My capacity to feel is . . . overwhelming. But here, in his arms, I wonder if maybe it’s so overwhelming because I never tried to unburden myself, to give it to someone else for a while.
The way I am, even in just this small way right now, with Christopher.
For so long I have prided myself on not needing others, loving people from a safe distance, through brief visits and playful care packages and entertaining emails. But beneath that pride, that fierce determination to be independent, is the desperate need for someone to grab me by the elbow and haul me into their arms and let me fall apart until I can put myself back together.
Just like Christopher has.
“Katydid,” he says softly, pulling me from my thoughts, back to his arms, to his palm steadily circling my back. “Let me make you pasta. All I need is flour and eggs. And those KitchenAid pasta-maker attachments I gifted Jules a couple Christmases back.”
“I don’t know if we even have that,” I tell him. “The flour or eggs, I mean.”
Slowly, he steps back, but his hand stays with mine, lacing our fingers together. “Let’s find out. We’ll run to the store if not.”
I let him tug me toward the kitchen and try not to feel deprived when he untangles our hands, using his to shut my laptop, power off my headphones, then slide them down the island, out of sight. He wraps up the bag of chips, sweeps away the crumbs, and wipes the island clean.
“Sit,” he says, tipping his head toward the chairs on the other side of the now-tidied island.
I don’t want an island between us. I want to be close to this new Christopher, so I can examine him and indulge my needy fascination. Instead, I hop up on the counter beside him, legs swinging. “Seated.”
He gives me a wry smile, then turns toward the kitchen cabinets, more at home and familiar with their contents than I am, even after weeks living here. I watch him find flour, then open the fridge and locate a carton of eggs.
And then I watch him do something I’ve never watched someone do so closely. His fingers deftly unbutton his cuffs and make quick work of rolling the fabric of his shirtsleeves up his arms, until it’s nestled right above his elbows, like they were when we tangoed. He turns on the water over the sink and starts a soapy lather in his palms.
I stare at his hands and forearms, these practical parts of his body that I’ve seen countless times. They don’t make me feel very practical right now.
They make me feel warm and unsteady as I look at them—long fingers and the rough joints of his knuckles, the muscles in his arms visible beneath a dusting of dark hair.
My breath feels tight. I think about touching those hands, sliding my fingertips across his skin, feeling fine, soft hair and hard, thick muscle. I think about taking those hands and pulling them toward my body so they can ease the ache between my thighs, which I squeeze together.
“Want to make it with me?” Christopher asks, eyes on his task as he sets out a wide nonstick mat and measures out flour onto it.
I set a hand against my hot cheek, trying to cool myself down. “I’m not sure.”
“I think you should.”
“Why?” I watch as he settles the flour into a circle, then hollows out a crater in the center of it.
“It’s cathartic.” He cracks an egg seamlessly, dropping it into the flour crater. “C’mon. Roll up those sleeves and wash your hands, Katydid. You’ll see.”
When I don’t answer him right away, he doesn’t seem to mind, doesn’t pressure or heckle me. He just cracks a few more eggs, then sinks his hands into the eggy lake in its flour valley and crushes half the yolks on the first kneading squeeze.
I never got the “food porn” concept, but if this is it, I do now.
Some kind of pained noise must leak out of me, because Christopher peers up, a furrow etched in his brow. “What is it?”
“I . . .” Riveted by the pasta-making porn, I search for words I don’t have.
He glances down, following my line of sight, then swears quietly under his breath. “My watch.” He lifts an egg-and-flour-covered hand in my direction. “Would you take it off?”
I stare down at his messy hand, his wrist where his pulse pounds steadily. Gingerly, I take his wrist and draw it closer, so I have a better angle to undo the buckle. Christopher observes me as I take off his watch, unusually quiet. I’m careful as I turn it over, examining the face, knowing, as I search the catalog of my sharp visual memory, that it’s familiar. “It was your dad’s.”
He stares down at it resting in my palm. “Yes.”