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“I don’t know. Seven, maybe.” I see his disbelief. “The mission was always giving us cornmeal. I guess there must’ve been a cornbread recipe on the bag. I’m sure I’ve altered it from the original over the years.”
“You made cornbread when you were seven?”
“Well, w— I wanted to eat.” I stumble over the words a little. “Eggs and bacon were always sparse, so when I layered them like this, it made a larger meal. I saw you had sausage, so that works, too.” I pause wondering if I overstepped, or used ingredients that were allocated for something else. “I hope that was okay. You’ve been doing all the cooking, and I wanted to help.”
“It’s fabulous. Thank you.” He says. But still he shakes his head. “Seven! Didn't your parents cook for you?”
I don’t ever talk about my childhood. I know I was sidetracked with thinking about my damned panic attack, but how did he drag that out of me? I don’t know where to go with this conversation now.
“Um. Well, my mom wasn’t around, and my father was... He was gone a lot.”
“Who took care of you?”
“I mostly took care of myself. I mean, there were teachers at school, and the church ladies who sometimes came by.”
His beautiful mouth is turned down now, and he rakes a hand through his hair.
“There are a lot of latchkey kids, James.” I say in a quiet tone, trying to throw my lot in with that category even though I know it wasn’t quite the same.
“Okay, you’re right.” He doesn’t sound very accepting, but he drops it. He goes on to talk about family recipes his mom taught him and his brother when they were teenagers.
Chapter 8
~~ James ~~
Lorelai is moving around better today. She’s in the shower now. I can hear the water splash as she moves around. The image of her body in her lingerie is burned into my brain, and the thought of her without it is doing a number on my head.
I sweep the floor and wash the dishes. I let Rusty out into the weather again, but I notice the wind is no longer howling.
When I come back into the cabin, she’s standing in the doorway of the bathroom in a wrinkled, cropped band tee. It’s Nirvana this time with the smiley face seeming to smirk at me like it knows I’m taking in the way my sweatpants drop around her hips, the strings tight in a bow with the ends hanging low. It knows I’ve caught sight of the tiny hoop in her navel and the words tattooed on her side I didn’t take time to read when she was unconscious. "It is what it is," in a loopy script, finished with some vines and a flower.
She’s trying to comb her hair, but she’s also leaning against the door frame like she’s having a hard time standing up. Bruises peek from the waistband on her other side. She looks up when I close the door, and I can see her eyes are shining silver with unshed tears. My heart crumbles.
I grab a chair from the table and place it in front of the recliner. “C’mere.” I tell her, patting the chair seat. She limps the few steps to the chair and sinks down with one leg stretched out. I hold out my hand for the comb, and she hesitates. “It’s okay to accept help sometimes,” I say. “It doesn’t make you less strong.”
Her eyes dart away, and I swear I hear a shaky indrawn breath, but she passes me the comb without looking back to me. I gather the thick mass of hair and drape it over the chair back. I force myself to focus on the task of starting at the bottom of a small section and working the tangles out before moving higher.
By the time I reach the other side of her head, the first side is drying into soft strands of silky fire. It touches my knees as I lean to reach the top of the last section. I can’t help but run my fingers through the ends. I wonder what it would feel like brushing my chest as she leans over me.
I must’ve made a sound because Lorelai turns in the seat. Her eyes have darkened to a soft shade of gray rimmed with a surprising blue. She exhales and my eyes drop to her mouth. Her lips are parted, and I linger there, wondering again how she tastes. Her tongue touches her bottom lip and I’m instantly rock hard.
I close my eyes and call myself names until the urge to bend her over the bed and do dirty things to her young body passes. Fuck. I’m a shit.
She takes the comb I hold out to her and struggles a little to get up. Normally, I’d lend her a hand or an arm, but I don’t trust myself to touch her right now. Instead, I return the chair and fill the ice pack I dug out of the first aid kit after I saw she’d made a makeshift one this morning.
When I walk back into the main room, Lorelai is relaxed on the loveseat with her legs stretched out on the cushions, pushing her arms into the same threadbare green sweater I’d loaned her. She pulls up a blanket and says a soft “thank you” when I hand her the ice pack. She has her tablet in hand, so I pick up my book, hunting clues alongside the detective hero. It feels good, warm, having someone next to me even though we’re doing separate things. I didn’t know I missed this. Maybe I hadn’t, and just realized I like it. Quiet companionship...
“James?” Lorelai’s voice pulls me out of the story after an hour or so. “Do you mind if I play some music? What genre do you like?” Her voice almost always seems modulated to be unassuming, non-confrontational. I wonder if that’s her natural personality or if she’s trained herself that way, or if those become the same after too long.
“Of course. I like a little of everything. Choose something you want to hear.” I tell her.
The smoky tones of an alto sax waltz into the air. After a few minutes, I hear a fiddle filtering through a guitar medley. Then a Stratocaster’s wail. I smile at how literal she took that, “little of everything”. Instead of just choosing one genre to play, she’s put together a playlist of, well, everything. The music sinks into the background as I keep reading, the warmth of companionship still at the forefront.
About the time my detective is putting together the clues pointing toward the culprit and sifting through the red herrings, Rusty’s whine and scratch at the back door interrupts. I get up and stretch. The inactivity of the last few days is starting to creep in. My body is usually punished to its limit almost daily between training, working out, keeping the ship running, and rescues. I suddenly feel the need to DO something.
I let Rusty out and eye the stacks of snow littering the back porch. The storm is calming, I think. At least it’s no longer blasting snow from mini tornados of wind. I spot the snow shovel hanging by the back door. Ah. That I can do.
I peek back at Lorelai still snuggled under the blanket on the loveseat. She seems engrossed in her tablet. I’m glad her headache is gone, although it was exciting to relive some of my boyhood days through the stories I shared with her. She shifts while I watch, stretching one arm up and then folding it under her head, her eyes never breaking from the device. I imagine the ways I want to stretch her, and curse under my breath.
