"Hello, good morning." Mark said with a smile. "Breakfast?"
"Good morning. Thanks, breakfast sounds great."
Rodia sat down. Mark's face, which was peaking in from the kitchen into the dining room was smiling. His smile always communicated things without words. Today Rodia knew right away that his smile meant, stay in the dining room. I'll take care of breakfast.
"We have blueberry pancakes and eggsalad on toast."
The aroma of extra dark roast
coffee
mixed with pancakes frying on iron skillet made Rodia salivate and also think about American
diners
. He wasn't surprised about the breakfast. Mark always cooked the most thoughtful meals no matter how busy the day was. This didn't diminish any appreciation though.
Before breakfast was served, Rodia sipped green tea that Mark had brought while pondering when to tell Mark that he had lost his job. Usually there were two thoughts to this. He either wanted to tell big news -- good or bad -- right away. Be a real man, get it out and get it over with. Don't hide anything. And then there was the other angle. Filled with anxiety he didn't care about being a 'real man'. All he wanted was to just put it off. Procrastinate.
"Here you go." Mark brought a plate with a toasted french baguette sliced into half. "There are
anchovies
under the egg salad . It's my secret ingredient. You don't mind do you?"
"I love anchovies."
Mark smiled. "Good."
Rodia ate the sandwich still thinking, but thinking less now that the creamy, smooth egg salad, balanced so well by the pungent green onion and salty anchovy mixed with the buttery, just crispy enough baguette was being chewed.
"Pancakes are coming up soon. How many do you want?"
Rodia saw that Mark was eating two. He was cooking while eating. Mark had already eaten his half baguette and was now on his pancakes.
"I'll take two."
"Well there's three left, why don't we make it three?"
Rodia smiled and said, sure thing.
Later on during the drive to the trail Rodia wanted to finally say he lost his job but instead he asked Mark what he thought about letting him live at his place for awhile. Six months to be more precise.
"You can just do that with your job?"
"Well it's remote and all."
"Hm. Okay. Well I'd love to have you around. Won't it impact your work?"
"No. I could use the company. So long as I get about three to four hours a day uninterrupted time that's plenty."
They drove for awhile in silence. The kind of silence you could only manage with people you really loved.
"Well let's do it then."
Mark smiled at him. Rodia wondered whether he knew or not.
