He got a sheepish look on his face. “Girlfriend issues.”
“Hilary?”
“Yeah.” He didn't say anything else.
I shot him a look of frustration. “Seriously, can’t you volunteer anything?”
He groaned, grabbing my hand, and pulled me into the kitchen. “We dated for a couple of years. Okay, we lived together at the end. But it didn't work out so not only did I move out, I moved away.” He started pulling the containers out of the bag and setting them on the table.
I got a couple of glasses out of the cabinet. “But why Henryetta? Most people want out of Henryetta, not in.”
He tilted his head to the side in a half-shrug. “There was a job here and I needed a job.”
“So why did Hilary show up?”
He stopped and rested the back of his legs against the table. The kitchen was small enough that he could grab my arm and tug me toward him. He pulled me to his chest and looked into my eyes, brushing the hair off my cheek. “I didn’t invite her here. She invited herself. She wasn’t my girlfriend at that point, although she hoped to be when she left. But I sent her away, Rose. It made me furious when she told you she was my girlfriend. I would have sent her away that night, but I tried to be courteous and I let her spend the night, in a separate room. She left the next day. You saw that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tried. You wouldn’t listen.”
I suddenly felt stupid. “Joe, I’m so sorry. I thought…” I looked away in embarrassment.
“Hey,” he put his fingers under my chin and turned my face to his. “I don’t blame you. It looked bad and you didn’t know me very well. That’s how I knew you really liked me though. You knew about Hilary, yet you were still interested in me.”
“So why can’t you go to the police?”
The blinds of honesty closed in his eyes. They looked cold in contrast. “I can’t answer that. Tonight.” He stressed. “If you give me until next week, I think I can tell you then.”
“And you won’t help me with number fifteen until you can tell me?”
He nodded. “I want you to know everything first, so you don't think I tried to trick you.”
The next week, I think began to sink in. “Wait a minute,” I turned my head to the side, scrutinizing him. “You keep telling me Monday, but it might actually be later.”
“What difference does a few days make? You’ve waited this long, what’s your hurry?”
“Maybe I’m tired of waiting.”
“What happens in three days?”
“Why won’t you go to the police?”
We reached a stalemate, and Joe wasn’t pleased. He just lost his upper hand. But instead of getting angry, he sighed. “Let's eat.”
We sat down, the mood heavy around us. It made me sad and depressed. This wasn’t how I wanted to spend my time with him. He was hiding things from me, but I didn’t want to spend the two days I had left figuring it out. Since he was hung up on my insistence that Sunday was the day everything had to be done, maybe I should just pretend it didn’t exist.
“This is good. I’ve never had Chinese food before.”
Joe’s mouth fell open in shock. “What? If I had known, I would have ordered. How did you know what to get?”
He laughed when I told him my reasoning. “You need to go to a Chinese buffet. You can try all kinds of different things on a buffet and then you’ll know what you like next time you order.”
“Maybe we could go next week,” I said, trying my new tactic.
The merriment in his eyes fell away. “I thought the world was going to end on Sunday.”
I shrugged. “Maybe you’ve convinced me it won’t. So what do you say? Wanna go with me?”
I couldn't help noticing he wouldn’t look me in the eye when he spoke with a chipperness I wasn’t used to hearing him use. “Yeah, sure.”
That seemed odd. Maybe he and Hilary really weren’t over, but it didn’t matter if they were or not. I only needed him for two more days. Facing death made me shameless.
Joe tried to restore our lighthearted mood and demonstrated how to use the thin wooden chopsticks in the bag. He showed me how to hold them like a pencil and pinch the ends together, then had me try. We held our chopsticks in the air, pinching at nothing in the air. Joe was pretty adept with chopsticks. I just made a mess.
I laughed. “Maybe if I can master this, I can put this in the number twenty-nine spot.”