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“Over beside the ingredients.” His brows pull together slightly, clearly concerned that I’m staring relentlessly at his nose, but he doesn’t retreat yet. Butohhe wants to. Especially when I take it up a notch and bounce my gaze from his eyes to his nose, back and forth.
He’s so tall and broad it feels like eyeing a skyscraper, but I continue staring up the gold mines of his nose, waiting for him to withdraw first. And to really put it over the top, I sniff lightly. Just once to worm my way into his head a little further.
It takes him all of two seconds to crack.
“Dammit,” Derek finally mutters under his breath before sniffing and turning his head to wipe quickly at his nose and the nonexistent booger. I turn my back to him with a satisfied grin, knowing that this small win will float me for the rest of the night.
Once he’s regained composure, certain there are no bats in the cave, he faces me again. “I’m going to go get a shower.”Not picturing that.“Everything you need should be on the counter or in the fridge.”
I nod and then bury my face in the recipe so I don’t allow myself to remember what it was like to stand under the hot spray of water with Derek’s arms around me. Kissing my shoulder and neck and then…
“Hey, Nora?” Derek asks, and the tenderness in his voice hooks me. For a split second, it’s like the man from my past is calling out to me. I wonder if it’s because he’s having the same memory I was.
“Yeah?”
He licks his lips with a small frown, making me think something truly earth-shattering is coming. “Umm. Just…don’t overcook the noodles.” His smile is a snake. “I hate when they get sticky.”
You’re sticky,I want to say to his retreating backside.
I’ve never made fettuccine Alfredo before, but where there’s a will there’s a way. Because if Derek thinks I’m going to be easily driven off by a bit of cooking, he must not know me at all. I’m going to make this pasta so good—so delicious he’ll weep. And then I’m going to make him sit down at the table and talk career strategy with me. He’ll have no choice but to comply once I put him in this food coma. I’m also convinced he doesn’t have a real date coming over. I have access to his Google Calendar now and when I just checked it, there was nothing on it that mentioned a date.
Which means it was yet another intended torture device for the night. He thinks I care if he has a date?Ha!Well, I…do, yes very much actually. But he will never get the satisfaction of knowing it.
I spend the next hour sorting ingredients, making the dough for the noodles and then cutting them out (yes, he required homemade noodles). I watch a YouTube video from a sweet angel who really holds my hand through the whole process, and by the time I’m finished with the noodles, I feel like Julia Child’s offspring. Next up is the sauce and it requires browning butter in a pan with garlic. Mystomach growls so loud I’m sure it’ll be reported as an earthquake on the news later.
Before I know it, it’s time to add the chicken broth to the pot. So after measuring out two cups of disgusting-smelling liquid into a glass measuring cup, I lift it from the counter and turn toward the stove. Unfortunately, my hand collides with the chest of the man I never heard enter the room, and I dump the entire contents of that smelly chicken stock all over my shirt and jeans. The glass cup falls to the floor and shatters into a million pieces because gravity is not slacking on the job today.
I yelp and drop to the floor to pick up the glass shards so we don’t step on them, but before I can, Derek grabs me around the waist and hauls me up onto the counter. His look is pure thunder, and I think maybe this new Derek is a yeller and he’s about to lay into me for making a mess in his kitchen. But then he says something unpredictable. “Please tell me you did not just try to pick up that glass with your bare hands?”
He takes my hand in his, turning it palm up and studying it closely. My awareness zeroes in on the warm, rough skin of his fingers. How big and sure and capable his hand is. I notice other things too—like how clean he smells after his shower. How I think his bodywash smells so delicious I would consider drinking it. But it’s the fact that this scent is mixed with his natural smell—the smell that’s so Derek—it makes my insides twist and melt.
“It was a gut reaction. I’m so sorry about the mess. I promise I’ll…”
Derek’s hand drops mine to trail down my calf, forcing my leg to extend out where he can take my bare foot in his hand (because I’m not one of those people who wear outside shoes inside). My lips part and I suck in a soft breath at the feel of his hands gliding delicately over my ankle and the arch of my foot. It’s such an intimate touch.Kind and tender. Like some part of him remembers that he used to think I was precious to him.
It takes a second for my brain to catch up, but finally, I realize what he’s doing. He’s making sure I’m not cut.
“I’m fine.” I try to yank my foot away because I can’t handle the swarm of hot dragonflies that the touch of his hands has released in my stomach. I’m not supposed to feel this way toward him anymore. My body should not react to his body.
The pinched lines between his dark brows intensify when those bright blue eyes flick to mine. “Hold still. There’s glass stuck in the top of your foot.”
“There is?” I look down and then the room goes woozy. There’s a little trail of blood gliding down the top of my foot along with two small pieces of glass sticking out.
This is the end for me. Tell my mom I love her. Please send all my money to the Knitters of America Association because I feel like it’s an underappreciated operation and I’ve always wanted to learn to knit.
“Hey, whoa,” says Derek, stepping closer and dropping my foot to cradle the back of my head with his hand. I want to say it’s romantic, but really, it’s that he can see I’m seconds from passing out and doesn’t want my skull to crash back against his counter and cause an even bigger mess. Then he’d have glass and pieces of bone to clean up and that sounds like too much to do before a date.
“You still pass out at the sight of blood?”
I nod because that’s all I’m capable of doing at the moment.
He learned this about me the hard way in college when one of our friends took a Frisbee to the face and had a gushing bloody nose. I fainted on the spot and hit the ground. He had to take me to the ER because I had a mild concussion, and after I was discharged, he stayed awake with me all night watchingThe Officeand feeding me candy.
The medical term is vasovagal syndrome, and it’s a heart condition where certain stressful triggers (mostly the sight of blood for me) can make my heart rate and blood pressure drop, which causes me to faint. But what most people hear is: a condition where Nora is a drama queen. In high school, girls thought I was faking it to steal the boys’ attention by fainting on my desk when Kathleen accidentally cut her hand during dissection week. It was so deep she needed stitches, and no one in her friend group forgave me that her crush—Cody—comforted me that day instead of her.
But my most recent ex-boyfriend just thought it was anotherover-the-top thinghe could put on the mental tally sheet he was apparently keeping for how extra I am.As if I can control what my heart does.Involuntary or not, it was the final straw for him. He was playing a scrimmage basketball game with his friends and he took an elbow to the face that knocked out his front tooth and busted his lip. He ran over to me at the bleachers and showed me his mouth to assess the damage. There wassomuch blood. I fainted, and later when it was all settled, he broke up with me. He just said our relationship was too much. But what he meant wasIwas too much.
That’s all right. My mom taught me early on that I would never be everyone’s cup of tea, but that doesn’t mean I should change my flavor for anyone either. I let that boyfriend go—Iwish I could let the sting of his rejection go too.
