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I’m laughing, but only slightly. I cringe every morning making him a peanut butter and jam sandwich.
“Does he stay with his grandfather often?” Gibson asks, taking a pull of his minerals.
“Yeah, if I have an overnight shift at the hospital. But he always takes him on Wednesday nights. He’s a crockety son of a bitch, but he adores Jett with every breath he breathes. He hated me when I married his daughter, keeping her in England. He doubly hated me when we divorced. It was a mutual decision and we stayed good friends. But I’d not be separated from my son, and it was only right she move home to be close to family.”
I’m not sure why I’m talking about Katherine. It’s a pain that’s never gone away, watching her die a slow and brutal death.
“Anyway, I’d go and sit with her toward the end. She’d want me to read to her, and I had. All her childhood favorites. And each night, on the way out of her father’s house, as grand as Buckingham palace, I tell you, he’d remind me of her biggest mistake in life, and that was me.”
It’s not a part of my life I’m proud of, yet I couldn’t be true to her at the same time. His hand connects with mine over the butcher top counter and I still for a second.
“Do you mind me asking what went wrong in your marriage? Because it seemed she adored you, and you her.”
To say Katherine was a great love isn’t wrong. Not in the very least. This has gotten dark and heavy, in a hurry. “It’s complicated,” I add, breaking his contact with me.
“Ah, the whole it’s complicated blow-off standard.” His words aren’t full of malice.
“It’s not a blow-off, not really. But if I were to tell you, it may sound a bit too forward of me, and I’ve yet to get a release, and I don’t want to scare you off.” My words are laced with mild humor in my tone.
“Okay, I can accept that one, because I’m not ready to leave either.”
I set the warm coddle in front of where he’s sitting at the butcher top island.
“Hell, this smells like my grams’.” Blowing the piece off, he sinks his teeth into the bite. “Mmmm.” His genuine smile makes me match his.
“Good, would your grams approve, Teach?” I ask, grabbing for the milk out of the refrigerator behind him. I don’t know what comes over me, but I lean over and place a chaste kiss on his cheek.
From the side, his face lights up. “Okay, so I’m moaning like you’re already inside of me. This dish is orgasmic. Fucking hell. I may be coming over for dinner more often, Doc.”
“Orgasmic. I’ve never quite heard this in regard to my cooking, but I’ll take it, Teach.”
I settle in on the other side of him in the middle of my kitchen, taking my first bite.
“I’ve sort of missed your foyer, at first, because well, I guess you could say I was preoccupied, but fuck, your house, or what I’ve seen, is beautiful.”
“Yeah, I bought it for the grand entry, so you missed a lot in the foyer, my good sir.” I give him a cheeky wink, only to continue. “It’s very traditional, with the wide moldings and the cherry finish on the floors. I tend to be a little more modern, but I wanted to pay homage to the house. And because I can’t decorate worth shit, I hired someone to help me. I’ve changed little, but this kitchen was a total gut job. I’m not one for a light kitchen, but my designer promised me white would work, and I think she pulled it off, giving me some more colors and textures in here, or at least it’s what she claimed. Oh, and I took out a downstairs bedroom to make it bigger.”
Whereas my house is thirty-five hundred square feet, my kitchen is a third of my house, with an eat-in bistro and a prep kitchen through double doors behind me.
“Yeah, I’m ready to buy my own house, a place I can have my own slice of heaven. Moving in with a friend and her family wasn’t in the plans.”
I finish my food, almost gobbling it down in a couple bites. “I guess I was hungrier than I thought.”
“Yeah, I’d say.” He’s slower in his bites. “So, if you don’t mind me asking, you were married to a woman, so are you—”
I don’t let him finish. This I can answer. “I’m bisexual. And you?”
This I want to know. Sure, it’s a casual fuck, but at the same time I won’t begin a relationship with a man who isn’t bi.
“Me, too. I’ll be honest.” He pauses, taking a drink of his minerals. “I’ve only been with a couple guys, but I’m certainly attracted to men, as I am to women. However, I thought my last relationship with a woman was it, thinking we were building to something when she apparently hadn’t, leaving me with only a few items.”
“So, you aren’t ready to jump back in right away?”
With the last bite on his fork, he’s neither smiling nor scowling. “I wouldn’t quite go that far, Doc. I think I’d go into it with eyes wide-open, and maybe not give so much of myself up right away as I had with Marcie. We were quick, and I sold everything I owned because she hated my style. I gave it up and in the long run, I just felt empty, as though she drained me.”
I get it. Katherine didn’t drain me, but not being able to be myself with her, it had been excruciating. When I longed for so much more.
“Believe it or not, and this, Teach, is as much as you’re getting from me tonight.”
