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The recipe is in her purse. It’s the reason she’s here after all:
Sticky Toffee Pudding.
The excuse is so transparent she can’t stop from smiling as he tries to deny he doesn’t have ulterior motives and she can’t take her eyes off him. She can’t believe she’s finally here and he’s sitting across from her and they’re alone. They’re so rarely alone together anymore. Not that she’s been paying attention to when she was alone with him, but she notices all the same. She’s been noticing him a lot lately. Except not really. She’s been careful. Can’t let anyone see her looking at him the way she’s trying very hard not to look at him.
But there’s no one else here. For the first time in months she’s alone with him. Really alone. Mr. Crane isn’t going to storm into the kitchen at any moment, and Dr. Crane won’t be returning home from the station at whatever hour he fancies. Her heart is racing with the potential of it all. She and Dr. Crane in his posh home across town from his brother and his father and Donny and Mel and—
Her heart is pounding and she’s fidgeting with the handles of her purse to have something to do with her hands and he’s looking at her, god the way he looks at her. Here they are and he knows she’s not buying his sticky toffee pudding excuse to have her come over on a Saturday night but she came anyway because
because
because
because
He’s cracking under her stare, blushing a little as the pretence for their meeting like this is quietly abandoned. She wants to tell him it’s okay. She’s here. She wants to be here. Here with him, alone on a Saturday night. She wants to tell him that he can tell her anything. Anything he might want to say to her tonight. Anything at all. Anything.
Instead she leans forward and kisses him.
She feels him freeze in shock for a fraction of a second before responding in kind. And just like that the truth of everything she’s been fighting to ignore storms past every gate she’s put up against it. Her eyes are closed and her only conscious thought is finally finally finally as his hands move to her back and the kiss deepens.
And then twenty people shout “SURPRISE!”
Her eyes snap open and she and Dr. Crane pull back and jump to their feet like the feinting couch has ejector seats to look at the audience who just appeared and there’s Donny front and centre looking like his heart was just cleaved in two and there’s Mel, unnaturally still and livid, her eyes burning daggers of ice into Dr. Crane.
Daphne is speechless. She has no idea what to say. There is nothing to say. There is nothing to say to Donny or to her friends who are staring at her in horror. Daphne becomes aware she’s shaking, her hands trembling something fierce as the magnitude of the mistake she’s made crashes upon her with every agonizing second that passes. She’s made a horrible mistake, a terrible assumption. How could she be so stupid? How could she let this happen?
She’s ruined everything.
Mel sweeps past them on her way out and Dr. Crane watches her slam the door without moving and Donny takes a step towards her, stepping out of the collection of all of her friends in Seattle. He says only, “Daphne?”
There are questions in his eyes that she’s not ready to face.
“I’m sorry,” she says looking away from him. She’s already crying and everyone can tell but she raises her hands to cover her face anyway.
And then she flees.
She turns toward the stairs, not wanting to risk being on an elevator with Mel because that would really be the type of icing on the cake the universe would throw at her tonight. She rushes though the door marked as the emergency exit without thought to whether an alarm will go off (it doesn’t) and she runs down the stairs as fast as she can in her best shoes (she wore her best shoes. To make pudding.) until she gets to the parking garage.
She fumbles with her keys, dropping them twice before she manages to start her car. She pulls out of the garage too fast and drives six blocks before pulling into a parking garage to pay $5 for the privilege of crying in her car somewhere a little more private than the side of the road.
She gets her money’s worth, sobbing with abandon as she replays this evenings disaster in every mortifying detail. Almost equally terrible are the events that led her there. She can’t pretend she doesn’t know anymore. And she certainly can’t pretend it doesn’t matter. Because she knows and it matters because… well… because…
Because she showed up to his place on a Saturday night in her favourite dress with a recipe for pudding that they both knew he didn’t want to make.
And then she kissed him.
She kissed him because she thought they were alone and that he’d invited her there to tell her that he was in love with her and she wanted him to tell her. God, she wanted him to tell her because...
because she…
Because.
She moans into her hands. The word ‘love’ hurts her throat to even think in the same thought as Dr. Crane so she beats it back down, like she has been for the last few months, refusing to let herself acknowledge it. But it’s there. It’s there. It’s there.
And she knows it.
And Dr. Crane probably doesn’t feel that way about her anymore. How could she be so stupid. He’s with Mel now. He’s with Mel now. He’s probably literally with Mel right now, trying to explain. But when she kissed him he kissed her back and—
She doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t know where to go. All of her friends were in Dr. Crane’s apartment for her bridal shower. Every person she would even consider turning to in a crisis like this was in that room and saw her kissing a man who was very much not her fiancé. She can’t go home. Dr. Crane and Mr. Crane will be there in no time, and that means Dr. Crane, the Dr. Crane she kissed, might show up there as well. And the last thing she needs in the whole Crane family weighing in on What Happened and What This Means. Even worse, Donny will probably go there to find her. He’s a good man. He’ll want to talk to her about this.
She’s not ready for any of that.
The conclusion she comes to is horrible in its truth: she needs go back to the Montana because the only person she wants to talk to is Dr. Crane. It feels monstrous to admit but she can’t have a conversation with Donny until she’s sure what’s going on between her and Dr. Crane. Absolutely sure. And the realization that she has a first choice gives her a sense of purpose. If nothing else, she knows where she stands.
The parking attendant only charges her the minimum payment (she must look a real mess) and says they hope her day gets better. She hopes that too as she pulls out into the street and drives the six blocks back to the Montana.
There is a flicker of doubt she can’t suppress as she pulls her keys out of the ignition and she’s at the part of this journey where she will have to get out of the car and actually go to Dr. Crane’s apartment again. It is the right choice, the only choice, but it is still hard. Assuming he’s still there (her heart clenches at the possibility that he is not) they’re going to have a long overdue conversation. A conversation she is dreading and needing in equal measures.
“He’s not here,” the doorman at the Montana says as soon as he sees her approaching.
“Oh.” Her heart sinks. So that’s it. Either he chased after Mel or he doesn’t want to see her. Or both. Either way, end of story. At least she knows—
“He gave me very specific instructions to let you in if you came here. Go right up. He left his key for you,” the doorman says, holding it out to her.
She takes the keys in a state of shock and does nothing but stare at them in her hand for a long moment. These are not a spare set of keys. Dr. Crane left her his keys. His own personal set of keys. Everything but his car key it looks like. And his key to his brothers place she realizes with a jolt. Is that where he went?
“Did he say when he would be back?” she asks, looking up from the keys at last.
The doorman shakes his head. “He barely broke his stride to give me his keys and to tell me to give them to you if you showed up.”
She is heartened by the gesture, by the immediacy of his decision to make sure that if she came back she had the means to stay. He wants to see her. He wants to see her tonight.
“Thank you,” Daphne says to the doorman before walking towards the elevator.
The elevator door opens and she walks the path she took a little over an hour ago. It’s not until she’s at the door that it occurs to her that someone might be inside. She knocks twice and waits before using the key to let herself in. There’s no one there but she calls out into the empty apartment anyway, even walks up the stairs and peers around the corner of the hall before returning to the feinting couch.
She sits down but stands shortly after and paces for a while, her mind abuzz with everything that had gone wrong and everything that could go more wrong but she keeps circling back to the fact that Dr. Crane wanted to talk to her enough that he left his keys behind for her.
She sits down, his keys still held tightly in her right hand.
After a period of time that is an unfathomable eternity and not nearly enough time to prepare, Niles bursts through the front door panting as if he just ran a mile.
“Daphne!” he exclaims between gasps for air. “The doorman said. You were here. Elevator too slow. Ran up the stairs.”
“Dr. Crane…”
“Daphne…I…” he stammers, still reeling from his sprint up the stairs. “I broke up with Mel.”
“Oh Dr. Crane I’m sor—”
He shakes his head as his breathing pattern returns closer to normal. “Don’t be. I just wanted to make sure that when I found you and told you it’s not too late for us—”, he falters, whether to steady his breath or his nerves she can not tell.
“Dr. Crane, I don’t know what to say,” she admits as he sits down on the feinting couch beside her. She has no idea where to start this conversation. Things will never be the same between them once it really starts. Things will never be the same between them as it is. There’s nowhere to go but forward now.
“I do,” he says, and she can actually see him summon his courage before continuing. “Daphne, I love you.”
She’s known for months but hearing him say the words still leaves her breathless. He loves her. And he’s still telling her, about her eyes and her smile and the way he’s never been able to get her out of his head or his heart and he’s tried, oh how he’s tried but he loves her he loves her he loves her.
“I should have told you ages ago,” he concludes.
“Why didn’t you?” She can’t pin down the tone in her voice any more than she can sift through the collision of emotions that storms through her as she asks the question she needs an answer to.
It takes her a few moments to accurately identify part of what she’s feeling as anger. If he’d just told her none of this would have happened. She wouldn’t have found out because his brother took too many pills. She wouldn’t have spent the last five months in hell while trying to pretend that she didn’t know. She wouldn’t have come here under the wrong impression and kissed him in front of every person she knows in Seattle. If he’d just been honest with her... If he’d just told her...
But he didn’t. Not once in all the years he’d known her. There must be a reason. Did he not want her to know? Did he not think she was worthy of him? Did he—
“You said you’d never get involved with a man who was in the middle of a divorce,” he says with a pained expression. “And the moment I was finally free from Maris you were with—”
She cuts him off. She’s not ready to hear her fiancé’s name spoken aloud. Not by him. Not tonight.
“I should have told you anyway,” he says. “Daphne I had a million chances to tell you and I always lost my nerve.”
“I… I was so shocked when I found out,” she says tentatively. Talking about how she felt when she found out is a lot more manageable than talking about her feeling towards him now.
“How did you find out?” he asks.
“Your brother.”
“Frasier told you?!”
“He doesn’t know he did. He’d hurt his back and had taken a few too many of those pills…”
He wilts a little under the weight of that revelation. “You’ve known for that long?”’
She nods.
He sits with that information for a moment, and she recognizes the symptoms of someone reliving a significant period of time in rapid succession before he finally says, “You could have told me.”
A humourless laugh from her. “There’s a fun conversation to start. ‘Good morning Dr. Crane. Lovely weather today. Oh by the way I just found out you’ve been secretly in love with me for six years. Did you want a scone?’”
“Daphne—” Her sarcasm has put him on edge and maybe he deserves that, at least a little, but she cuts him off to give the real answer:
“You never told me! And I’m engaged and you were with Mel! Maybe you didn’t feel that way about me anymore. And even if you did still feel that way…” she trails off and he fills her silence with “I did. I do. Oh Daphne I do.” before she continues, “If I said anything, you’d want to talk about it. And I had no idea how I felt about you.”
Seven long seconds of silence, the past tense of her last sentence hanging in the air between them before he asks the inevitable question, “How do you feel about me?”
“I wore my favourite dress tonight,” she says when she is able to summon the words. It feels like a declaration as weighty as the one he made. “To make pudding.”
“With me.”
“With you,” she confirms.
It’s not ‘I love you too’ but he seems to understand the subtext because he smiles slightly before he says, “And then you kissed me.”
“I did.”
She’s not quite meeting his eye, looking at his hands and then her hands and then the ceiling and then his shoulder. Anywhere but his face. The level of vulnerability between them is without precedent and it’s so bloody difficult to find the words.
She knows her emotional cards were on the table from the moment she kissed him. Since she put on her favourite dress. Since she accepted his invitation to come over on Saturday night to make pudding. Hell, probably long before that, but neither of them were letting themselves see it. She certainly wasn’t. How long had she been waiting for him to tell her? When did that shift occur? How did she not notice it when it happened?
“I want to apologize for earlier tonight,” he says. “I should never have put you in the position to think we were alone together when we weren’t. If I’d known you… If I knew…”
“What?” she asks. “Why would you have done?” They’re close now. Very close to the part of this conversation she has no idea how it will go. Uncharted territory. Here be dragons and all that.
“I would have refused to help orchestrate your bridal shower,” he says. “And then I would have invited you over to make Sticky Toffee Pudding.” There’s a declaration in his voice, as honest as when he told her he was in love with her.
“We still can,” she half-jokes to dispel some of the overwhelming magnitude of this conversation. “I brought the recipe.”
“Where are my manners?” he asks, his tone light. “The kitchen calls.”
“You’re serious?” she asks, it seems a ridiculous thing to do given the circumstances. Even more ridiculous than when he invited her over to make it in the first place, but she hadn’t minded the notion then…
“Only if you want to,” he answers. “You did bring the recipe. And come all the way over here. Twice.” He smiles a little at that.
“Alright,” she returns his smile. “I did come over here to teach you how to make sticky toffee pudding after all.”
The conversation isn’t over, but neither is their evening, and it feels perfectly natural to lead him into the kitchen and set about a task together that is only tangentially related to secrets and confessions and feelings and momentous decisions. They lean over the counter shoulder to shoulder to read the recipe she copied by hand onto an index card when she’d accepted his invitation. Her ribcage feels too small to contain the truth that amplifies within her as she looks at the careful lettering. She might as well have written ‘I Love You Niles Crane’ and drawn hearts around it for how obvious it is now in the light of his kitchen.
He seems to see what she sees in her penmanship because he reacts to her recipe like she’s already told him the real answer to the question he asked her earlier. The ‘how do you feel about me’ question. He keeps looking at her and smiling and it’s how he’s always looked at her, that same warm smile, the light in his eyes, but now she knows exactly what it means.
They work together to gather ingredients, bumping into each other and giggling all the while. There’s an energy between them that is so electric it’s impossible not to enjoy it. The giddy energy of being here in his kitchen doing something silly together is such a welcome relief from the torment of the denial and the decisions that led her here. It seems impossible that an hour ago she was sobbing in her car trying to figure out what to do and where to go next.
He passes her the measuring cup and she adds sugar to the bowl as he mixes and it’s the most natural thing in the world. And they’re still talking all the while they’re working, about the recipe and the process and about any number of things that aren’t Donny or Mel or what’s about to happen or the crossroads they have found themselves at. She mentions that time they found themselves chopping in rhythm in this very kitchen and he sighs with a soft smile and hums the first few bars of Heart and Soul and she shakes her head with a little laugh because he was so in love with her. Is so in love with her. He’s in love with her and she knows it and she—
He’s struggling to get the rest of the batter out of the mixing bowl with the fork in his hand and he says, “Please pass the spatula.”
And she says, “If you ask me to call off the wedding I will.”
He waits only the amount of time it takes to look up and lock eyes with her (his eyes are so beautiful) before he says, “Call off the wedding.”
“Okay,” she says and that’s it. This is the reason she came here tonight. This right here. And it feels crazy and impulsive and it feels right. It feels like them. She’s smiling without hesitation for what feels like the first time in weeks and she can’t take her eyes off him and he’s still gazing at her looking happier than she’s ever seen him and she knows she looks just as delighted. He’s giddy with relief and overcome with joy and adrenaline and she swears she sees his knees weaken when she adds, “…Niles.”
This time when she kisses him no one jumps out and yells surprise.