“Do you know any place I can get soup or something?”
He nodded. “Would you like me to go for you?”
“No, I’ll do it.” I gathered up my things and went to the car. He rushed in front of me, making sure to open the passenger side door for me. “You don’t need to do that.”
“Didn’t you just give a speech about people doing their jobs? Well, Ms. Felicity, this is my job, and I’m proud of it.”
I hadn’t thought about it like that. I wondered how annoyed I’d feel if someone came into the diner and told me not to serve them. Instead of getting in front with him, I took a step back and allowed him to open the door for me.
“Of course, ma’am.”
Leaning against the backseat, I flipped to where I was in the script. I wanted to know how Margaret and Ernest ended up, and as I read I thought they wouldn’t get any happy ending, despite the fact that they both loved each other. Ernest tried to get back to the life he had before the war, but he just couldn’t. He was breaking down and pulling her with him. The scene Theo had read to me was actually the saddest. Margaret didn’t get into the car. She didn’t choose him, which was ironic because she so badly wanted him in the beginning. The story skipped to Ernest alone in the house, holding the handkerchief Margaret had made him. His final line was:
I’ll always love her, I’ll always think of her, and hopefully one day, she’ll find room in her heart to love me again.
Theo
When I heard the door open, I sat up on the couch and closed the book I was reading. She came in with an assortment of bags and kicked off her heels.
“And here I thought you didn’t go shopping?” I smiled, getting up and going to her.
“You’re up.” She smiled at me as if seeing me for the first time in weeks. “I got food!”
“All of this is food?” I asked, taking a few bags from her.
“Yep. I was originally going to get just soup, but I got hungry, and each place Nolan took me to was better than the last.”
Proving her point, she pulled out pimento cheese sandwiches, damson plum jam, butter biscuits, clam chowder, something called muscadines, which looked like blackberries, and scuppernongs, which looked like fat grapes. Adding to her haul were two bottles of wine and finally the soup she’d mentioned.
“Do you have enough food, Felicity?” I tried a muscadine; they were really sweet.
“I haven’t eaten all day and besides, I figured this would be better than me trying and failing to make something again,” she replied as she grabbed the wine bottle and looked for a corkscrew in the kitchen drawers.
“I heard you became my personal assistant today?”
She froze and slowly turned to me. “Who told you?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Skirting the kitchen island, I took her hand, bringing her closer to me. “Thank you for your help today.”
“It was really—”
Kissing her was stiff for a second, the first ever since I had met her. It was only when I cupped her ass that she finally relaxed into me and wrapped her arms around my neck. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
She forced a smile, which was a shallow imitation of the one she’d had before. “After this week we should… I’m going to stop this. I just want you to know.”
Nodding, I moved back to the food while she searched for the corkscrew. I was annoyed, but it didn’t last long. The moment I saw the photo of us sticking out from her copy of the script, I slid it to me before turning to glance back at her.
“Honestly, where is that thing?” she muttered to herself, kneeling to reach a lower drawer.
Burying the picture into the script, I went to help her.
“We should have taken a picture while we were in costume yesterday, don’t you think?” I opened the dishwasher and pulled out the corkscrew. Taking the wine bottle from her hands, I opened it.
“Oh well. Besides, we don’t need photos anyway,” she lied as she grasped the script and tucked it into her bag.
I fought the urge to smile. She was trying so damn hard to push me away even when she didn’t want to.
“True. One more week, and we’re done,” I lied and poured her a glass.