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“Done with work?” he asked, putting down his knife and bending over to give her a kiss.
“Yes. I even cleaned up the table.”
He was glancing over her head when the timer for his pasta dinged. “Just in time,” he said with a smile. Cooking for Mina while she was working at her table was nice. Having her next to him was nicer.
Seated at her dining room table, it took only one question for Mina to launch into a story about her students and the homework she’d assigned in her graphic novel class. Spaghetti noodles bopped on the end of her fork as she talked and forgot to eat. Her eyebrows danced. Her cheeks rose and fell as hints of dimples that never fully appeared graced her face. She was completely animated and a sight to behold.
When he imagined them in bed—and on the couch and in the kitchen—he imagined her just as animated. Her hands everywhere on him at once. Her lips and cheeks and eyebrows springing about her face with pleasure before freezing when she came.
As their relationship moved forward—and he hoped it would—he should go to the hardware store and tip Al for selling Mina a dud mower. If Levi hadn’t come over to help her with that mower, he might still be sitting in his house, with his back to the kitchen window, being a dumbass about the neighbor he couldn’t take his eyes off of.
“Oh,” she said when she noticed that he was done with his dinner, and she had barely touched her own food. “I’ve been talking too much.”
The change in the tone of her voice brought his mind out of his fantasies and back to reality. Fortunately, he hadn’t gone too far afield. Mina was in both.
“I like listening to you.”
She waved her left hand at him, her right still holding the same fork with all the noodles wrapped around it that had been hanging there—uneaten—for a couple of minutes. “You’re being nice. I pour out words like faucets pour out water, only without a handle to turn me off.”
He snorted. When she said things like that, how could she doubt that he wanted to listen to her? “You assume I want to turn you off.”
“Well, sometimes I need a knob to turn myself down at least. My dinner has already gotten cold. And it was really good hot. If you find the lever, could you tell me?”
“Maybe. But maybe I’d want to turn you on instead.” He couldn’t help but smile. “Do you want your food reheated?”
“No. That’s silly. You made it for me and I’ve been too busy talking to finish it. It’s good cold, too. But I’m going to ask you a question and then stuff my mouth, and I’m not going to say another word until I finish eating. All the conversation responsibility will be yours,” she said menacingly.
Pronouncement made, Mina added more spaghetti to her already full fork. “How was your day?” she asked, then shoved the too-large pile into her mouth, her brows raised in a challenge.
“Good” was all he said in reply. Then he waited.
Mina waited and chewed. Patiently at first. Then her chewing got more fearsome, and her eyes got bigger with the playful scold that was clearly coming. Still chewing the massive amount of food she’d pushed into her mouth to make a point, she motioned with her hands, as though encouraging him forward.
He still didn’t say anything. His day had been good. That was all he had to say. Plus, he liked watching her squirm a little.
She must have realized his game, because she lifted an eyebrow and slowed her chewing. He cocked his head, waiting to see how long she could manage. Very pointedly her chin rose and fell until she couldn’t keep the food in her mouth any longer, and she had to swallow.
She let out a puff of exasperated air and said, “I wasn’t going to win at that game, no matter how I played it, was I?”
“No,” he said, chuckling. “That game was designed so that only I would win.”
“Well, you have to say something. Otherwise I’m going to try and fill the silence, and then I won’t eat.”
“What do you do when no one is here?” He wasn’t much of a talker, but he would for Mina, because she asked. Though he was genuinely curious.
She shrugged. “I turn on music. This is the first time I’ve lived by myself. I went from my parents to the dorm to graduate school and roommates, so there was pretty much always someone around. I like having my own space and getting to decide what to do with it, no roommate with the ugly couch they’re attached to, but I miss the company sometimes. It’s why I stay at work so late a lot of the time.”
