by Jackie Lau
When we were eating the stew, we were sitting across from each other, but now we’re closer, our knees touching, and his presence is making it hard for me to think. He smells good, like herbs and wine—like a kitchen, because he’s been slaving away in there, making a meal for me.
This man, who probably has much better things to do with his time, learned how to make a great beef stew for me.
Dessert, however, is my contribution to the meal, and I know it’s good.
I pick up a forkful of the chocolate hazelnut tart. Rather than putting it in my mouth, I hold it up to his lips. The last time we tried to feed each other, I managed to draw blood, but I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen again.
He takes the piece of chocolate hazelnut tart into his mouth, and I’m mesmerized by his lips. By his jaw. By every inch of his body, really.
I was not mesmerized by the way he tried to explain the napkins that I had bought for him. Not that there’s anything wrong with not knowing about rational and imaginary numbers. It isn’t something I have to think about in my daily life. But he went ahead and assumed I didn’t know and wouldn’t have bothered to look up the meaning of the gift I got him.
Of course, it wasn’t the first time a guy assumed he had to explain something I already understood, but I feel like Josh actually learns from his mistakes—which is rarer than it should be—and he didn’t defend himself for his assumption. He’s not one of these pretentious assholes who assumes everything that comes out of his mouth is spun from gold, even though he’s been quite successful in life.
So, I think we’re okay.
He swallows the chocolate hazelnut tart. “It’s delicious.”
“Why, thank you.”
He helps himself to another bite of chocolate hazelnut tart, along with some ice cream, before trying the maple hazelnut one.
“This one’s good, too.”
“Which do you like better?”
“Why are you asking me to make impossible decisions?”
“Just curious.”
“If I had to pick, I’d go with the maple one.”
He holds a forkful of maple hazelnut tart up to my mouth, and I eat my creation.
It’s better when he’s feeding it to me than when I was eating it alone at Happy As Pie. I stayed at work late yesterday, perfecting these tarts for him, and it was worth it.
And then I blurt out something that I hadn’t meant to reveal. “We’ve never catered before. I’ve done catering jobs when I worked at other places, but never at Happy As Pie. I’ve never heated up over a hundred savory pies and provided thirty or so sweet pies, plus tarts and savory tartlets—”
“Sarah...”
“Aren’t you worried I’ll screw up?”
“I have every confidence in you,” he says. “I think what you do is amazing. I can’t imagine making the pie crust and the filling, and then baking it—I can’t even imagine making one savory pie, and you do it all so easily.”
“It’s a lot of work. I work all the time.”
“But you do it. You’re great at what you do.” He feeds me a piece of chocolate hazelnut tart. “You impress me.”
His words and the way he’s looking at me so intently...it sends tingles down my body.
It’s different from how I’m used to people talking about my business. My mom never approved, and we don’t talk about it much, nor do I talk about it with my dad. My sister and brothers occasionally ask questions, but nobody seems impressed with what I’ve built. And I don’t have any close friends.
None of those people understand everything I put into Happy As Pie, but Josh does, and he believes in me.
I feel seen.
Still, a part of me wants to duck my head bashfully at the compliment, but I don’t.
“Thank you,” I say, looking him in the eye. “I want to get into catering. I was thinking we’d be good for company lunches. Eventually I want to open a second location with a larger kitchen and sell frozen savory pies to upscale grocery stores. But that’s a little ways down the line. We haven’t even been open a year yet.”
“Sounds good. I’m sure you’ll do a great job.”
I smile at him. On one hand, it’s a little strange talking about my ambitions and my successes with a literal CEO. But it’s Josh, and I feel like I can talk to him.
As we feed each other hazelnut tarts, my entire body practically throbs with awareness. It’s almost too much to be sitting here, so close together.
I don’t know if I want to go to bed with him, though.
I mean, on one hand, I really, really do, but the thought scares me. It’s been a while for me, and with Josh, I worry it’ll be too much and I won’t survive the intimacy. Like, it’ll completely change who I am as a person.
Also, I hear my mother’s voice in my head. She’s not one of those no-sex-before-marriage types; she knows that’s not realistic. But even as she educated us, it was still made clear to my sister and me that we should abstain unless we were in a serious relationship. Sex was not something to be taken lightly or casually.
According to my mother’s rules, I should still be a virgin, since I’ve never had a serious relationship.
But I’ve never been good at doing what my mother wanted me to do. I moved to Toronto, after all.
Why do I hear her voice in my head now? Why?
There’s one bite of maple hazelnut tart left. Josh lifts it up with his fingers, dips it in some melted ice cream, and holds it to my lips. I eat the dessert from his fingers and suck the melted ice cream off them afterward.
He hisses out a breath.
Even that is almost too much for me.
What could Josh and I have together? I don’t want to let my imagination run wild after one home-cooked meal at his house. Although he’s been so sweet to me and said things I’ve been longing to hear, there’s only been one night that could possibly be called a date. Plus, a fumbling kiss in the washroom earlier this week.
“Do you want both the maple hazelnut tarts and the chocolate hazelnut tarts at the party?” I ask, pushing those thoughts aside.
“Yes.” He seems to look past me. “I think my dad would like the chocolate hazelnut tarts better...but I’m not sure.”
“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned what your father would like. You said your parents are coming to the party?”
“I hope so. They live in Ottawa, where I grew up.”
“That’s a long way to come for a Pi Day party.”
“But it’s not just any Pi Day party. It’s the ultimate Pi Day party, and my dad loves Pi Day. He’s a retired math teacher.” Josh’s expression sobers, and he doesn’t quite meet my eyes. “He’s never been to Toronto to visit me, and I’m hoping this will finally convince him to come. He hasn’t spoken to me in about seventeen years.”
My eyes widen. “Seventeen years?”
“Yeah.” He sighs. “In the first half of high school, I was a bit of a rebel. Skipping class, coming home way past my curfew, getting drunk at parties, smoking pot.”
“Sounds like many teenagers.”
“Perhaps, but it was unacceptable in my family. I also had a girlfriend. My parents weren’t quite the no-dating-until-you-finish-med-school sort, but they weren’t pleased with that, either.”
I frown. “So your dad doesn’t talk to you because you had a girlfriend and skipped class when you were in high school?”
He shakes his head. “When I was sixteen, near the end of grade ten, my father was already yelling at me every day, and then...something happened, which he’s never forgiven me for. He stopped talking to me, even though we lived in the same house. I cleaned up my act and started doing really well in school, but it wasn’t enough.”
I don’t know what Josh could have possibly done to warrant that. I want to ask, but if he’d wanted to tell me, he would have. He doesn’t feel comfortable sharing everything with me now, and that’s okay. I’m glad he trusts me enough to tell me as much as he has.
“Whate
ver you did, seventeen years seems a bit extreme.”
“He was particularly pissed because my mom had cancer and was having chemo, and he hated that I was doing anything to worry her.”
“Your mom...” It sounds like she’s alive, but...
“She’s fine now.” He smiles faintly, sadly.
“Does she talk to you?”
“Oh, yes. She was disappointed in me at the time, but we get along now and I talk to her once a week. Perhaps I should just stop caring about my dad, but I still want him to speak to me again. I miss having a father.”
There’s anguish in his voice, and my heart aches for him.
“If anything could get him to come to Toronto and acknowledge my existence,” Josh says, “this would be it. If it doesn’t work, maybe I’ll try to finally let go. I don’t know if I can, though. He’s my father, after all.”
“Are your parents still married? And do you have siblings?”
“Yes, they are, and I have two sisters.”
“Do they still talk to your dad?”
He nods.
“Do they try to convince him to change his mind about you?”
“They did at one point, but now they’ve just accepted it. I know it’s weird, I know you probably wonder why I talk to any of my family at all, but this is what I’m used to.”
Josh is a huge success now, and he’s a good guy. I can’t imagine any father not being proud of him, regardless of what happened in the past.
And then I wonder...
“Hazelnut Tech,” I say. “Is this the reason you were so determined to succeed? Because you wanted your father’s approval?”
“It was partly that.” He laughs wryly. “But there are lots of things my father would have more respect for than a company that develops apps. He hates smartphones and still has an old pay-as-you-go cellphone. He doesn’t understand texting at all. But, to my surprise, he recently got a Facebook account, which he uses to post lame math jokes. Like the one on the napkins you bought me.” He pauses. “What kind of snake is 3.14 meters long?”
“Um...” And then I get it. “A Pi-thon. God, that’s bad.”
“Those jokes are what gave me the idea for the Pi Day party.”
“You said he likes Nutella and hazelnuts. You want those pies and tarts for him, but what about the name of your company? Is he the reason you named it Hazelnut Tech?”
Josh nods. “I know it’s pathetic, wanting so badly for him to properly acknowledge me.”
“It’s understandable,” I say. “It’s not at all the same, but my mother didn’t approve of my plan to move to Toronto and open my own bakery. She told me I’d fail, and I’ll never forget that.” I tense at the memory. “I keep hearing her words in my head, even though it’s been more than ten years since she said them to me.”
“Maybe she feels differently now.”
“But I know she still wants me to move back to Ingleford, maybe be an accountant.”
“Why an accountant?”
“Because I’m good at math, and I took an accounting class in high school and aced it. I didn’t particularly like it, though. Math was one of those things I didn’t mind because it was easy, but I had no interest in it.”
“Once again, I’m sorry—”
“It’s fine.” I wave away his apology. “Really, it is.”
“I always liked math,” Josh says, “but I often pretended I hated it. I didn’t want to just be that Asian kid who was good at math, plus, as I said, I was a rebel, and my dad was a math teacher. Now I have this company that’s probably succeeded in part because I worked so hard to make him proud, but at the same time, it’s a company that develops mobile apps, something he doesn’t approve of, to piss him off. Not that I chose it just to piss him off. I have a degree in computer science, and I saw an area where there was a need. The timing was good.”
“Did you start it all by yourself?”
“No, Amrita and I founded it. She’s the CTO now—chief technology officer. That’s what she wanted to be.”
His co-founder is a woman. Hmm. I can’t help but wonder...
Josh quirks up the corner of his mouth. “You’re jealous.”
“No!”
“You are.” He grins. “You’re jealous.”
Since he’s called me on it, I ask the question that’s on my mind. “Has anything ever happened between the two of you?”
“No. She’s a lesbian, and besides, she’s engaged now.”
That’s a pretty solid no.
He stands up, and I can’t help but giggle when he scoops me up in his arms and carries me to the couch in the next room. He sits down with me in his lap and winds his arms around me, looking like there’s absolutely nowhere else on earth he’d rather be.
I can’t remember anyone ever looking at me like this before.
He presses his lips to the base of my neck and slowly moves upward. My nipples tighten, and I release a sigh of appreciation. When he reaches my jaw, he kisses his way along it and then, finally, he moves to my mouth.
When our lips meet, it’s an explosion of sensation, and my body is even more keyed up than it was before. Every nerve ending is painfully sensitive, and when he cups my breast—covered in my sweater—I gasp.
“Okay?” he asks, pulling his hand back.
“Yes.”
But he still isn’t touching me.
“Josh, put your damn hand back on my breast!”
He chuckles, and I can feel it between my thighs. I wrap my legs around him as he returns his attention to my breasts, toying with my nipples through my sweater.
I’m not satisfied, though. I need him to touch my skin. Need. It’s suddenly the most necessary thing in the world. I’m about to put my hands on the bottom of my sweater to pull it off, but he beats me to it.
“May I?” he asks.
I nod eagerly.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be so eager. I could have put my finger to my lips and acted all seductive.
Fuck it. I don’t care. My sweater is now on the floor, and Josh is unclasping my bra.
Or trying to unclasp it.
“I swear I know what I’m doing,” he says. “I just...you make me so...” He shakes his head helplessly before finally managing to unhook my bra and throw it on the ground.
Once that’s out of the way, he begins feasting on my breasts. He pulls one nipple into his mouth and sucks as he rolls the other one between his fingers. I arch toward him, wanting more, more, more.
I saw his bare chest before, but I’ve never felt it against my own. I pull his shirt over his head, then press myself against him, groaning at the contact of his hard muscles against my breasts. How does it feel so amazing to simply be skin against skin with him?
“Sarah,” he murmurs into my hair. “I have to tell you something. The reason you couldn’t roll up the sleeve of my shirt the other day? It’s because I was flexing my arm.”
I laugh. “You sneak! You wanted to have to take off your shirt.”
“Guilty as charged.”
My lips are still curved in a slight smile as we kiss slowly, savoring each other.
He presses his thumb to the hickey he gave me. It’s mostly faded, but still visible. I spent five minutes studying it in the mirror the other night, unusually pleased that he’d marked me in some way.
The things he does to me.
I ache between my legs, and when I press myself against him, I feel the hardness of his cock, which shouldn’t shock me, but it does.
I’m not ready to go to bed with him.
It would be different if I could just think of Josh as a one-night stand, but I can’t. Being with him seems more momentous than being with another guy. It makes me feel vulnerable.
I stand up, then notice the open curtains.
Shit.
“I flashed the neighborhood,” I whisper, scandalized, as I collapse back on the couch.
“I’m sure the neighborhood enjoyed it.”
I swat his arm, then realize I
hit the exact place where I stabbed him with a fork the other day. The bandage has been removed, and the fork-tine marks are faint. It appears to have more or less healed, thank God, and Josh doesn’t seem bothered.
“Want to go upstairs?” He looks at me with his dark, seductive eyes. I don’t know what makes his eyes seductive, but damn.
I shake my head. “I’m not ready for...” I gesture helplessly.
He grins. “You’re not ready for me to fuck you?”
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
That word. The way he said it so pleasantly, but also with that current of desire.
“No,” I say. “I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, but—”
He puts a finger to my lips, and his expression sobers. “You don’t owe me anything. I’ve made that clear, haven’t I? It’s totally cool.”
A memory flashes to mind, of a time back in college when I was at a party—a rarity for me—and making out with a guy on a couch, surrounded by people getting drunk on cheap beer. He suggested we take it back to his place. Having no interest in losing my virginity to a stranger while half-drunk, I turned him down, and he accused me of leading him on.
That’s why I said sorry to Josh.
He’s right, though. I don’t owe him anything just because he cooked for me, just because we’re sitting here shirtless on his couch.
I do want to go to bed with him. I want to feel his talented mouth move downward from my breasts, between my legs. I want to feel him part my folds and slide inside me.
I want him desperately, in fact.
But I’m grappling with these unfamiliar feelings, with being in a situation that I can’t control as much as I’d usually like.
I just need a little more time.
“Can I take you out again?” he murmurs, kissing the underside of my jaw.
“You didn’t take me out today.”
“True, true. Next time, I want to take you out. Somewhere nice. That okay?”
I nod. “Perhaps Sunday?”
And then he does something no man has ever done for me before.