Family Law 7 – raw snippet

Lee woke up with Trish in front of her instead of behind. How she moved across without waking Lee was a mystery. Then she remembered she’d been up in the night for a couple of hours. Trish’s muzzle was buried in Lee’s armpit. It was a wonder she didn’t smother.

“Trish… ” Lee said gently. “Goy Trish,” had no impact said normally.

Lee sighed. It took shaking her by her arm delicately and then with increased vigor before her eyes finally popped open.

“If you say you were just resting your eyes I’m going to smack you,” Lee warned.

Trish looked around at the strange room amazed.

“I missed dessert, didn’t I?”

“You were going to miss breakfast if I didn’t wake you up.”

“I read that human teenagers need a lot of sleep too,” Trish said defensively.

“You read more trivia than I’ll ever manage,” Lee said.

“Well of course. You have businesses, and ships, and planets to manage,” Trish said.

It was infuriatingly reasonable.

“Watch out. I have to get up and use the bathroom.” Lee said.

“Me too,” Trish said. “But I’ll run and use the one off the kitchen.”

Lee tossed her clothes in the quick cleaner and took a shower while she was at it. When she finally came out Trish was sitting on a high stool. On the counter beside her was a package of bacon, a bowl of eggs and a bag of shredded potatoes. She was reading a fancy coffee table book with the title: The Complete Home Cook.

“You start the potatoes first because they take longest to cook,” Lee told her. “But all that won’t make a dent if you intend to feed Gandhi and Gordon.”

“Oh. That’s why there were six packages of bacon in the chiller,” Trish said.

“Refrigerator, but I knew what you meant.”

“Do we have truffle oil?” Trish asked frowning at the book.

“You’ve never cooked a meal in your life, have you?” Lee asked.

“They chase you out of the kitchen at home if you actually want to do anything,” Trish complained. “They make you sit across the table from them working.”

“Put the book away,” Lee said. “Those books with lots of pictures on shiny paper are expensive and useless. It would be a shame to get it dirty. I’ll show you what to do.”
Lee got three huge fry pans that barely fit on the huge commercial stove, a cutting board, and a two-hundred-millimeter chef’s knife from the rack.

“I’ll crack eggs and you can slice the bacon open and separate the slices,” Lee said.

Trish held the plastic package on the cutting board with her thumb hanging over the edge, reached across with the knife so close to her knuckles it made Lee’s heart skip a beat. She prepared to draw it back through plastic film and thumb.

Lee reached over and grabbed her wrist, averting certain disaster.

“You’ve never used a sharp knife before, have you?”

“My knife at dinner has some little serrations near the end,” Trish said.

“You were going to hurt yourself,” Lee said. “My fault. I might as well have handed you a loaded gun without asking if you’d been trained to use it.”

“Yes, please,” Trish said. “I’d like you to do that too.”