“What’s this?”
“Teach me how to cook. I understand that’s something girlfriends do for their boyfriends.”
She lifts an eyebrow. “Is that what we are?”
My stomach drops. I keep my mouth shut. Did I misunderstand or?—
She yanks me in by the collar and kisses me hard enough to reset the world. Then she grins. “Just playing. I’ll teach my boyfriend how to cook. Come on.”
We put the bag on the counter. She washes tomatoes and hands me a knife. “You chop. Small. Fingers tucked.”
I chop, and she laughs and adjusts my grip. We crush garlic. We salt the water and set a pot to boil. We tear basil. She shows me how to hold a pan so the oil spreads. I try to toss the tomatoes like I’ve seen on TV and almost flip them onto the stove. She catches the handle and steadies me.
“Careful, crazy.”
“Crazy about you.”
“Oh, so you’re cheesy tonight?”
I laugh and kiss her cheek, and then we get back to it.
My hand finds her hip when she reaches for the salt. Her mouth finds my jaw when she steps back. We bump into the drawer and laugh. It’s silly. It feels like real life, or what I think real life should feel like.
I stir and look at her face, and the words come out because they’re here now and I don’t want to pretend I don’t hear them. “I love you.”
It knocks the air out of both of us. She grips the counter and looks at me like she didn’t think it would be tonight. I didn’t either. My throat is tight. I don’t take it back.
She steps into me and puts both hands on my cheeks and kisses me slow, then again, not slow. “I love you too,” she says back, and I’m done.
We forget the timer. We forget the sauce. We remember the counter when the edge hits my hip. We kiss hard. We laugh into each other’s mouths because I fumble the ladle and it clatters, and we don’t care. She hops onto the counter and pulls me by the shirt. I fit between her knees like I’ve been here my whole life. We press together with the stove hissing behind us and the pan trying to get our attention.
“Wait,” she says, grinning. “Turn it off.”
I try to kill the flame with one hand without looking away from her. She hooks her fingers in my collar and pulls me back. Her mouth opens under mine, and I let the part of me that always wants speed learn a different tempo.
“Tell me,” she says, breath short.
“You’re it,” I say. “You’re the one.”
Her laugh is messy and perfect. “Say more.”
“I want this. A lot. All the time. Here. Now.”
“Good,” she says, and kisses me like we’re making the same promise.
Clothes don’t survive long. Once I have her naked, it’s all I can do not to rush. She bites my lip because she knows how to turn my brain off. When I thrust inside of her, the world stops. I put my mouth on her shoulder and tell it to go bother someone else.
We move with the counter edge against my hip and her breath at my ear. I say her name, and I keep my hands where she wants them and let her set the pace. She wraps her legs around me, and we find a rhythm that makes us both forget everything else.
She clings to me the way I always thought a girl should. Arms, legs, mouth, all in contact. Not porn star perfection. Someone who wants me as much as I want them. Crazed. Animal. Love.
Her cries drown out the other sounds in the kitchen, sharp, soft, loud, quiet. There is nothing else but this woman. This moment.
When it hits, it’s messy in the way that makes you bite your own fist. She laughs a half laugh and hides in my neck, and I hold on because I don’t know what else to do with all the swelling in my chest.
We breathe. We come back to earth.
Something smells wrong.
