Bacon and Eggs
Taylor couldn’t remember the last time he had slept well. Most nights, since Charlotte’s death and especially since his return to Tulsa, he didn’t feel as though he had slept at all. He tossed and turned for hours, finally waking up feeling as though he had done nothing more than close his eyes for a second.
That morning, however, he woke up feeling incredibly well rested.
It took him several minutes to figure out where he was or just why he felt so comfortable. His mind only began to figure it out when he felt the bed shifting a little and glanced over to see that someone else was laying with him. The covers were pulled up high, but her long black hair still hung out like a rusted halo around the pillow.
Shiloh.
Taylor couldn’t resist the urge to snuggle closer to her for a moment. Shiloh slept so soundly, he knew, that it wouldn’t wake her at all. She hardly stirred when he grew bolder and wrapped his arm around her waist. His confidence only grew. Knowing it was probably a horrible idea, he still couldn’t stop himself from running his hand across her stomach. He wanted desperately to feel the baby move or kick or something. Some tiny reminder that there really was a life inside there.
He had a feeling that if Shiloh woke up while he was touching her, she would be the one giving him a kick.
With a sigh, Taylor pulled himself away from Shiloh and rolled over. The clock on her nightstand showed that it was already nearing eight in the morning. He was pretty sure that Shiloh didn’t need to be at work for a few more hours, based on his creepy window watching, so he didn’t dare try to wake her. He couldn’t sleep any longer, though, no matter how well rested he felt. Instead, Taylor pulled himself out of the bed and wiggled back into the jeans Shiloh had insisted he take off before getting in bed.
Taylor ran his hand along the hallway wall as he walked back through her apartment to the kitchen. Their night together had been very strange, he decided. Shiloh had insisted that he sleep in her bed, and she had conceded to letting him wrap an arm around her, but her back had remained turned to him the entire time. There was nothing romantic about it at all. He wasn’t really sure why she had suggested it in the first place.
No, there had definitely been nothing romantic about the night. Taylor wasn’t even sure that he wanted anything romantic from Shiloh. Despite their one night together, he had never seen her as anything more than Charlotte’s infuriating best friend and Zac’s on again, off again girlfriend. He didn’t love her. He did care about her, though, especially when he knew she was going through a lot, too.
So maybe it wasn’t romantic. That didn’t mean he couldn’t do something nice for her.
Not bothering to be quiet, since he knew she could sleep through anything, Taylor began digging through her refrigerator and cabinets until he found all the ingredients he needed for a nice breakfast. Shiloh had a thing for junk food; he remembered that about her. That combined with the memory of fixing endless fried eggs for his own mother when she was pregnant with Zoe gave him the motivation he needed to pull out all the stops and cook her the best breakfast he could manage with what food she had on hand.
Luckily, Taylor was a pretty decent cook, if he did say so himself, and Shiloh kept her small kitchen quite well stocked. Taylor didn’t know for sure how she took her eggs, so he decided to fry a few as well as scramble some, both with and without some of the shredded cheese he found hiding behind the milk. He also found a package of bacon and a can of biscuits to finish off the meal. It wasn’t the fanciest breakfast he had ever cooked, but he figured it was better to stick to the basics; that gave him less chance of offending Shiloh or cooking something she wouldn’t eat.
If Shiloh had a coffee maker, Taylor would have considered it a perfect breakfast. Instead, he settled for pouring two glasses of orange juice and waiting to see which happened first – Shiloh waking up or the timer on the biscuits going off.
“Taylor?” Shiloh called out, just as the oven’s timer dinged. “Do I smell bacon?”
“I don’t know, do you?” Taylor called back, grinning even though he knew Shiloh couldn’t see him yet.
A moment later, she appeared in the doorway, leaning heavily against it and rubbing her eyes as though she wasn’t sure that what she saw in front of her was real. Taylor just continued to grin as he pulled the biscuits from the oven and sat them onto the counter.
“You probably do smell bacon,” he said, still grinning.
Shiloh only rolled her eyes in reply. She shuffled toward the oven and surveyed the variety of pans on top of it for a moment. Taylor thought he saw a tiny smile flicker across her face, but it was gone so quickly that he couldn’t be sure. There was a definite smirk on her face as she nudged him out of the way to pull a plate from the dish drainer. A smirk that didn’t also come with a complete refusal to eat his cooking was probably about the best he could hope for, Taylor figured.
He watched with amusement as Shiloh filled her plate up with heaping helpings of everything he had made, then dug butter and jelly out of the refrigerator to slather over her biscuits. He couldn’t help being pleased with himself, even if Shiloh had yet to, and likely wouldn’t, thank him for it. Once she had helped herself and sat down at the table, he scooped some of the remaining bacon and scrambled eggs with cheese onto a plate of his own. While he did love bacon, he wasn’t a huge fan of breakfast in the actual morning. But he figured it would have been strange not to eat his own cooking while Shiloh practically gorged herself on it.
“I forgot you were such a good cook,” Shiloh mumbled between bites. “Charlotte used to go on and on about the stuff you’d cook for her.”
At the mention of her name, both Taylor and Shiloh paused and stared at each other. The awkward moment passed quickly, though, which took Taylor by surprise. Perhaps in time it wouldn’t hurt so much to simply mention Charlotte’s name. He only hoped that pain wasn’t replaced by the pain of mentioning Zac’s name, but he had a feeling it would be.
“Thanks,” he finally replied, giving Shiloh the best smile he could manage.
Neither of them said much for the rest of the meal, but the silence wasn’t as awkward as Taylor thought it might be. Shiloh seemed, slowly, to be accepting that whether she liked it or not, Taylor was going to be a part of her life.
When they finished, he refused to let Shiloh help with the dishes. He had to all but shove her from the room so that she wouldn’t start raking out leftovers into the trash. Not that there had been very many leftovers. Taylor couldn’t resist wrapping up a leftover biscuit or two and the few remaining pieces of bacon for his own lunch; he’d found it difficult to even muster up the energy to go shopping, so his house was getting quite low on food. He promised himself to replace what he had taken of Shiloh’s as soon as possible.
With his lunch wrapped up and the dishes all washed and stuck in the dish drainer, he padded back down the hallway to retrieve the rest of his clothes and painting supplies. As much as he didn’t want to leave Shiloh alone, he also knew it was better not to overstay his welcome.
He heard water running from within her bathroom and thought it best not to bother her. Instead, he stepped into the nursery and gathered up the trash he had scattered around the day before. He stuffed his paintbrushes, drop cloth and cans of paint into one shopping bag, and gathered up all the rest of the trash into another. There was really less of it than he remembered, and it didn’t take long at all before the nursery looked absolutely perfect.
Once that was finished and he had carried the bags to the front door, he went back to Shiloh’s room to finish dressing. His jacket and shoes were scattered around the floor and he stooped down to pick them up. Shiloh walked back into the room, her pajamas replaced with jeans and a t-shirt, just as Taylor was tying his left shoe.
“Leaving?” She asked, not seeming particularly concerned either way.
“Figured I’d give you a few hours free of me before you had to leave for work,” he replied.
“I appreciate that,” Shiloh said, but her smirk said slightly different.
Taylor finished tying his shoe lace, then stood up and glanced around the room. It was a bit of a mess. He wasn’t one to judge, though. Charlotte was incredibly neat, and the habit of keeping things cleaned up had rubbed off on him, but it wasn’t really his natural state.
Shiloh must have noticed Taylor’s eyes roaming around, because she took a few steps toward her small desk and shuffled the envelopes and other papers on it nervously before finally shoving them all into a drawer.
“I could clean up a bit while you’re at work,” Taylor offered. “I mean, I don’t really have anything else to do all day. I get really bored.”
Shiloh spun around and glared at him. “You really don’t need to do that. You should just leave, actually.”
Taylor frowned. He wasn’t sure where her sudden change of mood had come from. Did the implication that she needed to clean offend her that much? Taylor supposed it was possible. It was generally impossible to predict what would set Shiloh off, and the pregnancy hormones couldn’t have possibly improved that little personality quirk.
He instinctively backed away from her and raised his hands in defeat. “Alright, sorry. The offer still stands, though, but I’ll go now. See you later, Shy.”
“Later,” Shiloh replied, her fingers nervously playing with the drawer pull on her desk.
Taylor wanted to say or do something to comfort her, but he knew it was best not to even try. Shiloh would calm down in time, but continuing to argue when she was upset was like poking a hornet’s nest. It was just asking for trouble in the worst possible way.
With one last, tiny smile in her general direction, Taylor shoved his hands in his pockets and walked out of her bedroom. He picked up his trash by the door on his way out, hoping and praying that it wasn’t the last time Shiloh let him into her apartment, and her life, so easily.