A Menu For Loving

by Olivia Gaines

  I am not sure what Jen means or how any of this is going to pan out ... but I am going to see this one through.

  Tony picked up his phone and dialed her number.

  “Chef Taylor, how may I help you,” her soft voice spoke into the phone.

  “I was just thinking about you. I thought I would call,” he found himself holding his breath.

  “That’s nice of you. What are you up to?” Jennifer asked as she sat on the side of the bed.

  “I’m feeling some kind of way. Out of sorts I guess,” he told her with some apprehension.

  Jennifer picked up on it immediately. “I know what you mean. I met you a week ago, by accident, and now I am in the inner sanctum, about to get into some serious fruit and vegetable cutting with your daughter.” She kicked off her shoes so she could lay back on the bed. “Who is as cute as a button I might add.”

  It was quiet on the other end of the line as he released the air he was holding in his lungs. “Thank you. She is a bit precocious, but she’s mine.” The air was thick with unsaid verses as he swam through the seconds, trying to get to the next minute of lined up words. “I like you, Jen. I like you a lot.”

  “You are pretty cool yourself there, Tony P.”

  “I would like to know more about you,” he said as he shut down his computer.

  “Me? There isn’t much to tell. I cook for a living, which is how I feed and clothe myself. Being good at what I do leaves me little time to do anything else. That’s my life in an antipasto dish,” she told him.

  “What about relationships, a love life, a past love,” he was curious to know.

  “I am divorced. My love life for the past two years has consisted of me getting lucky a week ago with a stranger in his hotel room.”

  It was the last thing he was expecting to hear from her, but the cat was out of the bag and he wanted to know more. “Any children?”

  “Much to father’s chagrin, no,” was all she gave.

  Tony was more interested now than before. “You don’t give away much do you?”

  “I just...” She stopped talking.

  “Say what’s on your mind. We should be able to do that with each other. Tell me what you need. Tell me what you want. Tell me you want me,” he said softly.

  “I would like to spend more time with you, Tony. But I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what I’m doing with any of this. I don’t know what I am doing with you... us... and then there is Sasha,” the concern was emanating from her voice. She had been introduced to his daughter. In the next week she was going to make a definite impression in her life. What if it went south?

  “Whatever this is, I like it. And I want more,” he told her with a firm voice.

  I don’t understand any of this. What is he up to? What does Tony want from me? Instead of having a one-sided conversation in her head, she spoke it aloud. “What do you want from me, Tony?”

  Failure to be honest with his feelings and emotions had left him in a cycle of doubt and uncertainty about his future. In a few years, his daughter would be off having fun and enjoying her life and he would still be on the couch with Raheem watching B-Flicks on demand. The past 12 years had been dedicated to being a great father to his daughter, but Jennifer was new life. He felt as if he had a chance to rejoin the human race. To love. To give love. To be honest. “Jen, I want to get a point when the next time you look in my eyes and say Tony, I love you, it’s for real.”

  There it was.

  In the open.

  In the air and floating.

  “Fair enough, Tony. Good night,” she said.

  “Good night, Jen.”

  “My marriage didn’t work because I had the wrong expectations,” she told Tony over the phone the next day. It was a quiet Sunday afternoon. Her father was snoring loudly on the couch, waking up sporadically, yelling, “Don’t change my channel!” She wasn’t paying much attention to the spaghetti western, which was cliché with bandits, men throwing bullets from unloaded weapons and the sound effects completed by an editor who must have fallen asleep at the helm. The gun would fire and 5 seconds later, the sound would come. Gotta love my dad.

  Her dad was her first real love. Johnny Taylor had set the standard of how a man should treat his princess, but he never warned her about the men who would manipulate her love as her husband Michael had.

  “I have only been back from Los Angeles for 18 months. I am living back home with my dad who retired last year,” she said.

  In LA, she was the personal chef to a big time Hollywood agent. A power player in the game with the big dogs. Jennifer loved her job and she was phenomenal at cooking meals and catering special events for small clients to premier red carpet events. It was also where she met Michael.

  “He was everything a girl could want. Tall, good looking, broad shoulders and a smile that would melt chocolate on a cold day,” she confessed. Initially, she met him at a small function. He came as someone’s plus one. “I was putting more antipasto out, with beautiful olives and bruschetta, when he walked up to me and started a conversation about my food. I was flattered.”

  The flattery didn’t stop there. Unbeknownst to Jennifer, Michael knew exactly who she was and who she worked for, and it was his way in. “We went on a few dates, then it got really serious really fast. We ran off to Vegas, got hitched and suddenly I was married to an up-and-coming actor,” she blew into the phone.

  “An up-and-comer who decided to help me out at one of my boss’s larger functions,” she said with some melancholy. “He worked the room like a champ.”

  In less than six months of marriage, he managed to score some walk-on roles and several TV gigs with lines. “By the 9-month period, he somehow managed to get my boss to get him a role in a major Hollywood blockbuster, with more than one line. It went from there,” Jennifer said into the line.

  Tony listened to her words and could hear the pain in her voice. “So you are saying he used you?”

  “Used is a small word for what he did. What he did was a betrayal. He married me to get to my boss. A boss who would do anything for me, and a woman who thought that getting my husband a leg up in the business was her way of giving back to me,” Jennifer said. “I didn’t know and didn’t understand. I was naïve.”

  Her naiveté was short lived when she came home to find him running lines with a costar. The next time he was practicing a lovemaking scene. The time after that he was actually method acting with the love-making passage. “Then he started to make the Hollywood scene. I was catering the red carpet events while he was walking it.”

  “I was proud of him, Tony. He was living his dream, then he got a larger role, which took him on location overseas,” she said with far too much pain in her voice.

  “That’s when all the pictures started to surface,” she said. “Of course he told me it was all publicity and press, but I knew better.”

  It only worsened the situation when her boss pulled her to the side and told her, “Guys like Michael are a dime a dozen. He will have a few more big movies and he will crash and burn. His type always does. Get out while you can.”

  “I listened. I filed for divorce after the release of the movie and took half of his assets. When it all cleared, I cashed the check and moved back home. It is how I opened the bistro,” she said.

  “It’s so cool that you own your own restaurant,” he added, uncertain why he was feeling a sense of pride in her accomplishment.

  “Yes. But being the boss doesn’t give me a lot of time off. I am closed on Sundays and off on Wednesdays, and every other Saturday,” she replied.

  “I can work with that,” he told her.

  Jennifer was smiling, even after her father woke up, passed gas, looked around like someone else had done it, and went back to sleep. Jen got up from the couch and went to the kitchen. “I’m not damaged, Tony. I’m wary.”

  “You? Hell, I am scared out of my mind. I mean for the past two days, my daughter has been mutilating vegetables trying to mak
e roses out of radishes. I have no idea what she did to that honeydew and she is constantly trying to get it right, so she can impress you,” he told her with a tinge of anger in his voice. “If this goes wrong...”

  “If it does not go between us, I will handle her with respect and as her own person.”

  “You would do that?”

  “Yes. She is a child and should not be in the middle of adult issues. Besides, I like her. She is a cool kid,” Jennifer said to him. “What about you?” She left it open-ended.

  “What about me?” He knew this was where she was going to ask the questions about Sasha’s mother.

  Jennifer asked, “Any brothers and sisters?”

  He didn’t know why, but he felt disappointed that she didn’t seem to want to know about that part of his life. “I have a sister, her name is Cleopatra. We call her Cleo.”

  “Wow, what is up with that? Your mom must be a big movie buff?”

  Tony was confused. “Yes, she is. Why do you say that?”

  “Anthony and Cleopatra? Are you two twins?”

  He laughed because until now, he had never made the connection between their names. “No, we are not. I am older by four years. What about you? Any siblings?”

  Jennifer exhaled loudly. “I have a sister, who is also the bane of my father’s existence. She has the personality of my mother but looks like my daddy.”

  “So I take it you look like your mother?”

  “Yes, but I have my dad’s personality... thank God for small favors.”

  His curiosity was piqued, and he found himself smiling. “Why is that?”

  She searched for the right words. “Have you ever seen someone so ugly that they are kind of cute?”

  “No. No, I have not,” he said flatly.

  “Well, that’s my sister,” she said very solemnly.

  “Must have been tough growing up with you being so statuesque and drop dead gorgeous,” he said.

  Jennifer was getting warm from her toes all the way up to her... “Well, you are just saying that to get in my pants again.”

  “I am saying it because I mean it, and we both know I am getting in your pants again. Several more times, in fact. Hell, if I had my way, I would wake up with your pants on my head.” He was laughing.

  The line was quiet. “Jen,” he said.

  “Yes, Tony?”

  “Did you enjoy making love to me as much as I did you?”

  Her breath was uneven, the room was hot and so was she. “Yes, I did.”

  His last words stayed with her for a minute, even after he hung up. “Jen, anytime ... any place ... any moment of the day or night, I will be yours. You have but to give me the command.”

  “Command? Aren’t we melodramatic?”

  “No, I am telling you what I want and what I need,” he said firmly.

  “What is it you need, Tony P?”

  “I need to be yours,” he said and bid her goodnight.

  That’s a lot of pasta...

  Sometimes, what you want and what you need can be diametrically opposed to what must occur for a life to move forward. What Tony P wanted was to see Jennifer. The thing he needed was to be back in her arms, feeling her lips on him, her hands roaming his body as she surrendered to her passion. Most of all, he wanted her to want him. All of these cravings in the middle of the night prompted a surprise visit to her little bistro on Tuesday afternoon.

  “I am in the neighborhood, I was wondering if I could stop by. I need to speak with you about something?”

  “Is everything okay? Is something wrong with Sasha?” she asked, immediately filled with concern for the child.

  “You are sweet to worry about her. But she is fine. There is just something that I want to discuss with you.”

  “Sounds serious,” she said as she pulled out the trout and began to filet the fish.

  “It may be nothing. I’ll be there in a few. I hope you can take a break,” he said.

  Apprehension filled her as she continued to work, trying to maintain focus on the cuts of fish. He arrived fifteen minutes later and her assistant showed him to the kitchen. “Hey there. Let me clean my hands,” she told him. He watched as she squeezed lemon juice on her hands, then used a hand sanitizer.

  “Is there somewhere we can speak in private?” he asked with no expression on his face.

  “Of course, come on in my office,” Jennifer told him with a great deal more trepidation than she was letting on. In the small office that she shared with her assistant, it also held the time clock where the staff clocked in. Shifts were about to start so there wasn’t much time or much privacy. She closed the door, taking a stand behind her desk, rubbing Citrusion Body Butter on her hands to prevent drying.

  “That smells amazing. What is that?” She handed him the jar from the Pilgrim Soap Company. “I like this, it’s subtle and powerful.” His eyes came up and he said, “Like you.”

  In two steps he was in front of her, so close – a bit too close for her comfort. “Jen, I can’t stop thinking about you. If I don’t kiss you in the next five seconds, I am going to lose my mind.”

  Her hand reached for the front of his shirt and pulled him forward, coming around the desk to stand toe-to-toe with him. “Well, I can’t have that on my conscience, can I?”

  Time stood still as he placed his arms around her waist and stood close, but was careful to not allow their bodies to touch as his lips came to hers. Gently, tenderly, pressing his mouth to hers as her mouth opened slightly, Tony’s tongue slipped inside to play with hers, while he allowed his mouth to slant over hers and she moved closer to him, their thighs now touching, her fingers going into his hair. Tony deepened the kiss. Jennifer pressed her body closer. A low growl emitted from the back of his throat as a gentle knock came at the door.

  “Chef Taylor, are you in there? Hiro is here with the salmon you ordered,” her assistant called out.

  Exhaling, she leaned into his strength, enjoying the feel of his arms around her waist, the heat of his body against her own. “Duty calls,” she whispered into his ear.

  Tony pulled his head back to glance down at her face, his hand coming to her cheek, brushing the soft skin with his fingertips. “Jen,” he said as he kissed her again, then reluctantly let go.

  “Stay put, be right back,” she told him as she opened the office door to greet the fishmonger.

  Jennifer’s assistant came into the office to collect a slip of paper she had no real need for, eyeing Tony with more than a mild curiosity. “You were in last week with your daughter, right? Chef Taylor is catering her party?”

  “Yes, that is correct.”

  The assistant was being nosy. Tony didn’t like nosy people. He liked even less the way the young lady was eyeing him as she sat in the chair. He was relieved when Jennifer returned to the office.

  He stood as she entered the room, smiling at her. They both stared at Melinda, waiting for her to leave the office. “Oh, excuse me,” she said, now somewhat bashful. The handsome man was only focused on her boss.

  “Tony, I’m sorry. I don’t remember why you said you were here and what you wanted to discuss,” Jen said as she closed the door behind the girl.

  “I told you what I needed. I need some alone time with you,” he said with a fire in his eyes that began to warm her from her core outwards. He pulled her into his arms. “I need to hold you. Shower you with affection, feel your body against mine, gaze deep into those brown eyes that seem to steal my breath every time you look at me. I need you,” he said as his lips trailed down her neck.

  “Oh wow ... you and those pretty words,” she said as she leaned into him. “Let’s get Sasha’s event out of the way first, and close out that order of business. Then we can see about anything else.”

  Tony didn’t like the sound of that. “Are you worried I won’t pay you?”

  “Oh, I’m getting paid?” She waggled her eyebrows at him.

  “Yes, I was going to compensate you for your time,” he said with a furro
wed brow.

  “I need to be clear on what I am trying to get done with her first. I don’t want a bevy of emotions to cloud her party. You know what I mean?”

  “Hell no!” His face was contorted like she had asked to borrow his underwear.

  “Tony, hear me out, okay?”

  “No, I don’t want to hear this nonsense. I thought you and I were talking about something a bit more substantial between us. Now you push me away?”

  Jennifer tried to calm him by placing a hand on his chest. “Stop it!” she told him with some force in her voice. “Kids have a sixth sense about this kind of stuff. I need to allow my time with her to be clear of sexual tension between you and me. If not, she won’t trust either of us.”

  Tony knew what she was saying to be true. It didn’t mean he had to like it. “What about what I need, Jen?”

  “Your ass needs a cold shower. That’s what you need! You’ll be fine. You can hold it for another week or so,” she told him as she kissed him briefly and opened her office door. “Have Sasha here next Thursday when she gets out of school.”

  “Next Thursday? I won’t see you again until next Thursday?”

  “Yes,” she said with some reluctance. Her body wanted to see him tonight. It took everything in her not to laugh as she looked at his contorted face. Tony P was pouting.

  “See you next week.”

  Even when he left the office, he was planning in his mind the next time they would see each other. In Raleigh, Tino Boehner was also planning the next time he would his brother Tony or even have a conversation with his mother.

  Ebony sat behind the desk, staring at Tino who was covered in dirt, grime and a gigantic smile. In the past four months of dating, she had learned so much about what made him tick and what truly made him happy. Working with his hands made him happy. The meetings, managing the office and being a figurehead was the last thing that he wanted to do. Tino reveled in the high of finding a property and converting it to a livable home for a family. Based on what she had learned, family meant a great deal to him.