Recalling good memories

 "Are you ever going to speak to me again?" Crystal was tired of getting the silent treatment from CW. She didn't think he'd be this moody. 

She tried that trick to continue talking, but he was still in a pout. He wouldn't even look at her. It was driving her crazy. OK, not that crazy. Just a little crazy. She knew she needed to be calm around him, or it would make things worse. They worked together. He was her neighbor.

"I'm sorry I upset you." She didn't mean to snap. She knew she should have said it with feeling, but she knew he wouldn't buy it. He could be so cold sometimes. "I'm sorry if I made you mad. I was just trying to make you see. We all have a hard job. Sometimes." 

Naturally, he swelled a frown. He was terribly stoic. 

They'd peered into the hallway in the building where the coffee shop was. It was closed at the moment, but the food pantry was full of baked goods and much, much more for the taking. Of course, neither picked up any of the bread or sweets. But CW kept looking as if he'd decide on something to take. At least the chocolate chip cookies.

"I could teach you,  you know, what I've learned in the kitchen, if that would help." She shrugged as she went to the canned goods to look for soup. 

He kept sulking as if he would never give in. Finally, after the silence grew to the point that Crystal was ready to go upstairs to her studio, CW said. "Teach me."

"Really?" She was shocked.

"Well, you have lots of good skills, you know?" She told him she'd been watching fry cooks just about all her life. "My granny was a teacher, but she worked as a fry cook on the side back in Oklahoma. It's kind of sad, most folks never remembered her teaching, they just remembered her fried chicken."

"My grandmother was a good cook too," CW let slip.

Crystal asked what he missed the most from her comfort food, and he said macaroni and cheese. 

"Do you remember what she put in it?" 

"I don't know."

"Well, come on up, I'll make you some." She smiled.

"But she put it in the oven," he sounded like it might be an all-day affair to make something like that.

"That does sound good," she said as they went on up the old stairwell. "But it's too hot for that. And I'd need time to study up on it, but in the meantime, I can make a pot of it. I got broccoli. You don't have anything against broccoli, do you?"

He snarled his nose up. She sighed with a laugh. He said he'd try it, anyway.