but there was nothing she could grab on to that would stop the world from turning.

      “Christ, move your ass! Put it on the table,” Todd said, voice prompting as if she was an idiot.

      She jumped. The command got her feet moving, anyway. Not from fear—he didn’t sound angry, just annoyed. More a point of pride, that she wasn’t so scared of him she couldn’t move, or so stupid she couldn’t figure out how to eat breakfast.

      Remembering his comments the night before, Gilly hesitated to open the refrigerator. She expected to recoil from the smell of dead rodents and had one hand already up to her nose in preparation. The interior of the appliance was not sparkling; age would prevent that from ever being true again. But it was clean. The caustic but somehow pleasant scent of cleanser drifted to her nostrils. Food filled every shelf, crammed into every corner. Jugs of milk and juice, loaves of bread, packages of bologna and turkey and deli bags of cheese. The freezer was the same, bulging with packages of ground beef and chicken breasts. No vegetables that she could see, but plenty of junk food in brightly colored boxes, full of chemicals and fat. The sort of food she bought but felt guilty for serving.

      “You went shopping.”

      “Even bastards gotta eat,” Todd said.

      Gilly pulled out the jumbo-size containers of jelly and margarine, not real butter, and set them on the table. She shifted on her feet, uncertain what to do next. She wasn’t used to not being the one at the stove. The bare table beckoned, and she opened cupboards in search of plates and cups, pulled out a drawer to look for silverware. The tiny kitchen meant they needed complicated choreography to get around each other, but she managed to set the table while Todd shifted back and forth at the stove to give her room to maneuver.

      When at last she’d finished and stood uncertainly at the table, Todd turned with a steaming skillet in one hand. “Sit down.”

      Gilly sat. Todd set the skillet on the table without putting a hot pad underneath it, but Gilly supposed it wouldn’t matter. One more scorch mark on the silver-dappled white veneer would hardly make much of a difference.

      Todd scooped a steaming pile of eggs, yellow interspersed with suspicious pink bits, onto her plate. Gilly just stared at it. She smelled bacon, which of course she wouldn’t eat, and which of course he couldn’t know.

      Instead she spread her browned toast with a layer of margarine and jelly and bit into it. The flavor of it burst on her tongue, igniting her hunger. She gobbled the rest of the bread and left only crumbs.

      A teakettle she hadn’t noticed began to whistle. Todd left the table to switch off the burner and pull two chipped mugs from one of the cupboards. Into each he dropped a tea bag and filled the mugs with the boiling water, then pushed one across the table at her.

      He took his chair again and settled into the act of eating as naturally as if he’d known her all their lives. He ate with gusto, great gulps and lip smacking. His fork went from the plate to his mouth and back again, with little pause. Watching him, Gilly was reminded of the way their dog crouched over his bowl to keep the cat from stealing the food. Her stomach shriveled in envy. One piece of toast wasn’t going to be enough.

      He paused in his consumption long enough to look up at her. “You not eating? There’s plenty. I made extra.”

      The sudden loud gurgle of her stomach would make her a liar if she said no. “Maybe some more toast.”

      The smooth skin of his brow furrowed. “You don’t like eggs?”

      Gilly pointed to the skillet. “Ah…they’ve got bacon mixed in with them.”

      Todd licked his lips. The gesture was feral and wary, as though she was trying to trick him and he knew it, but wasn’t sure how to stop her. “Yeah?”

      “I don’t eat bacon,” Gilly explained. Her stomach gurgled louder. She’d no more eat the breakfast he’d cooked than she would kick a puppy, but the smell was making her mouth water.

      “Why not?”

      “I’m Jewish,” she said simply. “I don’t eat pork.”

      Todd swiped his sweatshirt sleeve across his lips. “What?”

      Gilly was used to having to explain herself. “I don’t eat bacon. I’m Jewish.”

      Todd looked down at his plate and shoved the last few bites of pig-tainted eggs around with his fork. When he looked up at her, she noticed his eyes were the same shade as milk chocolate. “You don’t look Jewish.”

      The comment, so ripe with anti-Semitism, was one she’d heard often and which never ceased to rankle. “Well, you don’t look crazy.”

      He cocked his head at her, again lining the rim of his lips with his tongue. From any other young man the gesture might have been sensual or even aggressively, overtly sexual. On Todd, it merely made him look warily contemplative. Like a dog that’s been kicked too many times but keeps coming to the back door, anyway. Mistrustful, waiting for the blow, but unable to stop returning.

      “Uncle Bill always made the eggs that way up here,” he said finally. “He called them camp eggs. But I can make you some without bacon, if you want.”

      She wanted to deny him that kindness, to keep him as the villain. Her stomach gurgled some more, and she couldn’t. “I’ll make them.”

      She pushed away from the table, heat stinging in her cheeks. Why should she feel guilty? He was the bad guy. He’d held a knife on her, kidnapped her, stolen her vehicle. Put her kids in danger.

      “Can you use this skillet, or…” His voice trailed off uncertainly from behind her. “Or do you need one that didn’t have pig in it?”

      Again she thought of a kicked dog, slinking around the back door hoping for a moment of kindness, and the heat burned harder in her face. That