25

Sam

One more word and she would have left him there in the mountain until he was well enough to drive himself! The damn cheek of the man as if she couldn't drive anything he could! Or fly come to that! It was only because she partially understood his feelings for the damn vehicle that she forgave him, though it wasn't as if it was a bike! It was just another car, and a big honkin' gas guzzler at that!

She drove him home, and pulled in front of the neat building she had admired so much when he had held Daniels wake in it. Though she did not wish to remember that. She steadied him as he swung down from the truck a bit too fast and got his crutches, and helped him to the door, without trying to look like she was helping him. He almost went crashing when he went for the first of three steps up to the porch and a gust of wind came howling around the corner of the building, she managed to place her braced body in the way and stop him falling, just!

He grunted a thanks and got up the other two steps without a problem, waiting for her to open the door as she still had his keys in her hand. She opened the door and swung it wide and stepped back to allow him in first.

Daniel had been in the week before to get rid of the food in the fridge and air the place, so all that was needed was a little grocery shop, she thought. She watched him swing himself straight into the kitchen and open the fridge, she was about to remind him it had been cleared when he shut the door, beer bottle in hand and twisted off the cap, throwing it in the general direction of a bin and took a swallow that emptied half the contents. He sighed and then seemed to remember she was still in the hall. "Want one?" he gestured with his half empty bottle.

"No thanks sir, I have to go get you some food in, and Janet said…"

"She always does" he drank the second half of the bottle without pause and reached for another. This time he put it on the shelf that lead to the living room and headed out of the kitchen to sit down. Picking the bottle up once he dropped one of the crutches on the floor by the sofa.

"You don't have to do any shopping or anything Carter" he said, "I have everything I need in there, take the truck home with you, I can't drive it for a while" he sounded…defeated, down, she wasn't sure HOW to describe him, but there was something about his tone, she didn't recognise… wait … it was the same tone he had used when he told her he was dying.

She stepped into the kitchen herself and opened the fridge, beer, about two dozen bottles, nothing else, she checked the cupboards, a couple of packets of breakfast cereal, one tin of soup and a can of tuna, and no matter how many cupboards she opened she found nothing else. Not even a jar of instant coffee.

She stepped into the living room and he looked up from the photo he had in his hands, it was a classic school photo, head and chest on a none descript background, of his son, exactly as he looked when the crystal entity copied him, the Colonel looked…old…older than he had even when he was unshaven and freezing to death, and she wondered if he had welcomed the thought of joining his son, somewhere deep in his soul.

"Bye Carter" he said in dismissal, but she sat at the side of him, being careful of his cast and took a swig out of his new beer bottle, that he had opened but not started.

She hated beer, much preferring soft drinks, another aspect of 'her control issues' according to Janets friendly shrink she even made the drinks sugar free, so she was never on a sugar high! But she needed something to allow her to stay and drinking was a sure fire way of stopping him from kicking her out. He reached over to the far side of the sofa, where a phone sat on a table, he opened the draw and pulled out some menus, and spread them on his leg.

"What you want for dinner then?" he asked

"Janet said high protein for a while so how about I go get us some steaks in an hour and we can have steaks, potatoes and corn?"

"Can't light the grill in this weather," he pointed to a brick built barbeque on his patio

"I can cook them on the stove in there" she said "and I can nuke the potatoes, I saw a microwave, and corn is easy" he gestured to the menus on his thigh,

"THESE are easy, come on pick one, by the time you've eaten you will be fine to drive then you can get home"

"I can get home anyway," she said "My new place is only a couple of miles away, and a bit of wind isn't going to hurt me, I just thought you would like some company" she didn't actually want to go home, all that was there was a ginger cat that had adopted her when she moved in, that she called Schrödinger and a couple of pot plants, that were dying, probably because she had bored them to death talking to them!

"I…I'll leave you to it sir" she dropped the keys on the coffee table and got her coat on as he managed to make it to the steps out of the living room.

"If you want to stay, I'd like that steak" he said holding a hand slightly towards her, she looked at him and saw warmth returned to his eyes, and something she couldn't identify, and she took her coat off again, "have your beer, we can watch the Simpsons episodes I missed and then you can do some shopping, if that's ok?"

She sat down as he picked a couple of remotes up and switched on the telly, she had never seen the Simpsons, though he kept talking about them at work, maybe it was time she actually watched an episode.

She couldn't drink the beer, and when he went for the bathroom she emptied it down the sink, he knew she had, of course but was good enough not to blame her for the waste. He told her the best place to shop for steaks, a small mom & pop store a mile or so in the opposite direction from where she lived, and they had fresh fruit and veg as well as meat for sale she got the makings of a salad as well as the rest of the planned menu. Then she went to the next shop for milk, coffee, sugar, bread, butter, some diet sodas for herself and got some bits she needed for herself when she went home, shampoo, conditioner and as she was due on by the end of the week, some 'sanitary products' as her father always referred to them. It was the only memory of her father that made her smile, when he blushed as he mentioned buying them for his daughter, but he used no euphemism as some men did, just a generalization and red to the roots of his receding hairline.

She unloaded the truck and set the alarm and put the two huge bags that she had bought on the kitchen table, she took her own small bag from the top and put it under her coat on the hall table for when she left, she was going to walk home and catch a taxi to work the next day, and get her beloved bike home where it belonged, before some jarhead bumped into it with one of the small jeeps they used to transport VIPs from the car park to the security near the lifts.

Dinner was a success, or at least SHE thought it was and he certainly didn't complain as he even took over half the salad from the bowl, she, of course, only ate what she had to, never having been that bothered about eating for eatings sake, and he continually complained about how his steak was almost three times the size of hers, and she needed something substantial to eat. She ignored him after telling him once that she was fine, and continued to eat her meal. Afterwards he told her there were still another two episodes that he had taped, and asked her if she wanted to watch them with him, she looked at her watch and the dark sky and decided not to… to be perfectly honest, even though she had laughed at a couple of lines, she didn't see the attraction in watching it. Cartoons were for children, but she did smile at him as he laughed at it, some children were older than she was!