by Leddy Harper
It made me wonder if he felt the same thing.
A magnetic pull. A need to be close.
He gripped the back of my stool—as well as the back of Christine’s—and peered down at me, almost hovering over me. When he spoke, his husky words danced over my face and brought me back to the present. “What would I agree to?”
“That we’re friends.”
“Yes. I definitely agree with that.”
Other than adjusting her elbow on the counter to lean into it more, Christine didn’t move. She watched us, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see her Machiavellian grin. “I was convinced that after living together for over a month, one of you would be bald. Or on blood pressure medication.” Then she lowered her voice and added, “Or suffering a severe, on-going case of blue balls.”
“Christine!” I locked my stare on her and reprimanded her with a hiss.
Holden dropped his chin, shook his head, and laughed beneath his breath. And somehow, after all that had been said, nothing crippled me as much as his next words when he said, “You couldn’t be more wrong.”
I wanted to smack Christine or run away—or both—but I wasn’t given a chance. Just then, Mom decided to rejoin the conversation. “I wouldn’t have guessed hair loss or blood pressure issues. Maybe diabetes with as much crap as Jelly eats and drinks. Although, my money would be on Holden making her healthier, because he’s such a well-balanced young man.” Her rambling had me rolling my eyes and Holden puffing out his chest in exaggerated pride. Then, when we all thought she was done, she narrowed her questioning gaze at us and inquisitively asked, “But what are blue balls?”
Had I been drinking, liquid would’ve spurted out of my mouth like a sprinkler turning on for the first time all summer. Instead, all three of our mouths dropped open, and you could’ve heard a pin drop with as silent as we all went—considering we probably all stopped breathing and our hearts ceased to beat.
Thankfully, Mom realized it on her own. Her eyes turned abnormally bright and her mouth fell agape. Then she clutched her chest with both hands—which was a sure sign that her response was genuine and not leaning to the side of dramatic. “Oh, never mind. I wasn’t thinking.”
My mom’s reaction must’ve been too much for Holden, because he backed away and made some comment about joining Matthew and my dad outside. And the second he left the room, Christine pointed her know-it-all expression at me.
As if we hadn’t just been taken by surprise by my mother’s gaffe, Christine picked up where we left off prior to Holden’s interruption. “Something has to be going on between you guys. The way he looked at you when he came in here…” She shook her head and fanned her face. “If you didn’t see the way he looked at you like you were about to be his next meal, then you’re utterly blind.”
“Speaking of meals…” My mom leaned over the counter with her arms folded in front of her chest. “You’re at least cooking for the boy, aren’t you? When he comes home after a long day at work, the first thing he needs is a good meal. Please tell me you’re giving that to him. None of that canned food garbage, right?”
“Don’t worry, Mom. Every day when he comes home from work, he has dinner waiting for him at the table. Dinner I made myself. In fact, tonight will be the third time this week we’ve had lasagna—granted, the second time was leftovers.” I only hoped she didn’t keep prodding, because I wasn’t sure how much more I would be able to spin her words around to keep her from knowing the truth.
“You need to give him variety, Jelly. Haven’t I taught you anything? Men like options, and the less you give them on the dinner table, the more they’ll give of themselves in the bedroom. The trick is to keep his mind occupied with food. Spice it up one night, keep it mellow the next. Dress it up with parsley or lay it on thick with gravy. As long as his stomach is full, his taste buds are satisfied, and dessert includes either chocolate or whipped cream, you’ll be good to go.”
“Mom!” Christine and I both shouted at the same time. Christine covered her ears, but I was too taken aback and shocked to move.
“Hold on.” Mom waved us off and went around the bar to the pantry. “I have a couple cookbooks you can use. The trick is to never make the same meal twice, so once you make one, go on to the next.”
Christine adjusted her stool so she faced me. She leaned closer and lowered her voice to say, “Had I known you already made lasagna this week, I would’ve asked for something else. Now I feel bad that Holden has to eat it again.”
“Don’t feel bad. This one might actually taste good, so I’m sure he won’t mind at all.”
She quirked a brow and tilted her chin down to eye me. “How do you mess up lasagna? I honestly don’t think I’ve ever not liked it, no matter who made it. I mean, unless you forget an ingredient or something. Is that what happened?”
“Not quite.” I’d been cooking for Holden for a few weeks now—and by that, I mean more than sandwiches and hot dogs—and not once had I felt ashamed about the dinners I’d offered him. At least, not until this very moment when I knew someone other than myself would find out my secret. “It was one of those family-sized frozen meals.”
“Ran out of time to make dinner? Been there, done that. Although, those are typically the nights I play it off like I did it on purpose and make Matty take me out to eat. He never needs to know I simply forgot to take meat out of the freezer.”
“Yeah…ran out of time. Forgot to thaw meat. We’ll go with that.”
With a puzzled expression, she asked, “What do you mean?”
“Christine, I can’t cook. I lived on buttered noodles and pizza in college. How in God’s name am I supposed to give Holden dinner every night without offering him the same thing over and over again if I can’t prepare a decent meal?”
She fought against her smile, which tightened her lips yet still curled them in the corners.
I dropped my forehead to the bar top and groaned. “Mom’s getting me a cookbook I won’t be able to use. When I say I don’t cook, it’s not because I don’t like it. It’s because I literally don’t know how.” I sat up straight again and met her stare. “Well, I know the concept of cooking. It’s just every time I try, I mess it up in one way or another.”
“It’s all in your head. You just have to start off small and work your way up. Like make chicken and rice and go from there. No one can mess that up.” She studied my expression for a moment and then giggled to herself. “I’ll call you in the morning so you can write it all down. It’s really the easiest thing to make and barely takes any time at all to prep.”
Just then, Mom returned from the pantry and set the book in front of me. “Your grandmother gave this to me when I first married your father. The other three used to help me in the kitchen when they were younger, so I didn’t think about giving it to them when they got married. But I guess that was a good thing, because now you can have it.”
“I don’t need this, Ma. I’ll be fine.”
“No. You’re my last daughter, so take it. If I wait to give it to you as a wedding gift, I might be long gone by then. So I might as well do it now.”
All I could do was swallow my need to groan and roll my eyes. “Enough with the dramatics. You’re sixty, not a hundred. Both Rachel and Stacey were older than I am when they got married, so you never know, I could surprise you all and be married in six months.”
“Then good, take this and maybe it’ll bring you wedding-bell luck.”
I ran my fingertips over the front of the cookbook, taking note of the worn edges and grooves. If I believed in magic, I might’ve suspected this old book of having powers, because for some reason, I found the idea of cooking something new for Holden exhilarating. “Thank you, Mom.”
And deep down, I had a strange yearning to discover what it would be like to be a real wife, one who could actually cook instead of just heat up premade meals. And with my mother’s unknowing help, I felt confident I would be able to find out—I would be able to experience the role o
f a wife, without all that comes with it.
If only I could convince Holden to let me experience all the good marital parts without the baggage. Then I really wouldn’t have an issue staying with him until the divorce papers are signed…not that I really had one anymore.
12
Holden
The timer on the oven beeped as soon as I closed the front door behind me. I heard Janelle in the kitchen moving around and the clang of pots and pans. My stomach rumbled, something smelling good. A smile immediately took over my face as I made my way through the living room. This was the first time I’d come home to actual food—not that country fried steak in the microwave isn’t real food, but I could tell just by the aroma that this wasn’t bought on a frozen food aisle. I made it to the edge of the kitchen when I heard her curse beneath her breath.
“Something smells good.” It may have been the same line I recited every day when I walked through the front door, but I really meant it this time. I moved to stand behind her, and with a hand on her hip, I lifted the lid on the stockpot and peered inside from over her shoulder. “What’s for dinner?”
“Christine called this morning and gave me detailed instructions on how to make this recipe. She swore up and down that it was foolproof, and there’s no way I could mess it up.” It was obvious she was extremely irritated by the melodramatic way she spoke, overly enunciating her words, and for some unknown reason, saying them in a lower octave as if mimicking a man. But Christine wasn’t a man, which only meant one thing—Janelle had long ago passed frustration and had moved toward downright furious. “But apparently, it is possible to mess it up…because I did. No matter how long I cook the rice, it’s still hard and there’s still water on the bottom.”
She proceeded to elbow me out of the way in order to pull the chicken out from the oven.
After setting it on an empty burner, she tossed the oven mitt aside and huffed. “And the chicken doesn’t look right. I’m pretty sure it shouldn’t still be clucking.”
I tried not to laugh, I really did, but I couldn’t hold it in. The way she pouted was not only adorable, but hysterical, as well. Once I got it all out, and she finished slapping me for the last time, I glanced over the food she lovingly attempted to cook me. And it dawned on me. Really hit me like a two-ton truck…
Janelle Brewer cooked for me.
And if salmonella wasn’t a real threat, I would’ve eaten it just like that. However, I didn’t care to spend the night in the bathroom due to food poisoning, so I held onto her shoulder, my fingers extending to the back of her neck to keep her attention, and said, “It’s not a total loss. The chicken just needs to be cooked a bit longer.”
“I set it to three fifty and put it in there for as long as she told me to. I even moved the rack to the middle like she said. I did everything she told me to do. Foolproof, my ass.”
I was rather certain I knew what the problem was, but I worried I would insult her if I were wrong. Still, I didn’t care and asked her anyway. “Did you wait until the oven had preheated, or did you just stick it in there as soon as you set the temp?”
“I never preheat ovens and haven’t had a problem yet.”
“You mean…when you heat up frozen dinners that are technically pre-cooked?” I honestly hadn’t meant it as an insult, but the way she stood in front of me, eyes blinking rapidly, no words coming out, I knew she was more than likely contemplating the quickest escape route. “You know what? Let’s just stick this chicken back in the oven, and we’ll make a new pot of rice.”
“It’s pointless. I’ll throw this out, and we can order pizza or something.”
“Why can’t we just stick the chicken back in the oven and start a new pot of rice?”
“Because you’re probably hungry. Not to mention, it’s very obvious I don’t know how to cook. Like, at all.” She shoved the paper with the recipe on it in my face. “I’m pretty sure an illiterate chimpanzee could’ve followed these directions better.”
I set the handwritten recipe down, choosing to ignore the obvious reason the rice didn’t cook—she used a sixteen-quart stockpot for two cups of rice with a lid that didn’t fit properly. Instead, I held her face in my hands and attempted to calm her down. However, I didn’t actually think about the words before I said them. “Can you not cook? Is that why you’ve been feeding me Marie Callender’s for the last month?”
She gave me the death glare and tried to shove me away.
“Don’t be embarrassed. I’m not at all making fun of you—I swear. Hell, the only reason I know how to cook is because Matt moved out, and I had to learn. It was either that or starve. Well, I guess I did have the option of takeout, but I didn’t see the point in throwing money away. What kind of accountant would that make me?”
At least she stopped pushing me away. Her lips split into a wide grin, and it seemed as though her giggles refused to relent. “Dude…I’ve been feeding you Stouffer’s for weeks. Did you think I was just lazy and didn’t want to fix dinner or something?”
Her lips were mere inches away. Her body so close I could easily touch her. Realizing just how dangerous that was, I stepped away to give us space. I grabbed the pot off the stove and dumped the rice down the drain before setting it aside. “Honestly? I thought you were trying to prove a point. Kind of like you’ve done with everything else.”
“I will admit, at first, I fed you sandwiches to spite you. You made me feel like hired help, someone who’s at your beck and call for all the womanly duties of the house. You’d leave behind a list of things you wanted me to pick up at the grocery store without so much as a ‘could you please grab these things if you go out?’ And then you said you wanted dinner every night when you came home, like I’m technically your wife so I am expected to provide you these things. Your chauvinism bothered me. Pissed me off to the point that I sought revenge. I didn’t want to feel like that was all I was worth.”
“I thought we—”
“We did, Holden. That’s why I said at first. Then we called a truce, and after that, I can honestly say I gave dinner a genuine attempt. When you mentioned wanting to eat together, I figured you meant real food. Like…not macaroni and cheese from a box. I assumed that was your way of asking for real meals. Except I can’t cook real food, so the only option I had was frozen crap from a box—which you were never supposed to know about.”
Measuring water for the rice, I stood at the sink and asked, “Did you think I was under the impression you cooked all that? Yourself? From scratch? You do know I’ve eaten food before, right?”
She elbowed me before grabbing the stockpot from the counter. And rather than explain to her why we couldn’t use it, I moved around her and pulled a smaller pot from the cabinet and continued with the rice, knowing she was watching me and hopefully taking notes while we finished our conversation.
“Well…maybe not from scratch, but yeah. I thought it was good enough to fool you. I mean, I used the oven. There were a few things I made on the stove, and I opened some cans. Not to mention, I stored them in the freezer in the garage and threw the boxes away outside. How could you have possibly known?”
“Even if I couldn’t taste the difference between food someone prepared from scratch versus something that had been previously frozen and bought at a store? Janelle, I came home several times before you had a chance to move them from the cardboard they came in into a real dish.”
“Whatever. I put a decent effort into those meals. I can’t help it still sucked.”
I placed the lid on top of the rice to simmer and set the timer before turning my attention back to Janelle. With my hands on her face, I silently took her in. I admired her exotic and intoxicating beauty, how effortless it seemed to be for her. Even without all the paint on her face, she was…perfect.
“And I appreciated every single one of them,” I whispered, not having a clue as to where my voice had gone. Just then, we were interrupted by the obnoxious buzzing sound from her phone vibrating on the countertop next to
us.
We both glanced over, probably reading his name at the same time. Never had two syllables bothered me the way those two did.
I stepped back, as if she had ignited into flames and burned me, while she lunged for her phone. It didn’t matter how fast she grabbed it, because the damage had been done. In fact, I didn’t even care if she ignored it or answered it.
My stomach had soured, and I couldn’t stop my mind from racing. Aside from randomly mentioning the money she’d get for marrying this asshat, we hadn’t spoken about him. She hadn’t brought him up or even said his name aloud. I had no reason to believe she wasn’t in contact with him, but for whatever reason, I had convinced myself she wasn’t. Which proved to have been a horrible idea, considering the truth could be crippling.
I excused myself from the kitchen, went to my room, and closed the door behind me to change clothes. It didn’t take me that entire time to put on something more comfortable to eat in, but I didn’t come out until I heard the timer on the oven go off. I refused to risk hearing her converse with him. I didn’t even want to acknowledge there had been a conversation I’d ignored.
When I made it back to Janelle, we both fell into place, moving silently around the kitchen as though this was our regular, nightly routine. I grabbed the pan of chicken from the oven just as Janelle reached around to turn off the burner on the stove. She got the dishes, I pulled out the silverware, and as if we were some well-oiled machine who’d done this for the last fifty years, we helped our plates and then made our way to the table.
I cut a piece of chicken, scooped up some rice on the fork, and much like every other night, hummed as soon as the food touched my tongue. “This is amazing, Janelle,” I mumbled between bites, like I did with every meal, after every first mouthful I took.