Chapter 14
Matt had been quiet after his Thursday outing with his friends.
At first, I thought he was just tired. It had been late when he got home, and he was always tired after he had a few beers.
Just one of the little things I’d learned about him over the past few weeks, something I filed away in my head alongside other little idiosyncrasies like the fact that he washed his face in the shower instead of at the sink and refused to use the moisturizer I’d talked him into at the store.
It didn’t seem like a big deal, except that he was still quiet on Friday.
He was withdrawn, and I could practically feel the walls up between us.
I didn’t like it.
I didn’t like it one bit.
I thought about calling Eli. He’d texted me after Matt’s apartment caught fire, and I had a feeling he’d have some idea about what was going on with my boyfriend.
The only thing that kept me from doing that was the fact that it felt way too invasive.
Besides, I was probably overreacting. It was probably work related or something.
Saturday was a little better. He was a little more talkative as we ran our errands in the morning.
Okay, he was better once we hit the grocery store.
He started making suggestions for dinners for the week, things he could make or things I could make.
I could feel the wall starting to come down, and I wanted to figure out a way to pull it down completely.
I didn’t like the feeling of disconnect between us, and I wanted it gone.
“We should cook tonight,” I suggested as we browsed the meat. “We haven’t made Nonna’s lasagna in a while.”
I found the magic words. Matt’s eyes lit up, and he practically wiggled like an excited puppy dog right there in the grocery store.
“Oh my God, I used to dream about your Nonna’s lasagna.
Every time I had to eat someone else’s… And I could never get it right.
I tried making it, but no luck. It always came out terrible. ”
“That’s because Nonna told me the secret and made me swear on her life that I’d never tell anyone,” I said with a shrug.
“But we used to make it together all the time.”
“With a premixed seasoning blend. The secret’s what’s in the blend.”
Matt’s jaw dropped. “But you told me what was in the blend!”
“Everything but one ingredient,” I confessed.
“Nonna told me I could tell you if and only if you became a Guthrie.” She’d not given the same blessing to any of my other partners.
I think even she could tell that they weren’t the right fit for me, not the way Matt had been when we were younger.
He was starting to feel like the right fit again.
If he wasn’t the right fit, would I really be going out of my way to tear down the walls? I used to embrace the walls between me and my partners. They used to be my walls. Having Matt, open and loving and kind Matt, putting up the walls just felt wrong.
Matt and I finished our shopping and checked out.
We moved like a singular unit around my kitchen, putting away the week’s groceries.
I dictated the week’s menu to him after everything was put away, and he wrote it on the dry erase board on my fridge.
The longer we moved around the kitchen like a team, the less disconnected I felt from him.
Maybe this was just what we needed: a night that was just about the two of us working together on a project.
We started with the sauce. I set him to work on cutting the tomatoes and onions while I prepped the fresh garlic. Our elbows would occasionally brush against each other’s as we worked side-by-side, and each brush sent jolts of electricity down my spine.
“These look okay?” Matt asked as he finished dicing a few tomatoes.
I studied the uniform cuts and nodded. “They look great. Yours are always so much better than mine.”
“A coder’s attention to detail,” he teased as he nudged the stack to the side and started another tomato.
I watched as he cut the next one, distracted by the way the muscles and veins in his forearm flexed with every move of the knife.
He was distracting, and worse, he seemed to notice the effect he was having on me.
“Aren’t you supposed to be getting that garlic ready? ” he teased.
I stuck my tongue out at him and resumed my work.
Twenty minutes later, the sauce was simmering on the back burner.
“Do you remember how to make the noodles?” I asked him as I started pulling tins of flour from the top of my refrigerator.
I could feel Matt’s eyes on the small strip of back that popped into view when I reached for it, and I was suddenly thanking God that shorter shirts were on trend.
And if I took a little longer to grab the flour tin, well that was between me and God, wasn’t it? “Matt?”
“Uh,” he stammered. “S-sorry. Distracted. Yeah. I remember how to make noodles from scratch.”
“Perfect. Get out the eggs?” I instructed as I finally pulled down the flour and put it on the counter.
He ducked around me to get the eggs from the refrigerator and stopped by the pantry for the olive oil without any direction from me.
I loved cooking with people who actually knew what they were doing.
I loved Moira to bits, but she was hopeless in the kitchen.
Most of the people in my life were. Matt was a welcome breath of fresh air.
Hot, steamy fresh air, I realized, as I watched him knead the dough ten minutes later.
My tongue darted out between my lips as I watched him, and I started taking a few slow steps forward.
I was a moth drawn to his flame, but at least I wasn’t alone in it.
He leaned back against me when I neared him, resting his back against my torso.
I slowly dragged my fingers down his arms, resting over his hands, as we began kneading the dough together.
The smell of fresh dough mingled with the smell of his body wash, a soft, clean smell that was so distinctly him.
He’d been using the same body wash since high school, and every time I smelled it in my bathroom or on the sheets, I felt that thing again.
That rightness. I nuzzled into his neck and inhaled.
“Distracting,” he whispered.
“I could be more distracting,” I warned him before kissing his neck. He angled his head to the side to give me better access. He stopped kneading the dough and relaxed back into me. “You have to keep kneading.”
His hands began to move again, stalling momentarily as I bit down on the column of his neck.
I guided his hands back to work and rolled my hips against him.
The quiet moan he rewarded me with was everything.
The walls were tumbling down. I could feel them being deconstructed with every touch of my lips to his warm skin, and I needed more.
I dragged my hands up his strong arms and wrapped them tightly around his torso. I could feel his erect nipples through the thin fabric of his shirt. He was so responsive, and I wanted to milk every possible response from him. I tweaked one of his nipples, and he moaned again.
“Think the dough’s good to rest,” he breathed out.
I stopped kissing his neck long enough to look at the dough. “Looks good,” I agreed, guiding him around to face me. My eyes looked over his flushed face and landed on his spit slick lips. “Looks very good.”
I started to lean into him, desperate for a taste of those shiny lips of his. He pulled away, grin on his lips. “We need to cover the dough,” he reminded me.
He stepped away from me. I groaned. “Tease.”
“Nope,” he answered with a grin. “After we cover it, we have to let it rest. Takes some time, remember? And we can’t start the cheese sauce until later…
” His voice trailed off as he moved toward the sink.
I watched him for a moment before catching the hints he was dropping.
We had time while the sauce simmered and the dough rested.
I jumped into action, making quick work of rolling the dough into a ball and putting it in the wooden bowl I’d pulled down from the cabinet.
By the time the dough was in place, he had a wet towel ready to go.
He covered it and grabbed me by the collar of my shirt, dragging me in for a rough kiss.
My mouth opened to his tongue immediately.
I reached to grab the front of his shirt and guided us both backward to the wall.
We hit it so hard, I felt the canvas artwork I had hung there shake.
Matt laughed into my open mouth, and I felt all the walls crumble down.
I could feel every bit of that connection between us, every ounce of feeling I had toward him.
The way I felt about him was terrifying.
It was so foreign, and I didn’t know if it was the ghost of what we once had haunting me, tricking me into thinking that this time things could be different, or something entirely new.
Or maybe it was a combination of the two.
I didn’t know, and I couldn’t figure out how to detangle the complicated threads of emotion.
But when he plunged his tongue into my mouth, I realized it didn’t really matter right then. Later I could sit with all the introspection in the world. I could figure out what I felt for him, and I could take my time untangling everything. But now? God, now all I wanted was to feel him against me.
I made quick work of pulling the shirt from over his head. It was dirty anyway. There was flour across the front from where I’d been playing with his nipples. Better to leave it on the kitchen floor, especially since it left me free to explore the lithe muscles of his body.
I managed to pull my lips from his and began kissing along his neck again, kissing down to his collarbones.
I spun him around so his back was against the wall and fell to my knees.
I wanted to taste him, needed to taste him.
I needed to hear the responsive moans and groans that came when I wrapped my lips around his cock.