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Chapter twenty-five
Ben
My kitchen is a mess.
I glance around with a wide smile and take in the domesticity of it all. Flour coats one surface, mixing with chunks of left over pastry, and red smears of some fruity filling coat Mikaela’s fingers. She swings her hips from side to side, oblivious to my appreciation, and shimmies towards the sink with pots in her hands. Music blares from the speaker on the counter and her hair is once again twisted and pinned with a chopstick with loose tendrils bouncing around her face. Beneath the white shirt she has stolen from me I know she has nothing on, and as she bends forwards to adjust the volume of her music before starting on the dishes, the shirt hitches up, revealing a puckered river of silver I hadn’t noticed before.
It trails down the back of her thigh, thin wire that unwinds below her ass with twisted knots scattering in strange places, and comes to a stop just above the back of her knee. In the light of day it’s the faintest trail across her alabaster skin, in the night it had been entirely invisible. But this isn’t the only scar on her body and, in the back of my mind, I realise I have slowly catalogued them all as I’ve given myself to her. I hadn’t meant to, but they’re all there: listed and noted. The angry pink on her stomach, fresh and healing; the raised ridge that runs beneath her hair; the slash of silver on her collar bone. She has five years of scars and stories I never considered, and watching her dance through my kitchen and bake and wash dishes, as if she has been here one hundred times over, I find myself wondering what the story of Mikaela Wilcox really is. Outside of being Little Mik, outside of Jamie’s shadow and in the light of day, outside ofus, Mikaela has lived a life I know nothing about.
As she turns to the side, reaching for a dish cloth, she spots me. Suds fly into the air when she throws her hands to her chest and huffs out a laugh.
“You’re back.” She blushes as I walk towards her and wipe soapy bubbles from her shoulder.
“I am.” Her shock pulls a smile over my lips as I speak.
“I thought you went for a run.”
“I did.” I wrap my arms around her waist, squeezing gently as she places her hands on my chest and smiles up at me. “What are you making?”
“Pie.” She shrugs as if it’s nothing important and not another strangely normal thing for her to do in my home. “Mom’s recipe.”
I can feel it: my face erupts into an ear to ear grin. The same kind of grin I’d worn countless times in her childhood home. Elizabeth Wilcox made award winning pies when we were kids. She’d even told me once that she considered opening up her own little shop before Mik’s dad left and she got sick. I remember staying in Jamie’s room when my own father would turn; Elizabeth would make my favorite pie every time. Almost as if she knew I needed it.
“Is it -”
“Cherry,” Mik interrupts, turning away from me and grabbing some plastic wrap from a drawer as I follow her through the open space. “For some reason you had the exact ingredients laying around? Was someone hoping I’d share the recipe?” She teases me as she glances over her shoulder.
“Not at all. Now, remind me why we haven’t done this before if it means I get cherry pie?” I lean back against the kitchen island as she rolls the remaining crust into a small ball and wraps it tightly. Her mom taught her to freeze it for later use.
“Because,” she muses as she continues to tidy with a smile on her face, “we had rules. And before that, I used to hate you.”
I bark out a laugh and Mikaela grins. Last night definitely wiped hate off of the table, as did this morning, and the countless nights we’ve broken rule number two over the last month.
“Well, let the record reflect that I have never hated you. Not even as kids.”As I speak, I push away from my resting place and run my hands across her shoulders and down her arms. My fingers entwine with hers as I wrap myself around her and punctuate the thought with a soft kiss to her neck. When I hold her like this, her muscles relaxing with my embrace, I wonder how I’ll ever be able to let go.
I don’t think I ever could.
Mikaela
While the shower runs I sit on the couch with my legs crossed. The blanket that had been strewn across the arm of the chair last night is now draped over me and I hold an open book in my hands. Although my eyes skim the words on the page, I take nothing in.
Nothing about the last twenty-four hours has been normal. Nothing about the day I am happily spending baking in his kitchen, and curled up in his arms, and avoiding checking my phone is normal. Nothing. We’ve stepped over that line into a world we knew would have to change, and panic now settles in my stomach like an old friend returning for a surprise visit. The longer I’m away from him, the more I sink.
When he’d gone to take a shower he’d kissed me again. His lips had been lighter than a feather and his thumb had brushed against my cheek as if I were the most delicate silk that might tear beneath his touch. I’d smiled against his lips and pushed him to the bathroom. He’d made me promise I wouldn’t get changed. He said he wanted to see me wearing his clothes for a little while longer. And I agreed. I wanted to keep his shirt on. And besides, the only thing I have here is last night’s dress. But now, as I hear him singing off key in the shower and I pretend to read a book I haven’t even checked the name of, I want to run. Or hide. Or cry.
And I have a sinking feeling I know why.
I place the book down on the coffee table and get to my feet, leaving the blanket rumpled on the couch behind me.
My bag is still by the door from last night - dropped haphazardly as I had let him pull me into his apartment and bind me with more of those kisses I desperately adore - and I fish my phone from beneath the lipstick and concealer, tissues and business cards. My stomach drops and that desire to cry bubbles to the surface again, face to face with its cause.
Six missed calls from Jamie. Two voicemails. Two texts. Max also called twice and text. I open his first.
Max: You are in trouble. I had to leave that party for you :( call me.
I am panicking. I am definitely panicking. That’s why I can’t breathe as I dial, and why I slide down the wall and sit between the unit and the front door, curled in on myself as the phone rings. That’s why, when Max answers the phone, I find myself whispering.
“Mikaela Wilcox, you are in so much trouble.”
