Free The Do-Over by Kathy Dunnehoff

minestrone.”
    “It got pretty cold last night. No blanket.” Dan’s shoulders hunched a little.
    “It’s July.”
    He shrugged and kept going. “I haven’t eaten in days.”
    Mara felt the danger. She knew she was close, close to the edge of giving in, of giving up, of caving in to reason and logic and doing the right thing. Who’d come up with that one anyway? Do the right thing? The right thing for whom? What was right for somebody was always gonna be wrong for somebody else.
    Dan’s blue eyes widened. “You make really good minestrone at home.”
    He did. He did really love her minestrone. She leaned back, fighting being sucked into the undertow of her obligations, and glanced down at the floor. Her sandals weren’t leather or practical or well-made or even a match for her dress. They were plastic, and the butterflies were pink, and she was wearing them with a peach dress. A reasonable woman who took care of her husband so he had an ironed shirt and didn’t live in a car and was well fed on an Italian tomato based soup, well that woman certainly wouldn’t wear peach with pink. But she liked it, she liked it a lot.
    “And we’re out of lots of things at the house. You were supposed to go the warehouse store, remember?” Dan’s mouth quirked up at the corners.
    Was he getting ready to smile? Over the warehouse store? The giant cans of tuna. The paper towel packages that required a forklift to get into the van. Mara held up her hand. “No.”
    He continued anyway. “Tissues, and, hey, we could use some new pillows. Don’t you just love it when you replace the pillows? That’s a good feeling. You like that.”
    The waitress walked onto the trolley, took one look at them squaring off over the table, dropped the bread basket, and left.
    Dan pulled the cloth napkin back and closed his eyes as he breathed in the warm breadsticks. He plucked out the largest one, took a bite, and sat back with a satisfied smile amid the chewing.
    She grabbed a breadstick and pointed it at his chest, and he stopped smiling when she poked him. “What am I doing that’s so terrible?”
    He frowned at her. “Besides getting parmesan on my shirt?”
    “Is it illegal? Immoral? Irresponsible?” Mara jerked the breadstick up, ignored the flurry of cheese on the table. “Okay, it’s a bit irresponsible, but I’m due. I’ve never been irresponsible even a little in my whole life.”
    His eyebrows shot up. “A bit irresponsible? This is completely wrong. You’ve left your house, your family, your work.” He brushed at the front of his shirt with his left hand while power eating the bread with his right.
    “I’ve taken a couple of weeks’ vacation from my house, which will still be standing at the end of the month even if it’s out of paper products. Logan is enjoying his time with your parents whether I’m home or not. You chose to sleep in the car when you could have gone home. Maybe you could use this time to do what you want to do. There’s a crazy idea. And my work doesn’t start up again until school, which you know perfectly well.”
    Dan didn’t respond but reached for another breadstick and ate his way through it with even, methodical bites. He didn’t look confused anymore. Mara cursed herself. Encouraging him to raise his blood sugar had been a mistake.
    The waitress peeked up the trolley stairs, and Mara motioned her in and handed over her credit card. “I’ll pay for three breadsticks.” She pointed one at Dan. “Two, he ate, and this one’s used because I poked his shirt with it.” The waitress took the card but didn’t seem to know what to do with it. She left, reluctantly, and Mara watched for her return, avoiding Dan, who stared across the table. There’d been a shift between them, a shift of power maybe, of advantage. When they’d walked into the restaurant, she’d felt strong about staying, but Dan had gone from rumpled to resolved, and her grip on her month felt shaky. She needed to get