by L. P. Guleva
“That’s a tough question.” Could I pick just one? “Maybe manti. My family makes them for every holiday, so there’re a lot of good memories associated with them.”
Matt pulled out his phone, typed something in, and frowned. “We don’t have a steamer, and it’s supposed to be made from lamb. Good luck finding that with the shortages.”
“I can make them with ground beef instead. And I have everything I need for steaming.”
“Yeah?” He typed on his phone again. “Do we have pork bellies? Wait, do you eat pork?”
“I have a stash of uncured bacon.”
“What about flour? I thought no one sells it.”
I bumped him with my hip. “I have some left.”
We came to the pond. This property never quit. I had seen the ad before agreeing to this hair-brained move, and it said we could fish in this grimy, oversized puddle.
“I’m going to call this a false advertisement,” I said.
The frog croaked as if agreeing with me. What other kinds of creatures could live in this murky water?
“It’s exactly as advertised. TLC needed. And we can fish in the pond. I doubt we’ll catch anything other than frogs, and I didn’t realize that the pond needs more TLC than the house, but both are technically correct,” Matt said.
“Frog legs are all the rage.”
The frog hopped in the water. It must’ve been more scared of food shortages than I was.
Chapter 12
Matt
THIS STUPID RECIPE MADE no sense. Two cups of flour. That’s all it said. Nothing about the dough sticking to every surface it touched, especially my hands. How was I supposed to roll it into those circle thingies?
Professor Google had to have the answers I needed, but the disgusting, sticky mess clung to my fingers. I liked my phone too much to subject it to this. If I washed my hands, the amount of ingredients would change.
Oil. That stopped things from sticking.
I poured a bunch on the clump of dough, then kneaded it again. Good. It didn’t stick as much now. And it became shiny. Women liked shiny. What could possibly go wrong?
This was definitely not a disaster. Just a little artistic license that would probably destroy the dish.
“I thought you didn’t cook.” Zamira peeked through the open kitchen door.
Shit. “You’re supposed to be sleeping.”
“I heard you grumbling something about shiny food.” She looked at the ingredients I’d laid out on the table and the phone on the counter. “Oil doesn’t work well in manti.”
“Great. I just wasted all the flour, and I can’t even replace it.” Surprise, Honey. I ruined your favorite dish.
“You didn’t. This is perfect for samsa.” She washed her hands, then poured more oil on my concoction and turned it into layered dough.
“Got it. Step away from the food. I’m making you samsa now, and you better love it, or I’ll lose my perfect boyfriend card.”
She chuckled and sat down next to me while I washed my hands and googled this samsa thing.
What the hell was that? “You want me to cook you a rapper?”
Zamira looked at my phone. “That’s insane. He should’ve named himself a calzone. Can you check images?”
I did as she said and got a whole bunch of pictures of triangular pies with the caption of Uzbek Samsa.
“How did you know I’ll find the recipe this way?” I clicked on the second link.
“I actually wanted to know what that rapper looked like, but this works too.”
I read the recipe and added cumin to the meat. The rest looked similar enough. “I don’t think we have sesame seeds. Is that gonna be okay?”
“Yes.”
Zamira started rolling the dough. I moved to take the rolling pin from her, then remembered that I had touched my phone. I had never disinfected it.
“Seriously, step away from the food. I’ll make this.” I washed my hands and got to work.
Zamira turned on the oven and started preparing the cookie sheet. “Don’t look at me like that. I hate sitting around doing nothing.”
She helped make the triangular pies, then put them in the oven. Of course, she never checked the recipe before setting the timer.
I washed my hands for the hundredth time and plopped on the chair. “Do you know every dish by heart?”
“Only the things I cook all the time.” She stood between my legs and gave me a kiss. “Thank you for trying to make manti.”
“Trying and failing. Now we’re out of flour.”
“Now we have samsa. It’s delicious and easy to snack on while we finish cleaning.”
“Finish, huh? You’re an optimist.”
I pulled up her shirt and kissed her stomach. Sweatpants and a tee never looked this good. And I got to spend two nights with this hotness. This house had turned out to be a blessing disguised as a hoarder’s paradise.
“Do we need to clean out two bedrooms?” I had promised she could have her own, but damn.
“Yes.”
I buried my face in her shirt and gave out the most pitiful sound I could muster. “God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
Zamira chuckled and pulled away, but only to take the food out of the oven. It managed to look golden and crispy.
“We need to clean the whole house. There might be an army of dead raccoons hidden in all this mess. Do you want to live with dead raccoons?” Zamira put one samsa on her plate.
“Undead raccoons would be more fun, but we’re in the wrong apocalypse movie.” I tried grabbing one too, but damn, that was hot. How did Zamira not burn her fingers? Didn’t we have some cooking utensils?
“Yeah, I don’t think anyone expected toilet paper zombies or that we would end up locking ourselves in instead of escaping into the wilderness and forming survivor communes.”
The wooden spoon worked well enough to scoop up the samsa. “We’re supposed to get the internet hooked up today. Wanna watch zombie movies with me?”
She nodded. “When we’re done cleaning today.”
I bit into the samsa. “Oh, damn. I made something that tastes good.”
Zamira burst out laughing. “You’re that surprised by it? Cooking is easy.”
“Like hell it is. How do you make dough not stick to your hands without adding oil?”
“Add more flour.”
“We don’t have any.”
She shrugged and took another bite. The little moan she let out shot straight to my balls. “I guess you could throw oats in a blender or something like that. You’ll get oat flour. You only need a little to dust your hands and the table.”
“You’re a food genius.” I finished the last bite and grabbed two more samsas with a cup of coffee.
“I’m not. I just memorized what ingredients work well together and what it tastes like when cooked in different ways.”
“That’s art. With abstract, you need to know what colors work together and understand composition.”
She wiped her lips and hands. “You like abstract?”
“Hate it.” I grabbed her plate before she decided to wash it. “Takes a lot of effort not to show it. Every time I’m in an art show, I talk to other artists. Everyone shows me their work, and I have to say something about it, but I don’t wanna lie. So, I’m always going ‘that looks interesting’ and trying to change the subject.”
“What do you prefer?” She sat back and sipped her coffee, watching me with way too much interest.
“Realism and surrealism. It takes skills. I remember for my first show I had five fantasy paintings up. Didn’t sell anything. Half the people said my work was great but didn’t buy it. The other half looked for a while, made faces, and walked away.”
“You can’t please everyone.”
“Yeah, but I only pleased people who didn’t know shit about art. My lighting was wrong. I had it all coming from one direction, but light reflects from every surface.” I glided my finger over Zamira’s shoulder. “You have a lot
of white light up here.” Then I pointed at her elbow that hung less than an inch from the table. “And you have green light reflecting from the tablecloth here.”
She inspected her arm. “I never even thought about it.”
“Neither did I until I overheard someone saying I didn’t know how to do lighting. Never made that mistake again.”
“And abstract artists don’t care about those details?”
“They don’t have to.” I put the empty dishes in the sink. Do them now or later? If I left them, Zamira would get the bright idea to wash them. Now then. “What room do you wanna hit next?”
“We could do the living room.”
Good. At least one more night in the tent.
Chapter 13
Zamira
WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO do with all this junk?
“Can we donate it?” I put another doll-size pillow into the garbage bag.
“Sure.”
I picked up a framed black and white photo of a woman. Even if no one wanted the picture, they might want the frame.
Matt came up behind me and kissed my shoulder. “You’d look better from that angle. I might be biased, though.”
“Good to know you like my ass.” I looked over the piles that covered the floor and the furniture. “Are second-hand stores even open? They aren’t necessary for survival.”
“Crap. You’re right. Tossing it in the dumpster feels like a waste. There’re enough clothes to dress a small country.”
I picked up a WASP tee. “I don’t think anyone in the Vatican would wear it, and I can’t think of another country small enough.”
“Alright, it would be enough for a small country if this was all…” His eyebrows rose like he just saw the light, and it was glorious. “Masks. You made masks out of old shirts, right? Why not sell them?”
“From old clothes? I don’t know if anyone would want a used mask.” Unless I sold them really cheap. We did have shortages.
“They won’t be used. They are upcycled, and you can cut the production cost by not buying the fabric.”
Alright, he had a point. I just had a tiny little problem. “I hand sewed those masks. It takes way too long if I want to make money on it.”
Matt stepped away from me and pulled out his phone. “Damn, sewing machines are expensive. There’re a couple of cheap ones on Amazon, but I don’t know if they’ll be worth it.”
I looked at his screen. “I wouldn’t even know how to use these. I only worked with the old ones. You know, the kind that has the peddle and hides into a cabinet. My grandma got it from her mom.”
Matt looked at me, then at his phone, then back at me. “You’re a smart cookie. I believe in you.” And he hit the buy button.
My stomach dropped. Sure, I just got the stimulus check, and our rent was next to nothing, but this seemed risky. What if I failed to sell anything?
“What if they come up with the vaccine tomorrow and the lockdown ends? No one will need masks anymore. That was a lot of money to drop on something I might not use.”
“They’ll need time to test on animals, then on humans, then people will say that we can’t know about the long-term side effects and will refuse to get vaccinated. It’s gonna take a while.”
He looked around again, frowned, then headed to the basement door. Brave soul. No way would I step my foot down there.
Well, whatever he needed there wouldn’t put the piles of clothes away. I shoved all of it into garbage bags and put them aside. When I would get the sewing machine, I could sort through everything and decide what I would keep.
Matt poked his head up. “Guess what. We have a functional washer and dryer.”
At least some good news from this house. “Can I throw these bags down there? I’ll want to wash everything before I start sewing.”
Matt grabbed the bags for me and took them downstairs. I would’ve just let them roll, but he needed to keep his muscles in shape somehow. I better keep him well fed so his arms don't shrivel up.
I warmed up a few samsas. As soon as Matt found me in the kitchen, I handed him a plate and took my own to the table.
“Why are you only getting one, and I get four?” He sat across from me. “Is that some kind of a trick?”
“No. Just thought you might want a lot of protein. Wouldn’t want you getting deficient.”
He looked at the plate, then at me. His confused frown turned into a smirk as he flexed both biceps. “Good to know you like them.”
“Must suck not to be able to go to the gym.”
Matt hooked my ankle with his foot. “I hate gyms. If I had to go there to exercise, my spine would’ve popped out of my back and ran away.”
I frowned as I tried to decipher his words and get the disturbing image out of my head.
“I mean I wouldn’t exercise,” Matt said. “My back hurts sometimes from crouching over the drafting table and the computer. Whenever that happens, I work out with what I can have at home. Kettlebell, resistance bands, medicine ball, things like that.”
“Kettlebells are good.” I finished my samsa and threw another in the microwave. All the cleaning left me way too hungry.
Matt scooted to the edge of his chair. “Speaking of kettlebells, why do you think you’re Russian?”
“I’m not Russian Russian.” Why did I always get these hot and cold spots in my food? There had to be a better way to microwave. “Uzbekistan used to be a part of the USSR, so we get each other. We have the same mentality.”
“Judging by all the Russian videos on YouTube, there’s definitely something mental going on.” He didn’t know the half of it.
“We start learning physics in seventh grade and drinking at around the same time. Things happen.”
Matt took our plates to the sink. “So, you’re all drunk scientists. That doesn’t explain all the crazies on your roads.”
“Drinking is still a good explanation. Then there are the roads. To paraphrase one Russian mayor, our soil rejects the roads. Then there’s corruption. Buying a driver’s license is a thing.”
We went through the back door that opened up to our massively overgrown backyard. The rest of the cleaning could wait until tomorrow. I was beat and wanted to spend the rest of the night snuggling with Matt.
“Wanna watch something new or one of the classics?” he asked.
“Classics.”
I made myself comfortable on the mattress, one hand on Matt’s abs, next to his laptop that had already started playing The Night of the Living Dead.
“The director accidentally caused a scandal with his casting,” Matt said. “At that time, a black man couldn’t lose his cool on white people or be the only reasonable person in the room.”
I hummed, enjoying the warmth radiating from his body, the quiet moment, and Matt’s use of kettlebells. This needed to never end.
Chapter 14
Matt
ZAMIRA JUMPED AT THE LAST gunshot coming from the laptop. Every delicious curve of her body pressed against me.
“I can’t believe they killed him.” She shuddered. “He was the only likable character in the entire movie.”
“I can’t believe you’ve never seen The Night of the Living Dead. It’s a classic.”
She closed the laptop and managed to snuggle in even closer. “It might be a classic here, but even if it was ever shown in Uzbekistan, all characters would’ve been dubbed with this super nasal male voice. It’s not as scary that way.”
“Or female,” I said.
“No, just male. They had the same guy do every character. Zero voice acting, by the way.”
“Sounds terrible.”
I kissed her on the lips. Just a short, sweet kiss. Zamira put her hands on the back of my head and neck and went for one more. Then another. And another.
We rolled over. Zamira’s body rested on my chest. Her thighs on my hips. Her hands on my shoulders. Floral scent guided me to Zamira’s neck. So soft and smooth. Not at all like the damn zipper of my jeans.
&nb
sp; Something had to give, and I wasn’t arrogant enough to think I could break through the metal teeth. I shifted as much as I could under Zamira’s weight. Damn it. That just made it worse. Now she was pressing the zipper right into the tip of my cock.
With both hands on her ass, I moved her up an inch. Zamira ground back down.
I liked having her on top, but I also liked my manhood unshredded. We rolled onto the side, at an angle that had her arm pinned under me. Zamira groaned and pulled away a little. Then a little more until she wasn’t squashed anymore.
“We should stop,” Zamira said.
“Are you sure?” My dick didn’t mind the zipper anymore. Anything was better than stopping now.
“Yes. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Thinking is overrated.” I tucked her into my side, then it dawned on me. “Wait, you’re not a virgin, right?”
She turned crimson. “Umm… no. Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. I don’t do virgins.”
She frowned. “Why not?”
“They get clingy.” Now I sounded like an asshole. “The first time is always a big deal. You remember it for the rest of your life, and there’re all these romantic notions that your first should be the one. Half the time, girls get obsessed with their first, not because he’s God’s gift to women but because he was her first.”
“Not very romantic, when you put it that way.” She settled her head on my shoulder. Her breath tickled my neck.
“It’s really not. Can be kinda predatory. If you want the girl to be all about you, you, and only you.”
She stayed quiet, eyes downcast, fingers moving slowly over my shirt. That was one way to kill the mood. Yay me.
“Sounds about right,” she mumbled.
“What?”
She sighed and propped herself up on one elbow. “The predatory part. Or maybe just the overall, not that special part.”