by M. Mabie
I moved my hands to his cheeks so I could hold him there with me. My feet off the floor, he held me in his arms and leaned his back against his truck. My leg itched to climb him, hike up his thigh to latch on, but what focus I had left was poured in the kiss.
Our mouths only parted for air, and he kissed me like every girl, in all of history, ever dreamed of a man kissing her. With the passion of a lover. The power of a man who could protect her. And a tenderness that begged for her to return it.
The Fuck-hot Farmer, who borrowed gloves to spare my hands and brought me meatloaf, could kiss like a motherfucker.
Soon the fevered urgency ebbed and turned languid as I slid down his body. My legs straddled the outside of his, which were pitched out in front of him making him a height I could reach with ease.
His warm hand stroked my cheek, and he pulled away.
“Let’s eat before it gets cold,” he whispered in a husky timbre against my mouth as his lips paired with mine over and over.
More kissing was what I needed. To hell with food. Let me starve.
I kissed him back, my tongue sweeping out to swipe his lip. “I’m not hungry anymore.”
Rhett’s pliant mouth tightened into a smile and a chuckle shook his broad chest. He paired his forehead with mine and exhaled.
In the safety of his arms, I was bold and I admitted, “I wanted to kiss you last night and all day today.”
He ran his fingers over my hair as I pulled back to look at him, my confession making my cheeks flush hot.
“I’ve wanted to kiss you my whole damn life. I win.”
I was showing her my hand, which I hadn’t planned on doing, but the truth was always easier to say and harder to keep to myself. From the time I began thinking about kissing girls, I’d imagined kissing Sunny.
Turns out I didn’t have a very good imagination, because the real thing was far superior to any wet dream I’d ever had. And, sweet mother above, I never dreamed the way she’d feel in my arms would make me feel so strong and weak at the same time. Or how the little sounds she made when I kissed her harder would affect my vital bodily functions the way they did. My heart rate felt like I’d run miles, and my breathing was deep and full to provide me with much needed oxygen, exclusively for the purpose of living long enough to kiss her again.
She must really like meatloaf, and I wouldn’t soon forget it. I’d always been a little vague about my feelings on the dish, but it was easily my new favorite.
The way she was looking at me was reassurance that it wasn’t the worst thing I could have said, although it reminded me this wasn’t just some kiss. Not for me.
Her blue eyes lazily blinked up into mine, her pupils large but adjusting to the light after having been closed while we made out against my truck … a truck which, by the way, I also had a new appreciation for. She wasn’t wearing any makeup. Her hair was damp from a shower, but much messier than it had been when I pulled into her garage because I couldn’t keep my hands out of it—and it showed.
She’d never looked better.
Then again, hadn’t I just thought that earlier in the day?
Her lips were red from tangling with mine. Seeing how I’d rubbed them made me regret not taking the extra time to shave that evening.
I ran my thumb over them and her eyes fell closed as I smoothed left to right. “You can kiss me whenever you want, Sunshine. From here on out, you go ahead and do that anytime.”
She smiled and hummed.
I stood slowly, growing surer by the minute that our night would be a short one. We’d worked hard and slept little in the past twenty-four hours. That might have been why I didn’t want to waste much time getting here, but if there was going to be any time for me to put that look on her face again that night, she’d need to eat first.
Sunny followed my cue, stepped to the side, and snatched the bag of food off her car.
“This better be some damn good meatloaf,” Sunny teased as she walked up the wooden steps to the garage entrance into the house. I followed her and stepped into the laundry room.
She had some very delicate looking undergarments hanging above the washer and dryer, and I averted my eyes. Dear God, I wouldn’t be able to do anything if I couldn’t stop thinking about what she looked like in them. Eating included. Fuck, just walking without tripping of my feet was a challenge.
Her kitchen was a smaller room and she had a retro looking, four-person table in the center. It was tidy, but very lived in. She began unpacking the to-go meals that my mother insisted I stop and get for us.
Mom’s face was priceless when I told her why I couldn’t stay and eat. She was all too excited to make my takeout dinner for two.
I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I studied her refrigerator, which was covered almost completely with magnets, cards, photographs, and a calendar. There was a post-it with Mike’s number on it. Immediately, the impulse to rip it down and throw it in the trash burst through me, but it was too early to start pissing on her furniture and marking my territory.
We’d shared one kiss and a few hours together. That was it, and it would do me well to keep my ass in check. She wasn’t exactly mine to lay claim to.
Yet.
“It’s not too cold. I’ll just pop the plates in the microwave. That okay with you?”
Whatever she wanted was fine with me. I would have been happy eating it cold in the garage with my hands if I got to be there with her.
“That’s perfect. What can I do?” I asked, as I looked at a picture of her with her best friend Mutt in a wedding dress. “Did Mutt get married?”
She chortled. “You mean Hannah? Nobody calls her Mutt anymore. Vaughn, her husband—the new dentist—made sure of that. But, yeah. Hannah got married.” Her voice was telling at the end, like she was jealous or something. “I’ve got sweet tea in the fridge, and there are glasses in the cabinet to the left. Can you get us some ice? I drink a lot of tea when I eat. You can leave the pitcher on the table.”
“Sure.” She actually had two pitchers of tea. I chose the least full one and placed it on the table behind me, then found the glasses where she told me they’d be. She didn’t have an ice maker in the door like we had at the farm and like I had at the cabin, so I went to the sink to wash my hands before digging around in her ice bin.
It wasn’t awkward or uncomfortable, but a tension grew in the air. While the microwave warmed the first plate and I filled our glasses, we looked at each other. She kept taking long, deep breaths and shaking her head.
“So should we talk about the elephant in the room?” I asked. I wasn’t usually one to bring up things—to want to talk about feelings and stuff like that—but dammit, this was kind of important. It was obvious she was thinking about something, and if I knew what was going on in her head, then maybe I could sort out what was in mine.
“Which one?” she asked as she swapped the hot plate for the cold one and got silverware out of the drawer.
“How many elephants do we have in here?”
She huffed. “Two. The old one and the young one.”
That was one way to think about it.
After the microwave beeped and we had two hot plates of food ready, she sat down next to me, took a long drink and said, “Who goes first?”
I wanted to think up some excuse to get out of being the one to go, but that was childish and that was the last thing I wanted her to think of me.
“I’ll go. I had it bad for you when I was a kid, then I went to school and came home. We ran into each other and…”
I’m getting it bad again? No. That wasn’t good.
She didn’t try to interrupt while I looked for the right thing to say, but ate and stared at her plate.
“—And now I want to get to know you better. To me, it’s like you stopped aging and I just caught up. That’s how I see it.”
Kind of.
Who was I kidding? I still had it so fucking bad.
She nodded and swallowed, then emptied her glas
s of tea. She could really put it down, just like she’d said.
“Okay, but even though you don’t feel like we’re much different in age now…” She began and poured herself another glass, then topped off mine while she was at it. “Wait. How old are you, by the way?”
“Twenty-three.”
“And I’m twenty-eight. So five years. That doesn’t seem that big of a difference, but when you were thirteen and I was eighteen, that difference was huge.”
Honestly, it didn’t feel that way to me back then either. If it had, I probably wouldn’t have trailed her everywhere she went.
She continued, “But you’re right, it doesn’t seem that different now. I don’t see you like that anymore.”
I ran a forkful of meatloaf through my mashed potatoes and took a bite. I prayed she didn’t still see me as that kid. I was glad to hear we were at least on the same page, but I was still curious about something.
“How do you see me now?”
“I don’t know. I mean, in one way we kind of just met. In another, I’ve known you for as long as I can remember. So, that’s kind of weird. But, really, we don’t know each other as adults. You know? It wasn’t like I was some full-grown woman back then either. I was still really young, too.”
That wasn’t quite what I was after. “You didn’t answer my question. How do you see me now?”
She leaned back in her chair and propped her foot up on the edge of the seat. Took a few breaths and said, “I see an educated guy. A hard worker. Someone thoughtful. Quiet, sometimes. Funny, sometimes.” She blinked and held her eyes shut, like it hurt to admit. “Really attractive.” She opened them, one lid at a time. Peeking at me.
Then she took another bite of potatoes and added, “And I like spending time with you so far. These are really freaking good. Did your mom make them?”
I’d never tackled a woman to the ground and fucked her until she screamed my name before, but I was thinking about it.
It was all kind of too much. She’d said what I wanted to hear. That coupled with being there with her. Talking with her like that. How honest she was. It was so unexpected, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Especially since I’d rather kiss the horse.
I should have said something back. I should have complimented her or told her what I liked, but I didn’t, which was selfish.
Regardless, she’d been the one to change the conversation, so I let it go.
“She’s a great cook. My dad almost fought me for these two pieces. It’s his favorite.”
“Do you eat there a lot?”
Did she mean did my mom still cook all of my meals? “No,” I said a little defensively and tried to backtrack. “I like to cook. I eat a lot.”
She didn’t take offense to what I’d said, at least outwardly, and said, “I eat at my mom’s all the time. I’m a shitty cook, but if my mom cooked like yours, I’d be as big as a barn. My mom is always on some health food fad diet. So, at the moment it’s a lot of quinoa.”
I laughed.
“It’s cool you’re staying out at the cabin though,” she said.
When she was saying these things all I heard was you can’t take care of yourself, but I knew that’s not what she was trying to say. It was me. My issue.
“Yeah, I love it out there.”
“I know. I was lucky when I got back from school that my family let me move in here.” Sunny was so relaxed as she spoke. If she was picking up on any of the stupid things I was thinking, she didn’t let it affect her.
I told myself to chill out.
“There aren’t a lot of places in town anyway,” I said.
She chugged her tea and answered with a wet lip. “I know.”
“I’m just staying at the cabin until I can start ground work on my house.”
Her eyes widened. “Your house?”
“My farm.” I hadn’t told anyone my plans, not even my parents yet. I was waiting until after I talked to the bank next week.
“It’s not my business, but don’t you have an ass load of student loans? I could buy something now, but not for a long time after I got out of school.”
“I have some, but mostly just from the few classes I stayed to take last year. I had a full ride from track, as long as I kept my grades strong, so I didn’t have to pay for much.” And the little bit of debt I had, I could have paid off from savings, but I was waiting for harvest.
“Wow. Do you already have land to build on?”
I had plenty of land.
Most, and I mean the vast majority, of the ground we worked was my father’s, but when my grandpa passed the farm down the line, he made sure that Haley and I owned property of our own, too. Caraway Farms still occupied and farmed it, but I got paid a lease every year and a wage from working when I was home. It wasn’t anything uncommon for a farm kid.
I wanted to buy more land around Wynne, preferably more tracts near ours, but that was a waiting game. Farm ground around us rarely became available, and when it did it went fast and high.
“I do. I’ll take you out there sometime.”
Maybe you’ll want to stay out there with me.
She yawned and took the last bite on her plate. “I’m so stuffed.”
“It’s all that tea. You drank half a gallon.”
“Shut up. I love it.” She got up and picked up my empty plate with hers. “Thank you for bringing that over.”
“Thank you for helping us today.” I’d been shocked to see her when I pulled in, but to have her there the entire day—technically, working longer than I had—it spoke a lot about her character. Regardless of her motivation, she’d helped.
As she cleaned up the dishes and stuck my mom’s coveted Tupperware in the dishwasher, I took the dishcloth she’d set aside and wiped down the counters and table.
She yawned and said, “I know it’s Saturday night, but I don’t really feel like doing much. If you’d rather go out and do something, I get it.”
That was a relief. I didn’t want to go into town either. I didn’t even feel like drinking. All I wanted to do was sit next to her and maybe kiss her again. It was a short list, but I felt pretty optimistic.
“What did you have in mind?” I asked.
She leaned against the counter and crossed her tan legs. “I think watching a movie sounds good. Although, I’ll be honest. I probably won’t make it very long. I’m worn out.” Of course she was. No sleep last night followed by a long day of manual labor? I was surprised she wasn’t asleep already.
“Movie sounds good,” I admitted.
“You can pick. I have a bunch in the cabinet over there.” She wadded her hair up on her head and held it there, then shuffled down her hall.
Crouching to read the titles she had in her movie collection, I saw one of my favorites and the choice was easy.
I found the remote on the coffee table and tried to work my way through her television and DVD player to get it cued up. Trying to navigate someone else’s TV is never easy, but I’d finally gotten there by the time she came into the room.
“What are we watching?” she asked and I held up the case to The Shawshank Redemption.
Sunny looked sleepy, but a lazy smile cracked her face. Her head tipped to one side, looking at me like I’d made the right choice as she climbed onto the couch.
Andy was on the other end of the sofa, where he’d been sleeping since I got there, which didn’t leave much room for me. The way he looked at me, I knew taking his spot wasn’t a good move. I sat in the recliner, then Sunny kicked poor Andy off and patted the cushion for me to move closer to her.
From the opposite end, her legs stretched over to me, while I sunk down into the couch and pressed play.
I’d seen the film dozens of times, maybe more, but it was all relative.
Soon her foot wandered onto my lap, and as if we’d sat that way many times before, I held it in my hand and eventually began rubbing her sole. Little pink toenails. Smooth, warm skin under my hands. When that
foot had as much attention as she desired, she stirred and added the other to my lap. So I gave it the same treatment.
It was about halfway through the movie when I chanced a look to the far end of the couch, and her eyes had fallen shut. Lips parted and her face lay peacefully.
I wasn’t sure how I was going to get up without waking her, and the position she had her head pitched to the side didn’t look like it would be comfortable for long.
I moved her foot to see if she would stir easily. She didn’t. Gently, I stood from under her legs and she didn’t wake. I walked down the hall to see where I’d be going, looking in all of the doors as I went. A full hall bathroom. Two smaller bedrooms, one with a bed and the other with a treadmill where winter coats hung.
Her bedroom was at the very end of the hall, and I flipped the light on, mostly to make sure I could make it with her in my arms without any tripping hazards. It was pretty clean, but the closet doors were wide open. Additionally, there was an extra standing rack with clothes hanging on it to the point where it was full, too. Shoes spilled out from the floor of the closet and the doors were used to hold belts and scarves and purses.
She liked clothes.
Out of curiosity, I crossed the room, around the bed, and flipped on the switch to her bathroom. Again I found it basically clean, but very lived in.
She was different than the person I’d imagined in my young mind. Hardly the girl I’d put up on a pedestal.
The woman wasn’t perfect. No. Instead though, she was real. Tea chugging. Half-full laundry baskets in the corner. Toothpaste on the mirror. She was normal.
The more time I spent with her—the more I got to know her—I realized I liked the real version much better. She was easy to fixate on superficially, but underneath the clothes, hair and radio voice, was a woman who was worth a good man’s time. If the age thing was something we had to get used to, then it was worth it to get to know her more.
I flipped the bedside lamp on, turned off the overhead light, pulled down her blankets, and then found her exactly how I’d left her on the couch. Her mouth parted just a little, her lashes fanned over her sun-pinked cheeks.
