“I’m sorry I hurt you again,” Cort whispers behind me.
I nod once, accepting the apology but still stung by his rejection. I don’t need a marriage proposal, but I’m also not looking for a rollercoaster ride with this man.
Cort swipes his hand up my back and squeezes at the nape of my neck. He clears his throat. “Can I help somehow?”
“I’ve got it. This just needs to cool a bit, the cakes as well, and then I can apply the glaze and frost them.” I turn off the stove and step over to the island with the hot pot.
Cort follows me and reaches for the open bottle of wine on the counter to refill my glass.
“Want a beer?”
“I’d love one.” His sly smile lights up his face. Like I’m offering him something more than a beverage. I’m giving him time.
After getting him a beer, I set the glaze in a glass jar to cool and clean up the mess I’ve already made. Cort helps himself to a dish towel hanging off a hook and dries all the bowls and utensils. We work mostly in silence, just taking up space with one another, which is different, of course, from sharing a kitchen with my brother. This sensation is foreign but nice.
“Think your brother will tell you that you can’t see me?” Cort eventually asks, his tone heavy.
“Think I still don’t listen to my big brother all the time,” I sass like the teenager I once was, frustrated when Stone tried to tell me what to do. “I respect my brother, but I don’t kowtow to him.”
Cort roughly chuckles. “I bet you’ve been a real pain in the ass over the years.”
I snort. “Bees sting, Cortland.”
“The queen especially.” He winks.
I laugh as I scrub down the sink and turn off the faucet. “Want to watch a movie?” Next on my night alone list was watching a rom-com.
Cake. Wine. And mindless romance. A perfect combination.
Cort shrugs, picks up both his beer and my wine glass and follows me into the living room. Within minutes, I queue up a movie and we watch the hero fumble around his attraction to the heroine. The acting is weak and when the sex scene begins, I pause the film.
“Why do men think they can say such a thing?”
“What thing?”
Cort and I are sitting next to each other, but we feel miles apart. I’m curled over the armrest with my knees bent and feetagainst his thigh. His hand holds my ankle, but we still feel disconnected.
Pulling up a deep masculine voice, I mock, “I’m so hard for you.”
Cort sputters. “What?”
“You never hear or read a woman say,I’m so wet for you.” I use a false soprano to mimic my own kind.
Cort’s been holding his beer bottle on his upper thigh, and he lifts the glass to his mouth, muttering, “Jesus,” before he takes a sip.
I lift the remote, aiming it toward the screen, when Cort cuffs my wrist. “What else?”
“What else what?”
“What are other things men get away with saying but women don’t?”
I shift on the couch, dipping my toes beneath his thigh, taking a second to think of a few other statements fictional men make.
“I can’t wait to fill you up,” I mock in a rugged voice then drop to my own. “Never hear a woman say aloudI can’t wait to be filled by you.”
Cort shifts slightly, draping his arm over the back of the couch as his upper body faces mine. “And why is that?”
“I don’t know,” I nearly shriek. “Like women should get to be just as vocal. Turning all those phrases around.”
