AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Too much oil?” I muttered.
“Yes, I would say half the bottle is too much…”
I slid the bottle out of sight on a shelf while Devin’s back was turned decanting oil out of the frying pan. It left a big smear on the shelf as it went along… but so long as Devin didn’t have a go at me, I would take care of that later. “Well, I don’t think I can be expected to know about cooking.”
“You should know the difference between real cooking and bullshit. You’ve been born into a family with means, there’s no excuse. It’s the sort of thing that sets heathens with money apart from people of culture, Julia.”
He moved the frying pan back to the bench, plugged it in, and started pushing around the pieces of chicken and capsicum in the pan with a metal kitchen implement, his back tranquil in posture and not a single splash of anything unclean on his black jacket.
“I suppose that’s why you won’t touch me unless you want to scare me into thinking my parents might see or punish me for throwing footwear at you. I’m too much of a heathen for you.”
“I already told you that kind of intimacy was not what I was looking for in this arrangement.” Devin turned to me, his face an obnoxious model of tranquillity too. “Some small portions of rice?”
I located the shopping bag with the package of rice and took a hesitant step towards the microwave.
“No.” At least that managed to cause a flash of pain on his face. “Have you never prepared rice before?”
“It usually comes in microwave packets…”
Devin was shaking his head while still stirring his chicken. I started walking for my phone in my bag. There had to be a cooking app or something I could track down.
“Two parts of water to one part rice, boil.” I turned around. “And not in the microwave!”
“You’d be more attracted to me if I didn’t need to have cooking rice explained to me, right?”
At least with my head buried in a cupboard on the hunt for a pot I could pretend he wasn’t still making disapproving faces at me. “You are fixated on the physical aspect of any relationship between a man and a woman. I thought it was supposed to be a man’s prerogative to be overly focused on sex as a goal?”
I got up so fast with my pot I banged my head on the inside of the cupboard on the way out, but in the state of mind I was in I couldn’t bring myself to be bothered about that. “It’s just bizarre to me, to be agreeing to marry someone and having things just be awkward sexually.”
I thought there was something stiff about his posture as he turned to me, but if I’d managed to make him uncomfortable he was able to recover faster than he was able to with his mother. “That’s quite normal in some circles.”
I would have deliberately laughed in his face at that, but it was pushed out of me beyond my control. “I hope you’re not trying to convince me that we’re going to have a traditional marriage.”
Devin took a step towards me that had me shrinking against the far side of the kitchen. Perhaps I had set him off talking about traditional marriage.
I flinched at his hand on my shoulder, but he was just moving me aside so he could open a cupboard. He pulled a glass lid off a
shelf and fitted it over the frying pan, fidgeted with the controls, and then returned his attention to me. I tried not to look like his scrutiny was making me too nervous to get the pot of rice going, then I reflected that nerves might be a better explanation than incompetence.
“Of course nothing about the partnership we will form is going to be traditional. If we were going to have a traditional marriage, I wouldn’t care about anything in the intimacy sense except whether you did as you were told and were able to become pregnant in a reasonable amount of time with healthy offspring.” Something about the way he moved his head before he continued speaking said he was dragging that line out because of my reaction. “And then to return to your original state of receptiveness quickly after completing the pregnancy.”
“I am not receptive to pregnancy at all,” I snapped. “Just in case there was any uncertainty.”
He had returned to my side. Thank goodness I seemed to have the rice in the prescribed quantity of water and cooking. “Good. You’re not in a stage of life where having a baby would be appropriate.”
I glared up at him, but when he was that close he was able to reflect it back on me, and it really felt like he was heating me up. It pissed me off, when it was just his lack of involvement causing it.
“Why do you have to be like this?” I demanded.
“Do you mean, agreeing with you?”
“You can play it like that if you want, but I mean standing there with that Madonna-and-child energy like you know a secret I don’t, cutting me down with every second word.”
“Madonna and child.” Devin folded his arms and leaned back; it felt like an acknowledgement that I’d landed a hit, but I didn’t have any idea how. I’d just been trying to give a voice to my frustrations. “So you know a little bit about art, then.”
“I think that’s kind of something I picked up through pop culture actually,” I said. I was hoping to screw with him while I seemed to have an advantage, and he did appear to deflate a little in response. “You’d be more eager to get a leg over if I was the kind of girl who actually knew about art and how to recognise real cooking, right?”
“We’ve already discussed this. I am not engaging with you because I have any desire to ‘get a leg over’. And I have no intention of scorning you because you lack cultural polish. I assure you that I will be able to provide for you sexually in every way you might require.”
