DISHING UP LOVE

by Robichaux, KD

  “Whomp whooomp,” she singsongs, shaking her head then taking a large swig of her daquiri.

  I want to breach the subject of us, but I don’t want this light feeling to end. I stare down into my big white cup, at the purple slush gleaming back at me in the candlelight of this amazing three-hundred-year-old building, trying to come up with a way to start the conversation without making Erin’s spirits sink.

  Just when I start to feel anxiety creeping up, she saves me, and I’m grateful to see she’s still got a small smile on her delectable lips. “When you said you wanted one of our stops to be somewhere we could relax and rest our old bones, I immediately thought of this place,” she says quietly. “This isn’t my go-to bar, the one I frequent the most after a hard day at work or to just go out and meet new people, but it’s like my… happy place. I save it for special occasions, and when I really need a pick-me-up. That way it doesn’t lose its soothing effect. I came here after my ex-fiancé left me, and before that, I came here just to sit and regain some of my… zen, I guess you could call it, after I had my miscarriage.”

  My eyes that’d been locked on hers while she spoke shutter when I see the pain in her eyes. Her smiling lips tremble slightly, and I know she’s trying to stay strong while she bravely just spits it all out for me.

  “I’ve never told anyone about any of this, except for Emmy. Only my ex, my doctor, and my best friend know anything about it. Well, and my old therapist, but I don’t really count her,” she admits, and I tilt my head to the side.

  “Why don’t you count her?” I ask.

  “Because she really didn’t do much to help me heal from it. She doesn’t use the same techniques and practices as I do, and after I laid it all out for her only to have no results in the end, I didn’t bother finding another therapist. Didn’t want to go through the pain of having to recap it all, so I decided—like an idiot, mind you—that I could be my own therapist, get over it on my own. As we know from earlier, I’m not the greatest at taking care of myself, and I save up all my energy for helping other people. Really, I’ve just been using other people’s problems to ignore my own,” she confesses, taking a long sip of her drink.

  I nod, giving it a minute for her words to settle between us. And then what she told me before really sinks in. “You said your fiancé left you… but before then, you had a miscarriage? He left you after you lost your baby?” I rumble, my last sentence coming out testier than I meant for it to.

  At her nod, things start clicking into place—the reason she seemed so sad during the tour when children were mentioned, when she snorted when Ronnie explained women were sent here because the residents needed wives to birth the next generation, and why she thinks she can’t give anyone what they want out of life, including herself.

  Not caring any longer about the furniture, I scoot back from the table and wrap my arms around the woman next to me, pulling her into my lap and cradling her against my much larger frame. She feels almost childlike herself when she curls into me, allowing me to comfort her broken heart. I feel her breathe me in, hear her sigh, and it makes me think of the many times I’ve seen my yaya bury her face in her husband’s chest or neck to inhale his scent. She always pulls away from him with a look of blissful love on her face, seeming more relaxed and calmer than before.

  I rub up and down Erin’s back with an open palm, my hand seeming big against her small body. And when she melts into me, I know all her walls are finally crumbling down around us. In this moment, I feel a closeness with her I’ve never felt with anyone before, and I wonder if it’s our souls finally greeting each other, after she finally let hers come out from the tower she had it locked away in.

  She tilts her head, unburying her face from my shirt, so she can speak quietly in my ear. “It’s not only that though, Curtis. Yes, it was super shitty that he left after one of the most heartbreaking experiences of my life. But I can’t really blame him after what the doctor told us.”

  I pull away just enough so I can look her in the eyes while she talks. “What could he have possibly said that would make what your ex did forgivable?” My nostrils flare. I’m not a violent man. I’ve never really had to be. Any bad situation I’ve ever been in, the opponent would just look at the sheer size of me and back down. I’ve been grateful for my Nordic genes for keeping me out of too much trouble until now, but for the first time in my life, I feel the old Viking blood in my veins sizzle, wanting to go after this motherfucker for leaving this wonderful creature in my arms after she suffered such a painful loss.

  “I have been blessed with a hostile uterus with an unhealthy dose of random-ass leiomyomas for good measure, ensuring that the chances of conceiving and carrying my own child would be—for lack of a better word—a fucking miracle,” she explains, and I narrow my eyes.

  “I’m sorry, sugar. What is that lie-word you said again?” I ask, trying to take in all the information I can.

  “Leiomyomas. It’s the technical term for uterine fibroids.”

  I hold her closer, even as I reach out to take hold of her drink, pulling it up in front of her to take a big gulp before replacing it on the table. “Is that cancerous? My yaya had to have some pre-cancer cells frozen years ago, but that word never came up.”

  “No, not cancerous. At least there’s that. They just… like, take up all the room in my uterus. Some can block the way for swimmers to make their way in and create the baby, but like I said, hostile uterus, so even when that miracle happened and I conceived, my body treated her like she was a foreign entity and rejected her,” she murmurs, her lip trembling once again and her eyes filling with tears, and she tries to laugh away the emotion, shaking her head. “It was a long time ago. I’m fine, really.”

  “Clearly,” I growl, my hand making its way into the back of her hair to tilt her head back so she can see deep into my eyes. “And you think that just because you might never be able to have a baby, you’re unworthy of love, of having a relationship so fulfilling a man wouldn’t even need anything besides you in his life?”

  “That man doesn’t exist. It’s in men’s very nature to want to spread his seed. It’s basically their meaning of life, to put babies in bellies. I’m a psychologist. I know all too well the physiology of it all,” she says heatedly, but not as if she’s angry with me, just the hand she’s been dealt.

  When I let the silence stretch between us, I can’t help but smile at the thoughts running through my mind. And when she sees the expression on my face, she narrows her eyes. “What? What could you possibly be smiling about right now?” She wiggles attempting to get away from me, but I just wrap my arms more tightly around her, not letting her go.

  I pretend likes she’s not struggling in my hold and hissing at me like a pissed off cat. “Not long ago, maybe a month or two,” I begin, and she slowly settles back down, “I was hanging out with none other than your best friend’s husband. We had a network meeting, and we sat together for lunch. We made small-talk, of course, shooting the shit like we always do, but then he asked me about my love life, if I was ever going to settle down.”

  She can’t help herself. She gives in when I don’t continue with my story. “And what did you say?” she prompts.

  “I told him I wouldn’t be settling down anytime soon, because there was nothing holding me to one spot. My travels and cooking and TV show were all I needed to have a fulfilling life. I never really craved the traditional marriage and two-point-five children and white picket fence life. That all just seemed so… claustrophobic. Almost… like a trapped feeling, you know? Literally feeling shackled down—which I suppose is why that term is used when referring to getting married, huh?” I smile.

  “So what you’re saying is you’re happy being a bachelor with no responsibilities,” she says with an accusing tone.

  “Says the beauty in my lap who is one hundred percent the female version of me. Bachelorette pad, great job you love, not allowing yourself to get attached to anyone,” I point out.

  She t
urns her head and gives me a side-eye. “Touché.”

  “But as I said, that was a month or two ago. That was… before I met you. And somehow, in just one night, you’ve changed everything,” I murmur, imploring with my eyes for her to believe me. “No, I still don’t want the traditional two-point-five kids trapped behind a white picket fence. But you know what? Being shackled to a woman behind fancy wrought-iron gallery posts seems right up my alley.”

  She stares into my eyes for a full minute, and I watch, fascinated as her tear ducts seem to drain the tears from her once swimming golden pools. And the next thing I know, I’m breathing in her grapey breath as her lips lock to mine and she gives me the most heart-wrenching kiss I’ve ever experienced in my life.

  Chapter 15

  Erin

  THE SIX-BLOCK walk back to my house passes in a blur, and not because of the drinks. We make several stops beneath random galleries to pause for kisses and sweet nothings, but the rest of the way is passed with hurried footsteps. When we reach the door, I can barely ring the hole with my key I’m so jittery with anticipation of what’s to come and because Curtis can’t seem to keep his hands off me. And when I finally do get the door unlocked, we’ve hardly made it inside before he slams it shut and my back is pressed against it.

  The quietness of the room is deafening after the hustle and bustle we just came from. While Lafitte’s was muted and intimate, we had to pass back through party central in order to make it home.

  Curtis is so close, so big he’s the only thing I can see, everything behind him disappearing at my height until I’m suddenly up, up against the door with my legs instinctively wrapping around his hips. Now that I can see over his shoulder, all I want to do is go up the staircases just feet away, lead him to my room, my haven. I’ve never allowed any other man into my room before. When my ex and I were together, we were waiting until marriage to actually live together, and while we were dating and engaged, I always stayed at his place. It felt wrong bringing him here when this wasn’t my house, disrespectful somehow. But with Curtis, it’s completely different. He feels like home just as much if not more than this building does, and I feel nothing but peace thinking about him joining me upstairs.

  He presses me into the door, grinding his ever-present erection against the seam of my jean shorts once again, and my eyes roll back into my head before it thumps against the wood. It gives him access to my throat, where he licks and nibbles, sucking gently enough not to leave a mark, even though the death grip he has on my hips tells me he’s restraining himself, holding back from doing everything as roughly as he truly wants.

  “Upstairs, first room on the left,” I tell him, and then I’m levitating. I’m lifted, spun, and hauled so swiftly to my room I don’t have time to think about how he carries me as if I weigh no more than the fluffy beignets we consumed earlier tonight. He’s not even breathing hard after the three flights of stairs, which is fucking impressive, seeing as there are sixty steps in total.

  I’m flat on my back in the middle of my king-sized bed before I even have my shoes off, but he must read my mind, because I instantly feel him unlacing my Converse, hearing them thunk to the floor as my black no-show socks are whipped off my feet. And then his big, strong hands are sliding over my ankles, over my calves, between my inner thighs, and then over my jean shorts until he reaches the button there, which he pops open with ease.

  My zipper is pulled down, and just as he’s working the tight denim over my hips, my eyes pop open with sudden realization. And I’m so mortified by what he’s about to see that I can’t even move or speak to stop it from happening before it’s too late. Up until this moment, since the second we entered the house, all our humor and easy nature with each other went out the window. It’s been passion and ferocity, heated desire and desperation. That was… until my jean shorts are slid down and off and I open my eyes to take in what I hoped had miraculously disappeared at some point during the night. But alas, there they are, in all their stretchy, white, unflattering, as-far-from-sexy-black-lace-lingerie-as-you-can-get glory. My motherfucking surgery panties.

  I hesitantly glance up at Curtis, who is frozen, my shorts gripped in both hands, paused midair over his left shoulder as if he was about to toss them behind him before he caught sight of the disaster wrapped around my hips. His face is almost comedic in its utter confusion, his brow furrowed, and he cocks his head to the side, obviously trying to figure out what the fuck I’m wearing.

  I groan, covering my face, turning my upper half to the side and trying to pull my body into full-on fetal position in mortification, but he’s got my legs trapped. “Fucking kill me now,” I utter. “Whyyy me?”

  He clears his throat. “Um… so, not exactly what I was expecting when I finally got in your pants, sugar.”

  “Fuuuck my life,” I murmur.

  “But… it could totally be worse,” he soothes, pulling at my elbow to make me face him and uncover my eyes.

  My fists slam into the mattress on either side of my body as I pout up at him furiously. “How? How could it possibly be worse than finding those inside my pants? I got caught wearing my freaking surgery panties while getting it on for the first time with the world’s sexiest chef!”

  He pinches my pooched-out bottom lip gently before hovering himself over me, one hand bracing him on either side of my head. “I mean… you could have a dick.” He shrugs, and I’m so shocked by this answer that I let out a loud gush of laughter, the force behind it sending my hand into his chest, punching him there with my ineffectual fist. He continues, a mocking smile on his face as he teases me, “And while I totally believe in falling in love with the wine, not the label, as David Rose so eloquently explained, I don’t really consider myself pansexual. I’m strictly non-dickly.”

  I groan once more before squeezing my eyes closed and letting out a pained laugh. “Couldn’t have caught me in my cute lacy undies I wore at work all day, could ya? Nooo, had to be after I changed into my comfy stuff. And to think I go to that store because I never see anyone I know and can walk around in hermit mode without being embarrassed. Thank you for ruining that for me.” I shake my head.

  Without another word, I feel him crawling down my body, making his way to the offending item of clothing, kissing a shiver-inducing path. I open my eyes to watch him, suddenly entranced by the way his eyelashes fan out above his cheekbones, the way his brow lifts when he finds a particularly soft spot of skin next to my belly button, his deep inhale as his gets ever-closer to my center, sending goose bumps down my legs.

  He hooks the ugly-ass panties with his pointer fingers and slides them down and all the way off, not saying anything else about them as he watches where he tosses them, turning back. And I see his eyes catch on my scar, the whole reason I have a drawerful of those panties in the first place. I’m shaved bare, so it’s on full display, and I fight not to squirm under his stare.

  Normally, I don’t give a shit about it. I haven’t been with anyone since my surgery. And even if I had, any other time, the lights would be out and everything so quick no one would take the time to look so closely at the other’s body. But here with Curtis, my overhead light is still on from before we left the house earlier, and I’m completely presented for his perusal.

  The scar runs from one side of my bikini line to the other, about four inches of pink slightly puckered flesh. It’s been almost six months since my surgery, so it’s no longer sore. But when Curtis reaches up to run a fingertip gently along the line, I involuntarily jerk, and he looks up to meet my eyes.

  “Does it hurt?” he asks softly.

  I shake my head, biting my lip as my gaze bounces between the scar and his expression. Until he leans down and kisses the pink line from one end to the other then running his nose back to the other side. I melt into the bed, my heart peeking out of the rubble that was its protective tower as Curtis soothes any embarrassment I felt before.

  “What’s it from?” he murmurs, tracing his finger over it once more.
>
  “Myomectomy,” I reply, and at his questioning look, I explain quietly, “I had some of the fibroids removed that were affecting my blood pressure. I was sleeping close to fourteen hours a day, and finally Emmy dragged me to the doctor. They did the ultrasound and found them, and I had the surgery almost six months ago.”

  “Did it help? You feel better?” he asks, concern in his eyes, and my heart starts throwing the rubble out of its way, clearing a path for its escape.

  I nod, my lip trembling a little bit, and I inhale at the unexpected emotion. He’s suddenly above me, looking straight down into me with his stormy eyes, and all I can see is him.

  “That’s all that matters, sweet girl. You could be scarred from head to toe, and wear nothing but those godawful… whatever those were, and you’d still be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever laid eyes on. It’s your inside I’m completely falling head-over-heels for, and as long as that inside is feeling the way it should, then that is all I care about,” he tells me, and my throat gets tight. “So is your inside feeling the way it should, sugar?” He leans down and nuzzles my neck, and my eyes flutter closed.

  “Starting to…” I whisper. “Starting to feel a lot better than it ever did. I think—” My face grows hot at admitting this aloud, but he deserves to hear it, since he’s been so open with me. “—you might be healing whatever it is inside me the doctors would never be able to. You’re making my heart feel a lot better about things going on with the rest of my body that I never thought I’d recover from.” A single tear slides down my temple and into my hair, and Curtis presses a kiss to its track before moving to my lips, letting me taste the salt as my tongue meets his.