She was too upset and angry to eat.
Upset with Ethan, and angry with herself because he’d been scarily close to the truth.
When she’d planned and cooked the meal, she had assumed he’d be joining her. Not because she had designs on him romantically, but because it seemed like the civilized thing to do. She’d pictured herself serving the meal, and imagined his enjoyment at finally tasting real food instead of endless takeout meals and fast food. She’d tried to make it special. She’d even had a quick look in the kitchen cabinets to see if she could find candles for the table.
Candles?
With a groan, Harriet leaned her head against the window.
How could she have been so incredibly stupid?
This was what happened when you moved outside your comfort zone, outside the circle of people who knew you well.
Creating a home wherever she went was something she did automatically. No matter where she was, she always wanted the atmosphere to be as comforting and soothing as possible. Her siblings teased her for it. They removed cushions before they sat on the sofa, ignored napkins she placed on the table.
Before Molly had arrived on the scene, when she and Fliss had still been sharing the apartment, Daniel had often dropped in for breakfast. Sundays had become her favorite day. She’d made homemade granola and stacks of fresh pancakes, and both her brother and sister had eaten so much they could barely drag themselves to the sofa.
She particularly wanted mealtimes to be relaxing, probably because growing up they had been anything but. Every meal had been fraught with tension, and for years after she’d left home Harriet had worked hard to even want to sit at a table to eat. The solution she’d found had been to make it as different from her childhood experience as possible. She enjoyed cooking, but there was so much more to her enjoyment than simply a fascination with recipes and food.
For her, cooking and eating was symbolic of something bigger. Cooking was her way of expressing love. A way of creating a warm, comforting space, and you didn’t need a degree in psychology to know that the origins of her need for that were to be found in her childhood.
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There had been nothing warm or comforting about her home growing up. Nothing warm or comforting about mealtimes. Sitting round the table together had been something to be endured. The atmosphere had been strained, the food nothing more than punctuation in an hour of rising stress levels.
Harriet had eaten little. As a child her weight had been on the low side of normal, not because she had food issues, but simply because she couldn’t seem to push it past the lump of tension wedged in her throat and chest. She’d willed mealtimes to be over as fast as possible so she could escape back to her room. Sometimes she’d ended up under the table, hiding while the battle raged above her head.
Now, she wanted fine dining and good conversation. Instead of shouting, she wanted to hear the clink of glass and the hum of laughter. She wanted everyone relaxed and focused on the food, instead of glancing at the time and wondering how quickly they could escape.
In her later teenage years she’d used candles as a method of calming herself, and it had been easy enough to add those to a meal table.
Her brother Daniel had teased her for creating a romantic atmosphere, and she’d admitted that it had nothing at all to do with romance and everything to do with her own rituals for keeping calm in a situation she’d always found stressful.
What if she’d found candles and matches? In all probability she would have used them, and Ethan would have come home to fine dining and candlelight. She would have had a big problem explaining her way out of that one.
She could have told him it was the way she liked to live her life now. When she’d moved into an apartment with her sister, she’d immediately set about creating a space that felt safe and cozy. Plants, cushions, rugs—she was the one who had turned their place into a home, and although Fliss teased her and wouldn’t have watered a plant if her life depended on it, Harriet knew she’d enjoyed living there too.
Up until a few months ago, she’d shared almost every aspect of her life with her twin.
And she was missing that. Because a home was so much more than four walls, some pretty throw cushions and a few healthy plants, wasn’t it? A home was about the people. Atmosphere.
And right now her home was depressingly silent. She missed the feeling of coming home to someone.
Had that been part of the reason she’d accepted Ethan’s invitation to stay at his place? Had she been avoiding her own? Or had she secretly hoped that something might develop between them?
Pathetic, she muttered, and sat down in the chair by the window to eat her meal. Alone.
This was what Challenge Harriet was all about. If she had a problem with the way she was living her life, then she needed to fix it. And wanting things to go back to the way they were wasn’t a fix.
If she missed people then the answer was to fill her home with more people. It shouldn’t matter that Fliss wasn’t living with her anymore. She should simply make some calls and have people over. Maybe she should call Molly and suggest meeting for brunch. Or her friend Matilda. Except that Matilda was spending most of her time in the Hamptons with her new baby.
She needed to make new friends. Be self-sufficient and adventurous.
Maybe she ought to book a week away somewhere. She could go hiking. Get some fresh air. Snatch some time away from the city. A change of scene would be good.
She was pondering that when there was a tap on the door.
She put her spoon down, knowing this wasn’t a conversation she was going to be able to avoid.