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“And you’re going to get it,” I told her. I hopped out of the pool, then I picked her up and threw her over my shoulder like a fucking caveman.
“Mine,” I grunted as she squealed with laughter. “You’re all mine.”
I carried her to the bottom of the stairs like that, both of us buck naked. But as we passed the kitchen, she pounded on my back.
“Wait!” she exclaimed.
“Not a chance.”
“Mitchell, please.”
I froze. It was that word, the way she’d used it like for a split second, she was worried I wouldn’t listen.
She didn’t quite trust me yet. And why would she?
I flipped her over, setting her on her feet.
She looked relieved. And a little nervous, suddenly. She put an arm across her breasts, and the light thatch of hair between her legs. While I loved seeing her, the last thing I wanted was for her to feel unsafe.
“Hang on,” I said, heading for the couch, where I pulled a throw blanket I’d never once touched before off the arm and came back to her, wrapping it around her.
She smiled gratefully. “Thank you.” Then she glanced to the fridge. “I was thinking, you must be gut-foundered.”
“Gut—” I couldn’t help smiling. “Is that hungry?”
She nodded.
“I don’t know if I have anything,” I said, heading over to the massive stainless steel appliance. But of course, I did. There were the boxes of food from Sal, fresh yesterday, and whole containers full of other food I didn’t recognize.
“Um…”
“You don’t know where any of this came from, did you?”
I ran a hand through my hair, sheepishly. “Not really.”
She smiled, but I could tell the fact that there was so much food available that I hadn’t touched was jarring to her.
Had she ever gone hungry?
Once again I felt like a dick. Only this time, a privileged dick. With my actual dick hanging out.
I angled myself behind the kitchen island so I didn’t at least look like a damned peacock. “I could have Anita order us something?” I asked, as if that would somehow make our differences less stark. But I’d just offered to have my damned house order us dinner. Now was definitely not the time to tell her if I announced I was hungry, Anita would do everything including choosing the food and arranging the transport.
“How about I make myself useful?” she said.
“I don’t want you to be useful,” I said to her back as she tucked the blanket around her like a toga. “I just want to be with you.”
I saw her shoulder stiffen as she tidied up her tools from earlier, setting them in her box.
“Just give me a few,” she said softly.
I wanted to say something, but anything I thought of I knew would make things worse, so I went and found a towel in a nearby bathroom to cover myself in.
In the end, Winona found a whole feast for us—charcuterie, crackers, some kind of cold-on-purpose soup. It was good, and I was in fact gut-foundered.
“I’m perfectly capable of walking, you know,” she laughed, when I insisted on carrying her up the stairs.
But something had changed. There was some shift, over dinner. She hadn’t acted like she’d wanted to go, and when I moved close to her, she still reacted to me. In fact, we’d talked more—for an hour, at least. She asked me questions about my book, and I found myself talking about the pain and the pressure of it, and how the joyful moments felt hard to come by. How when I read, it was books that were nothing like what I was writing. “I read for fun and write for pain, I guess.”
