He had attempted pasta.
Aria knew this the moment she stepped into his apartment — the smell of garlic and something slightly over-reduced reaching the hallway before she'd finished knocking. She stood at the door with the bread she'd bought from a bakery two blocks from her apartment and looked at him when he opened it.
He was wearing an apron.
She had never seen him in an apron.
It was the most unexpectedly human thing she'd witnessed in four months of knowing him and she had witnessed him cry in a courthouse corridor and plant basil seeds in January.
"Don't," he said.
"I haven't said anything," she said.
"You were about to."
"I was going to say it smells good," she said.
He looked at her. "Does it?"
She considered. "It smells like effort," she said. "That's the same thing."
H
