Jenna stays after to help clean up

Jenna happily chattered about all the highlights of the game as she picked up snack bowls, glasses and other things from the table to bring into the kitchen. The rest of the group already went home, leaving her alone with Eric as he washed dishes and talked to her about the game. She felt energized for once in her life, and for the first time in a long time, found it harder to stop talking than to try and find a topic. For his part, the game master and host of the game night continued to encourage her, pleased that she'd enjoyed herself so much and that he'd inducted another gamer into the halls of tabletop geekery.

"And when the bugbear came from where the goblins ran, I was like haha no! Shield!" And then she tilted up the plate she was currently carrying, forgetting that it still had a half-eaten meal on it. She realized it when the food slopped first onto her shirt, then onto the floor, and it was immediately like a light switched off for her. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to-"

But he short-circuited it. "Hey." He said it very softly, and that more than anything - the kind, gentleness of his voice, the lack of anger - caught her off guard. He continued, "It's okay. These things happen! You were excited, and that's what paper towels are for." And he smiled at her. And she thought, in that moment, that things might actually be okay. Her body and mind didn't trust it at first, but they wanted to. They truly wanted to believe that it was okay.

He kept smiling at her, drying his hands on a little decorative hand towel over the oven before pulling down some paper towels from the nearby rack and handing them to her. Eric tore off more for himself and, while she was still processing what was going on and how things could go even more wrong, he simply knelt down and started cleaning. He didn't demand that she do it or yell about the dish or the mess; he just started cleaning while he spoke more and calmed her down.

And that helped more than she could ever tell him. She got down there with him and helped clean up the mess, and that familiar biting, acidic, panicky feeling in her gut and face faded as he comforted her and as they cleaned up. "See? No harm, no foul," he said with a casual, confident smile as he threw away the dirty paper towels, then took hers and do the same. "Thank you for helping clean up, by the way. The guys help in the beginning, but by the end of the night we're all tired and they head home. It's nice to have someone here afterward, especially when they had as much fun as you did. Sorry about the shirt, though."

The shirt? She looked down at herself when he said that, and finally realized that the food had splattered on her too - not just the floor. She flushed deeply.