Her eyes widen slightly as though she’s going along with my story. “Oh, that sucks. I’ve heard Dad complaining about supply issues.” She wanders into the kitchen as she talks, the sweater she’s wearing tugging up a little with each move.
“Yeah, the storms have clogged up our supply chain. Looks like we’ve another one blowing in tonight. They were already closing mountain roads on the west end.”
“Oh, shoot. I didn’t realize it was that bad.” She presses the bright red button on the coffee maker after pouring in some freshly ground beans. I recognize the bag from the general store. It’s a brand they ship in from South America that everyone considers a luxury around here. “You should get going then. You don’t want to get stuck here.”
That’s where she’s wrong. As sick as it is, I’d love to be stuck here with her. Some nights, when I’m feeling particularly twisted, this scenario is all I think about.
She and I alone. No one around to notice how long my gaze lingers or how I go out of my way to be next to her.
“Ah, I’m not worried about it,” I finally say, half sitting on the stool by the kitchen counter. “The old truck can take it. Besides, if it’s alright with you, I could really use this break. I can’t remember the last time I just sat and relaxed. When I go home, all I see are the hundred projects that still need to get done.”
“Yeah?” She clears her throat and tips up onto her toes to reach for the cookies on the top shelf, unintentionally showing off the roundest part of her ass. It’s a view that sends an animalistic urge straight to my cock. “What are you working on now? I thought you had that place finished?”
“Decided to add another room on. Got everything framed in before winter, and the insulation and drywall are in. Now it just needs everything else.” I chuckle and watch her carefully, trying not to come in my fucking jeans as she spins back toward me with the jar of chocolate cookies. I expected them to be store bought but they look homemade. “Still baking, huh?”
“Here and there. I set these aside for Mrs. Robinson, but she’s got a cold, and I figure she won’t be feeling much like chocolate, so I made some soup and oatmeal raisin cookies. I was going to bring them over there tomorrow on my way into work,” she peeks out the side window through the flowy white curtain, “assuming we don’t have a snow day.”
“How’s all that going? Fourth graders, right?” I pretend not to know, though I know every detail through her father, my best friend, the guy I shouldn’t betray by thinking filthy thoughts of his daughter.
“Fourth grade.” She pulls down a mug and readies it by the coffee maker as it drips the last bit of coffee into the pot. “The kids are great. It’s the parents that annoy me,” she shrugs and pulls the carafe from the hot plate, “but it’s all part of it, and I wouldn’t have my life any other way. I have this one student, her name is Eliza, and she loves hippopotamuses. Every day she tells me another fact.” Kit tilts her head to the side and smiles as she hands me the mug. “Did you know that hippos secrete this substance on their skin that kills bacteria and acts like sunscreen?”
“No,” I grin and take a sip of coffee, “I did not. Sounds like Eliza has a lot of good info.”
“Yeah, sometimes I think the kids teach me just as much as I teach them, and they’re still young enough that I don’t have to deal with all the stupid trends kids do nowadays. I heard Ms. Emily, the sixth-grade teacher, talking about this super repetitive thing the kids say that means nothing.” She shrugs. “I don’t remember what it was, but it’s annoying the hell out of her.”
“How repetitive?”
“She said it’s all the time. Think twenty times an hour.”
“And it means nothing?” I take a cookie out of the jar.
“It isintentionalnonsense,” she laughs. “It’s mental warfare.”
“I don’t remember any nonsensical words when I was a kid, though I do remember us saying things to intentionally mess with adults, like telling a teacher to not flip her wig anytime she raised her voice.”
Kit’s brows narrow. “Did she wear a wig?”
“No.” I grin and take a sip of coffee, remembering that we come from different generations. “It’s an expression. It means… don’t get your panties in a bunch. You do know that one, right?”
She knocks my shoulder playfully and grabs out a cookie for herself. “How are you drinking caffeine this late in the day? That’d be a surefire ticket to an all-night cleaning session for me. Charlotte dropped by earlier, and we were on caffeine-free. Well, it better have been! I guess I’m not jittery, so… one can only assume.”
“Ha! See, there’s the flaw in your plan. You need to drink more of it. The more you drink, the less it affects you. I need at least four cups to get my ass moving on house projects after work most nights.”
“Why are you expanding the cabin? It’s just you, right?”
I bite into the cookie, groaning a little without thought as the crumbling soft texture hits my tongue. “Yeah, just me.”
“Okay, so why the big expansion then?”
I rub the side of my face, scratching my beard a little as I try to think of how to formulate the words without sounding like a sad sack. “I, ugh, I don’t know. The house was a relic when I inherited it from my grandparents. They lived out there for… sixty years. I wanted to modernize it a little in case I ever sold it, and that means adding bedrooms. People like having space.”
She narrows her brows as the nutty caramel coffee lingers between us. “Like… you’d sell it? Why would you sell that place? I remember so many summers out there under the stars. It’s magic. People would kill for a property like that. I mean,” she grins, “it’s probably missing a gourmet baker’s kitchen and a stone fireplace with a live edge mantle, but I’m sure the renovations are gorgeous.”
I smile and look down at my hands before glancing up again. “You’ve always said you wanted those things in a house. I bet you’ll get them all someday.”
“I don’t know about that. It’s a pretty tall order. That said, baker’s kitchen or not, you have a responsibility to keep that place forever. Besides, where would you go? You don’t like itin the city, and you’d just be trading one cabin for another out here.”
I tilt my head to the side, studying over the woman I’ve inadvertently fallen for. The woman I shouldn’t have fallen for. The woman I need space from because I’ve fallen for. “I haven’t said anything to your dad yet, but I’m planning to make a move out to Wyoming come spring.”
