Fluffy

by Julia Kent

  I smell it before I can put words to it. “DINNER IS BURNING!” I scream, fleeing to the stove, where the onions have gone half black and the red pepper strips look like blood on tar.

  “It's charbroiled,” Will announces, chin on my shoulder as I use the spatula to scrape up what I can and evenly distribute the vegetables.

  “You're diplomatic.”

  “I would never insult another vegetable. They're my people. Purple eggplant, red pepper–we stick together.”

  An elbow to his gut is my response.

  He laughs, moving gracefully across my kitchen to find a bottle of white wine in the fridge. It's already open, stopper in place. Without asking, he looks through my cabinets, finds two wine glasses, and asks, “Wine?”

  “Perfect.”

  Part of the appeal of gas stoves comes in being able to regulate the heat visually, the distribution easier to calibrate when you can see it. Will's body is the same way. Our fingers brush as he hands me the wine, the stir fry saved by my quick movements, the marinated chicken ready to add in a moment.

  Steam rises from the rice cooker on the counter behind Will, the aroma of butter and saffron making me smile.

  “Smart, sexy, centered, and a good cook. I found the whole package.” Holding his wine glass aloft in a toast, he waits until I walk to him, the glasses ringing in approval as we cheer each other, sip once, then kiss.

  Beep!

  The rice cooker is done.

  “Can I help?” Will drinks more wine, then sets down the glass, looking at my midsection. “Do you have another apron?”

  I point to the row of hooks with five white aprons in a row.

  “Wow. You're organized.”

  “Form and function. I like aprons and I like the look.”

  Plucking one off a hook, he opens it up and bursts out laughing.

  Across the front is a huge Wonder Woman symbol, two giant silkscreened Ws.

  Looping the top over his head, he reaches behind himself and ties the strings. “What do you think?”

  “You're working it. You could be the next Gal Gadot.”

  “I'll stick to being Will Lotham. I'm pretty good at that. What should I do?” Unbuttoning his cuffs, he does that slow shirtsleeve roll that looks so sexy on a man who has come over to make love with you after dinner.

  Not that I would know.

  Because this is the first time I've had a guy overnight. But I'm hoping it's the first of many nights with Will, so I'm going to generalize.

  “How about salad, Wonder Will?” I point to the fixings. He gets to work, again not asking, just intuitively knowing what to do in my space.

  I like this.

  No. Scratch that.

  I love this.

  As I'm browning the chicken in some avocado oil, he asks. “Do these go in the salad?”

  I look up. He's staring at a small tray of long, aromatic herbs arranged with other savory bites.

  “No. But you can have some now.”

  “What are they?”

  “Basil, mint, coriander, lemongrass.”

  “Not for the salad? What do you do with them?”

  “Eat them. As an appetizer. And we'll have some of the herbs on the chicken.” I reach over and choose a sprig of basil, a sliver of ham, and a sesame cracker. “Try it,” I offer.

  He does. He nods, making sounds of approval.

  Is he loud in bed? I wonder as I watch him. Or a dirty talker?

  Blood rushes to every pore on my body at the thought, my face feeling like a furnace.

  “Mal?” He steps toward me, a predator sensing an opening. “What are you thinking about? You just... changed.”

  “Changed?” My voice cracks.

  He pulls me close. “You look like you just imagined me naked.”

  “It's the vegetables. Made me think about your eggplant.”

  A shift in his hips and he presses against me. “You don't need to just think about it.”

  “Aren't you hungry?'

  He maintains eye contact as he reaches for his wine, taking a long mouthful. After he swallows, he simply says, “Yes.”

  “Then let's eat.”

  “Oh. You meant dinner.”

  “Is that how this is going to be all night, Will? You'll make sexual innuendos about everything?”

  “Yes. Got a problem with that?”

  “No. It's just–I think we need to work on some expectations management for this evening, Will.”

  He bursts out laughing at my use of his own words against him.

  I pull back. His grip tightens.

  “Where are you going?”

  “The chicken needs me more than you do.”

  “That's debatable.” A sweet kiss on my forehead comes before he lets me go, the ukulele music winding down and going quiet.

  Five minutes later, we've removed our respective aprons and we're sitting at my four-person table, two seats empty–thank goodness. Tonight is about us and only us, the dinner a perfectly decent performance on my part, Will making appreciative sounds of gustatory happiness.

  “The herb tray really adds to this,” he says, the compliment hitting home in a way that surprises me.

  “Thanks.”

  “I have to confess, I've never had a date invite me to her apartment and cook me dinner. I wasn't sure how this would go.”

  “Hold on there, bud. We haven't made it to dessert yet. Don't call this a success before we hit the finish line.”

  “Dessert isn't the finish line tonight, Mallory.”

  I fill my mouth with wine and savor it, mulling over his words as my pulse races to settle between my legs.

  He stands and holds out his hand, grasping the edge of my empty plate. “Finished?”

  I choke a little, a dribble of wine tickling my throat. “Hmmm?”

  “Finished? With dinner? You cooked, so I'll clean up.” He grabs his Wonder Woman costume–I mean, apron–and gets to work.

  Openly gawking, I watch as he clears the table, putting dirty dishes in the sink, setting serving dishes on the counter. Opening my lower cabinets, he looks around and says, “Where do you keep containers for leftovers?”

  Have I died and gone to heaven?

  “You don't have to do that!” I insist, pushing my chair back, abandoning my wine.

  “I know I don't have to. I want to.” Kitchen skills can't be faked. This is a guy who is comfortable in his own skin, and who knows that pulling your own weight is part of being an adult.

  I sit back down.

  I sip my wine.

  I'm getting even more turned on.

  How is that possible? Energy flow is limited by resistors to prevent an overload. Capacitors store energy so it can be released later. I'm ready to explode. I must be short-circuiting.

  Maybe that's where tonight's orgasm comes in.

  Orgasms.

  Please let there be plenty of them.

  I finish my wine and move to him, unable to be idle while he does everything. Standing next to each other, we make light work of it, the food put away and the dishwasher humming soon.

  Parts of me are humming, too.

  Will excuses himself to use the bathroom and I grab the edge of the kitchen counter, reeling, the few moments of alone time crucial for regulating my emotions. My “gynecological parts,” as Mom so delicately referred to them, are beyond regulation.

  I'm a runaway train of oxytocin and pent-up need.

  Nervous, I flit around the room, fluffing my sofa pillows, straightening a stack of books on my side table. I'm good in the grooming department. Condoms and lube in my bedside drawer. Will's comment earlier about staying for breakfast makes his intentions clear.

  This is happening.

  This is really happening.

  I need music. My powered-off phone is normally docked into a speaker set, but instead of re-opening a portal into hell with my mother by turning it on, I find my laptop and re-connect to streaming music, picking a soothing jazz-filled station with a little
blues, making the air spontaneous and loose. I sit down on my sofa and hold the stemless wine glass at the base, resting lightly in my palm like a man's sac.

  It's fragile.

  It contains something you swallow.

  Squeeze too tight and someone bleeds.

  “What are you thinking about?” Will asks me as he walks in and sits down next to me, body language clear that we're moving on to the sex part of tonight.

  Do I tell him the truth?

  I blush.

  I remove my glasses. He's so close, he's almost crystal clear. If I move three more inches toward him, true clarity will set in.

  “Ah,” he says softly, looking at me. “You look so much softer. Sweeter.”

  “Without the glasses?”

  “Yes. Younger.” He strokes my arm. “Something.”

  “I can put them back on.”

  Two fingers touch my face, tracing the cheekbone. “I like you however you are.” Before I can react, he looks at the wine in my hand and adds, “Want more?”

  I look at his package. I can't help myself. “Yes.”

  “Now who's making every comment into a sexual innuendo? We're a pair, aren't we?”

  Pair. Sac. Testicles.

  Oh, no.

  How much wine have I had?

  He makes his move without any pretense, because seriously–why bother? We both know what comes next.

  What comes next is us.

  A kiss that is a prelude to making love feels so different from any other kiss. Like the first step in a long journey you know will require all the effort, stamina, and fortitude you have, but you also know you'll come out on the other side of it stronger, knowing yourself better, and changed.

  From the tips of my toes to the tip of my tongue, this kiss, his breath, the feel of his hands on my body, moving down to my breasts with questions that are too complex to answer with words – it's all about to change me.

  For the better.

  Smooth and confident, Will takes the wine glass out of my hand, setting it down on the cocktail table in front of us, a mid-century modern piece I picked up at a small second-hand shop in Chelmsford last year. My mind does this–it starts tracking the rooted origin of everything he does. Each physical item in my apartment has a story. Just like me.

  Just like Will.

  Just like this.

  The long kidney pillow behind me has a jewel-toned pattern of teardrops, colored in orange, turquoise, amethyst. As it rubs against my lower back, warm from the blanket of his body, our kiss growing more intense, my mind conjures the pattern. Perhaps I'm curating our movements, attaching them to important markers that chronicle what we do.

  Or maybe I'm just filled with anxiety because OMG WILL LOTHAM IS CUPPING MY BREAST AND WE'RE MAKING OUT ON MY SOFA AND WE ARE ABOUT TO BE NAKED.

  Pretty sure I thought that so loudly Will can hear it from outside my own skull, because he suddenly stops, his hand on my cheek. Looking down at me, eyes filled with an excited, smoky heat, he asks, “You okay?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “You tensed up.”

  “I did?”

  “We don't need to do anything you don't want to do, Mallory.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I laugh, brushing the hair off his brow. It's fallen across his eyelashes, the tips moving as he blinks. “Do you have any idea how long I've been waiting for this?”

  “Me, too.”

  “What?” I nearly fall off the couch. “What do you mean, you too?”

  “I always wondered what it would be like to kiss you.”

  “By ‘always,’ you mean a month, right? Since you saved me from my failed porn career.”

  He laughs, his warm breath tickling the tip of my nose. “No. Before that.”

  “Before that, Will, I hadn't seen you since high school.”

  “That's right.”

  “You wondered what it would be like to kiss me back in high school?” I squeak out.

  “Mmm hmm.” He kisses my collarbone. I stare at his thick, brown hair, each strand standing out like a member of a Greek chorus, waiting to chant something incriminating at me.

  “Hold up, mister. You can't just drop a fact like that on me without explanation. I confessed my crush on you and you never said a word!”

  “Your crush wasn't exactly private,” he whispers, the words making every pore on my neck tingle.

  “That's not–” I gasp, “–the point.” I had no idea a tongue on my neck could do that to me.

  “What is the point?” he asks, thumb grazing my nipple until it tightens to an impossibly arousing peak, brushing against my bra with a maddening sensation that makes me want to be naked. Now. With Will between my legs. Now.

  Did I mention the now part?

  “You, um...” Oh, damn. What was I talking about?

  “I wondered,” he whispers into my ear, mouth on my neck, tongue teasing various soft sections of skin. “I wondered what you were like underneath that shell.”

  “Shell?”

  “You were quiet. Nice. Almost too nice. I didn't think I knew how to be part of your world.” A soulful kiss, then he looks at me, heartfelt and true. “I also didn't have the courage then to break out of my own shell and see what you were really like. And when you rejected Harvard, you set off a cyclone inside me.”

  “I did? Me?”

  “Yes. You. I've thought about you all these years. Not the same way you described your crush on me,” he explains, pausing.

  Our openness surprises me. Pleases me. The sensation is more than intellectual, way more than nostalgic. It's rooted here in the present, the clock ticking and marking this moment, a sentry watching out for me.

  Watching out for my heart.

  And then Will adds, “More like the feeling that you were the one who got away.”

  “Really?” This is turning me on more than it should.

  No. Scratch that.

  This is turning me on exactly the way it should.

  “I came back to manage the company for Mom and Dad and planned to look you up. I've never been able to get that day in the high school parking lot out of my mind.”

  “You – what?”

  “I almost kissed you then.”

  My heart stops.

  “I wish I had.” A quick kiss, a brush of lips against lips, and then he continues, as if his recap of that day during finals week didn't just come careening into the present, wheels peeling on asphalt, racing ten years at lightning speed.

  Minus the magenta glitter paint.

  “I assumed you'd married long ago. That some lucky guy got you.” He pauses to consider. “Or lucky woman.” This time, the kiss is long and slow, his hands all over me, moving to the tender, swollen spot between my legs. He stops, stretching over me, our bodies pinned to the sofa, my mind a whirl. “Looks like I'm the one who got lucky.”

  “You mean finding me on a porn set?” I blink, returning us to banter, because his telling of that moment has all the selves inside me colliding in a mad rush to be fully present, right here, right now.

  “That's... not what I was thinking.” He laughs. “But I wasn't upset to find you there.”

  “I'm not sure how to take that statement, Will.”

  “Then how about I stop talking and show you what I mean.”

  Closing the space between us, he leads with his mouth, the soft press of his lips against mine extraordinary. This isn't our first kiss and it certainly won't be our last, but it is special. It is special because the gap's been bridged, the question's been answered, the border between my body and his has been crossed. Now it's all about logistics.

  And other words that begin with L.

  Working the hem of my shirt loose, Will's warm hands are on my belly, moving up to cup my breasts. Once he takes that step, I figure it's my turn.

  Oh, my. The bare skin of his back is so hot to the touch, the ridged line of muscles riding up his spine like steel under flesh. Migrating up, I feel his ribs, then shoulder blades, roilin
g as he moves, my mind transfixed by what my fingers feel. Decoding it as he kisses me puts my body into a state of circuit overload, especially when his fingertips slip under my bra line and I moan.

  “The sofa is nice, Mallory,” he whispers as we kiss, “but do you have a bed?”

  “A bed?”

  “You know. A flat, soft surface with sheets and blankets, where people get naked and do naughty, filthy things to each other.”

  “Naughty?” And filthy? A low, hot clench between my legs is followed by a sudden rush of heat.

  “Do you prefer nice?”

  “I prefer you.”

  I stand and stretch out my hand to him and he joins me, leg to leg, hip to hip, belly to belly, then mouths on each other as I walk him backwards to my bedroom. His hips move with fluidity and confidence, a predictor of what's about to happen.

  Naked. We're about to be naked, Will's going to be between my legs, and I'm being kissed so hard right now that my hair's on fire. Breasts, too.

  And I really need a firehose down below.

  Hose. Will. Will's penis.

  “What are you thinking?” he asks suddenly.

  “Women ask men that question. Not the other way around.”

  “I'm asking you. You seem distracted. I don't want you distracted during sex. So–”

  “I was thinking about your firehose.”

  “First it's an eggplant, now it's a firehose? Let's get back to expectations management, Mallory. ”

  I start laughing as he strips out of his shirt like a guy in a naughty soda commercial. It's as if time runs in slow motion and a spritzer machine is on standby in the wings.

  Only it's not Will who is wet.

  My fingers know what to do, immediately reaching for his bare chest, palms going flat right on his breast bone. His eyes catch mine. I feel him inhale, then slowly let out his breath, the warm air making me lean in.

  We have thousands of ways to touch someone. The permutations are endless. For instance, in this moment, Will bends over me, his hands going to my shirt, undoing the buttons one by one as if he's in sync with my heartbeat. Fast, nimble movements leave my skin chilled by the sudden bareness, his chest brushing against mine as he bends down to kiss me while sliding my shirt off my shoulders, down my elbows, my hands forgotten until I remember they exist, his tongue teasing my teeth as I try to remember how to use the rest of my body.