A shy reference librarian, and a college student who was disowned when she refused to submit to conversion therapy, meet in a bookstore. He's been waiting his whole life for her. Meanwhile, she's starting her whole life over. What ensues between the...
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I am covered with honey and cinnamon. The table is getting messy, too; we're going to have to really scrub to clean it off. I'm not sure what holding still is accomplishing, given the incredible amount of inevitable splattering, but I continue to do so. It's for art. Besides, he asked me to.
Holding still is getting difficult, though, because he's started painting my nether regions. Every stroke of the paintbrush makes me want to roll my hips in ecstasy.
"It's amazing how many euphemisms and slang terms for the female genitalia reference honey or sugar," he says, and does something particularly interesting with a corner of the brush. "Jelly hole. Jelly roll. Honey pot. Honey hive. Honey trap. Sticky bun. Sugar basin. Donut. It makes the female genitalia into a dessert. Linguistically speaking."
"Oh," I reply.
I can't tell if I'm automatically commenting on his words or on what he's doing with the paintbrush. It probably doesn't matter too much, really.
"Rather makes one wonder if terms of endearment like 'my sweetness' were used innocently."
He pauses his monologue.
That's not a paintbrush. I cry out. I don't want him to stop what he's doing...
...and he stops. And he gets up to go to the refrigerator. And he starts rummaging. I groan. This isn't fair. Just now, the oven timer also chooses to go off, so he takes spanakopitas and tiropitas out of the oven and baklava out of the toaster oven, and then turns off the heat to the ovens and sets the baking dishes on the counters to cool. We're running out of counter space. I'm running out of patience, but that's my problem.
When he returns, he has the bowl of grape and yogurt salad in the crook of his arm. "You didn't really think I'd forgotten about you?" he asks. "Tsk. You know better than that." Then he starts inserting the grapes.
"They're... they're cold," I gasp, displaying fine mastery of the obvious. Not that coldness is a bad thing. Actually, it feels quite interesting. Interesting, that's a good word for it. I think he could hold my attention this way for quite some time.
"Don't worry; I'll warm you up. Stop wriggling, please. You'll undo my work."
How many grapes is he going to try to fit in there? I feel frozen and stuffed. The filling sensation is not at all unpleasant; I've accommodated his hand on numerous occasions, and the grapes aren't much different in that regard, except for the fact that I can't move around the grapes to get myself off, the way I can move around his hand. The chill, however - I'm not sure whether it feels uncomfortable in a bad way, or uncomfortable in a good way. I do know it's starting to feel uncomfortable. I'm shivering from the cold.
And then he gets up, lifts the saucer to drink tea out of the mug, sits back down again, and puts his mouth against me. Warm tea spills against my flesh. After the cold of the grapes and the yogurt, it feels like sunlight. I moan.
