"Can I finish my pancakes first?" I said, stuffing a forkful in my mouth and making a show of looking around the hotel restaurant.
"Way to make a girl feel wanted," Mina said. "You just missed a golden opportunity to shove aside these dishes and take me right here on the table."
"Oh sure," I said. "Because I was really hoping that this trip would end up with both of us arrested for indecent exposure."
She laughed. But beneath the laughter she seemed nervous and I realized she was probably worried she'd gone too far.
I leaned forward and put my hand on top of hers. "Joking aside," I said, "I'm interested. But could we maybe talk about it someplace a little more private?"
She looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. There were a fair number of other guests around the restaurant. "That's fair," she said. "Want to come back to my room with me after breakfast?"
"Sure thing," I said.
We kept the conversation casual after that while we finished eating. On the way out I grabbed a to go cup and filled it with coffee. I wanted to make sure I was wide awake for whatever happened next.
Mina led the way back to her room and let us both in. I'd never been inside her room before but I wasn't surprised to find it looked just like mine.
"Have a seat," said Mina.
I was about to sit down but then I sipped the coffee I'd brought upstairs with me and couldn't help making a face as the bitter flavor hit my tongue.
"What's wrong?" asked Mina.
"I forgot to add cream," I said.
"There's cream in the fridge," said Mina, waving her hand toward the kitchen.
I walked over and opened the fridge. The cream would have been hard to miss. It was almost the only thing in the fridge, apart from some cans of pop.
"Is this all you've got?" I couldn't help but ask.
"What do you mean?" she said.
"Well what have you been eating?" I asked.
"You've had dinner with me most nights," she said, with a puzzled look. "You've seen me eat."
"Sure," I said, "but what have you been doing for lunch?
We'd been taking it in turns to eat lunch during the day at work. Lunch was an hour long, but neither of us took that long away from the classroom. One of us would go to the staff lunchroom and eat while the other hung out in the classroom in case any of the trainees had questions or needed extra support with anything. Then we'd swap.
That gave us each only half an hour or so for lunch, which wasn't enough time to go out and get anything. The office was located on the outskirts of town with nothing nearby but industrial space and other office buildings. The closest food place was more than twenty minutes away in lunch time traffic.
Fortunately our company had put us up in long-term stay rooms at the hotel. The rooms had a decent kitchenette, including a full-sized fridge with a freezer. There was also an oven with a stovetop, and even a bunch of cooking utensils and dishes. I'd been making myself lunches at the hotel and bringing them to the office with me during the day. I'd assumed Mina had been doing the same but based on the contents of her fridge there was no way she was.
In response to my question she pointed at the freezer.
I opened it up and saw a half dozen frozen meals. Cheap ones. The gross kind I used to eat sometimes as a broke undergrad student.
"Oh god, seriously?" I asked. "You know the company is giving us a per diem for food right? You could buy better groceries."
"I don't cook," she said, blushing.
"What?" I said. "Seriously?"
She nodded. "Brad cooks," she said. "I do the dishes. That's always been our trade-off. He likes to cook and I hate it."
Still looking in the fridge I pulled open the crisper, which was also empty. "You don't even have any fruit," I said. "You know that you don't have to cook fruit right?"
"Shut up," she said, still blushing. She was trying to look stern but I could tell she was fighting to hide a smile.
"Okay," I said, "change of plans for the day. I know you wanted to talk logistics, but we're going grocery shopping first. This travesty cannot stand." I gestured towards the frozen meals, shaking my head.
"Aww, you're going to buy me groceries?" she said. "You do care." She blinked theatrically and wiped an imaginary tear from her eye.
I laughed and shook my head. "The company's buying," I said. "But if you tell me what you want to eat for lunches I'll find the ingredients. I'll even cook them for you."
"You're sweet," she said. "You sure you want to go to that much trouble?"
I looked in her fridge once more and nodded. "I can't send you back to Brad suffering from malnutrition," I said. "Or scurvy," I added, pushing the crisper closed with my foot.
She laughed. "I do eat veggies you know," she said. "You've seen me eat them."
I shook my head and patted her on the shoulder. "I'm pretty sure those frozen meals counteract any good food you eat," I said. "It's not a risk worth taking."
She rolled her eyes and swatted my hand away. But then she grabbed my hand, squeezed it and laughed again. "I surrender," she said, picking up the car keys from the kitchen counter. "Let's go."
We drove to the nearest grocery store. There was also a bookstore in the same plaza. Once Mina saw it, her eyes lit up. "Ooh, can we go there first?" she asked.
I'm a bit of a book nerd, so she didn't have to twist my arm too hard on that one.
We spent a couple of hours in the bookstore, looking at books and talking about books. Part way through our time there the bookstore announced an impromptu scavenger hunt, with a prize for the first five people who finished it.
Mina got super into it, and swept me up along with her, so we ended up racing around the store looking for the clues. They were all literary themed, which was to be expected for a bookstore contest. Mina and I were pretty evenly matched when it came to solving the clues, but her love of mystery novels clinched it for us as she guessed a couple of references that I wouldn't have.
Nobody finished before us, so we were first and second place. We each got a $10 gift card, but I insisted she take both since without her I might not have won.
She used them to buy a little stuffed bear that was of all things, wearing a trench coat and a Sherlock Holmes hat. "To commemorate our victory," she said with a grin.
On our way out of the store she bumped shoulders with me. "Thanks," she said, still holding the bear.
"For what?" I asked.
"For coming with me," she said. "Brad's not a big book guy. He'll come to bookstores with me if I ask, but as much as he tries to hide it I can always tell he's not having fun while we're there. It's a nice change to go with someone that also likes books."
"Any time," I said.