Kendra giggles as she picks up the small bowl with the mixture, scraping it into the mixing bowl with the dry ingredients. The corner of my lips turns up in a smirk as I watch her and Rita work together.
Rita scolds Kendra for being immature, but adoration fills her eyes as she watches her. The two of them move withthe coordination of a well-oiled machine, as if they know the movements the other will make before either of them makes the decision. “How long have you been together?” I ask them.
“Fifteen years,” they answer at the same time.
Krystal and I look at each other, the inside joke sparking a reminder of the activities that occurred after its inception. Her face flushes.
“If you had a piece of advice for any new couple, what would it be?” I follow.
“Now we’re going to add our egg mixture and mix until we have a dough,”Mary announces. I pick up the wooden spoon and begin folding all the ingredients together.
“I would say,” Rita responds, her eyes not leaving her wife. “If you truly love them and believe they are the best person for you, the benefit of the doubt is the most valuable thing you can give to them.”
A gentle ray of sunlight sneaks through the frosted screen of the porch, casting a prism of light over Kendra’s pixie cut. It streaks across her face when she looks up at Rita. I drop the spoon, reach for my camera, and bring it up to my eye. With my 80mm still attached, my frame is zoomed in on the two of them, trapped in the bubble of their bliss and oblivious to my actions.
As Kendra leans forward for a kiss, the ray of light stretches over the junction of their faces — the tiny rainbow landing over their lips. I click my shutter, immediately pulling the camera away to check my work, and praying the focus is right. “Let me see,” Krystal mutters as she leans in.
She’d taken over the mixing, pushed her long sleeves up to her elbows. As she looks from the image on the screen to me and back, I feel a small victory in my chest. “You’re so good,” she whispers. The breathy tone of her voice combined with thepraise in her words, triggers a flame of desire at the base of my spine.
I’d do anything to hear her tell me how proud she is of me, to have me. I smile down at her, bringing the camera up to my eye again, this time, training my lens on her.
She laughs. “Stop!”
But I stand there, my smile growing wider as she gets shyer under the attention of my lens. Right when I press the trigger button, she puts a hand in front of her face. Being this close-up, her palm partially obscures the image, with the rest revealing her glowing eyes and smile. Another perfectly candid moment I could not have seen coming, captured — memorialized for us to return to in the future.
She rolls the dough out on the floured surface at Mary’s request, spreading the cinnamon filling all over. My breath is stuck in my throat as I try to reach my equilibrium again. There’s a possibility that all we ever are is this. She said she doesn’t want it to end, but who knows?
We could go our separate ways and get wrapped back up in our lives as we knew them before, outside of the incubator. Will we be the same when the circumstances change? When shit hits the fan and I don’t say the perfect thing, or do exactly what she needs me to do, will she remember this moment? When we’re the most perfect thing to exist? Will she walk away?
Her long fingers are sure as she cuts the roll of dough into five equal pieces. I watch her move, suffocated by the fear and the hope for what we could be. I’ve learned the hard way that I can never have one without the other. Hope cannot exist in the absence of fear.
She blinks up at me, smiles. “You gonna help me out or what?” She presses a bottle of Dragon Stout along with a bottleopener to my chest. I have no idea where we’re at in the process, but I take the chilled drink from her and pop the cap off before handing it back — unable to suppress the smile that dares to mirror hers.
I expect her to pour some of the malt liquor into the mixture, but she presses the mouth of the bottle to her lips and sips. My mouth waters when a tiny bit spills down the side of her mouth. The desire unfurling at the base of my spine spreads.
“Want some?” She offers.
The cold beverage is rich with notes of roasted sugar and a slightly sweet coffee aftertaste. It’s not something I would drink casually…but good, flavorful — made better with the lingering taste of her. I start to tip a bit into the bowl when Krystal sticks her hand out, gawking at me.
“We’re not supposed to put it in there!” She exclaims.
The whole room laughs. “What are you thinking?!” She yells, nodding thankfully to the employee who runs over with a wet towel.
I step closer, letting her back brush my front. The movement does nothing to quench my arousal, but I need her to be the only one who hears me when I put my lips against her hair and say, “If I admit what I was thinking, they’d probably kick us out.”
She chuckles, her temperature rising as she uses a hand mixer to mix her concoction. “Us? Why would I be in it?”
“You might not be, but I’m dragging you out of here with me either way.”
Her flirty giggles trip the wires of my heart. When she tilts her head back, pursing her lips for a kiss, delight shocks my body.
“Usually,” Mary says, her sharp voice cutting through all the chatter, “you would let your cookies bake and cool before icing them, but we — well, I won’t speak for y’all, but I certainly don’t have time for all that!”
Various employees filter out of the kitchen with trays of pre-baked cookies, naked and ready for our cream cheese frosting. Krystal picks one off the tray, dipping her offset spatula into the bowl and spreading it artfully over the cookie. Without thinking twice about it, I bend over her shoulder and take a large bite.
“You’re so…” she sighs, laughing as she moves on to another cookie. If I keep standing behind her, the entire room will find out just how badly I want her, how I would clear this table and devour her if it were just the two of us. I reclaim my space next to her and pick up the other spatula.
She looks up at me as if she’s about to say something when her nose wrinkles in an adorable snort of a laugh. “What?” I ask, suppressing laughter of my own.
