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He swirled the coated pasta around the fork and slipped it between his lips. The world halted on its axis, then jolted awake as he swallowed. He had died and woken up in Tuscany.
“Oh, baby. This is absolutely amazing,” he said. The pasta ribbons were the perfect size and consistency to pick up the rich, meaty rabbit ragu.
“You didn’t just call me baby,” Lili said.
“Correct, I didn’t. I was talking to the food.”
“You two need to be alone?”
“Maybe. I would have sex with this pasta if I could.”
“With the way your love life is going, that might be your best bet.” She licked her lips, catching some of the sauce from the corner of her mouth. Her hand hovered over the focaccia, but she withdrew breadless.
“There’s plenty more.”
“That’s okay,” she murmured, and something about how she said it sent a quiver of unease through him. Bloody Twitter.
Covertly, he watched her slurping the noodles, all while envying her fork. Damn if it wasn’t sexy. He loved that she’d eaten everything he had fed her today and that she didn’t have a weird relationship with food. So unlike most of the women he dated who were constantly whining about carbs and diets. He was suddenly aware of the irony, that his taste in women usually veered toward the ones who despised the very thing he spent his life’s work on. It gave him a moment’s pause. At the same time, another interesting thought lit up his blood-deprived frontal lobe.
Healthy appetites usually had universal application.
He loved cooking, women, and, since he’d moved to New York eight years ago, the Mets. In that order. And this season, the Mets couldn’t hit for shit. He’d played sexy food games with previous lovers but it had always felt like a fraud, like he was going through the motions because eating involved mouths and tongues, ergo it was a natural complement to sex. But experiencing food with a woman had never felt like this. Sensual and visceral. Right.
Rein. It. In. His gaze drifted to the restaurant’s exposed brick walls, eager to get his filthy mind off sex. “These photos are good. Yours?”
“Hmm.” She looked around as if noticing them for the first time. “I took some of them in Italy. Some of them in the parks around the city.”
“Is this the kind of work you usually do?”
“No, this was just for fun, my take on Cartier-Bresson. Trying to catch people at a decisive moment. I’m more interested in posed portraiture at the moment, specifically the human body as text and narrative.”
“What does that mean?”
She paused, probably trying to think of one-syllable words to explain it to him. “Nudes, Jack.” She gifted him with a lazy, devastating grin. “I work with my friend, Zander. He’s interested in the male form and the interplay of light on muscle, particularly when the body is under stress.”
“Under stress?”
“Yeah, working out, tied up, that kind of thing. The tauter the muscle action, the better for Zander.”
Jesus, only artists could get away with that kind of shit.
“Do you work with men?” The only taut male musculature he wanted to think about Lili seeing was his.
“No, I work strictly with the female body. As interesting as the male form is, a female’s lines are much more beautiful.”
“On that we can agree,” he said, stupidly relieved. “Cara said you’re planning to go to graduate school in New York. Which one?” Real subtle, subconscious.
“I had my eye on Parsons. They have a great photography program, but...” The pause stretched tight.
“You’ve been busy with other things,” he finished for her.
A short nod, a quick blink, and she looked away. Her thoughts echoed loudly, so loudly they made his heart thud against his rib cage.
“Sounds like it’s been a tough year,” he said.
She made a gulping noise. “Tougher for my mom. And for Dad, too. He’s crazy about her and I’m not sure he would have survived if she hadn’t.” She hesitated and rubbed the lip of her wine glass.
“Go on, love.”
