Chapter 8
Eight
Reef
“Reef, are you okay?”
Quincy stands behind me as I bask in this absolute paradise of a kitchen.
“I…love…your grandmother.”
I have stepped inside a time capsule. If someone asked me to tear apart every updated white kitchen on Zillow and redo it, it would be this.
It’s like an avalanche of nostalgia and happiness, and I have to take it in little by little.
The gold laminate countertops. The double oven with shiny chrome dials. The black and white cat clock, with its tail swinging back and forth.
“You’ve never met her,” Quincy says, sidling up next to me, resting a hand on my shoulder. “Oh my god, do you see ghosts?”
I go over to the table and unpack the groceries, my head bumping into the hanging stained glass lamp with its pictures of fruit. The pattern matches the woven basket on the table that holds plastic grapes and pears, which, in turn, matches the 1970s fringed placemats.
“No, I don’t see ghosts. I fucking love this kitchen.”
Quincy sighs and helps me unpack. “Mmkay. Hopefully, the oven still works. I’ve never tried it.”
I stare at her. “You don’t use it?”
She shakes her head. “I’m a little scared of it, to be honest.”
“How do you eat?”
“The microwave works fine.”
The behemoth countertop microwave that’s more than thirty years old is about the only thing in this kitchen that should be chucked out, but I’m not about to scold Quincy and explain how much radiation is probably leaking out of that old thing. I scrub my face and say, “I assure you, it doesn’t.”
“I can’t just go buy a new microwave, I mean…”
“Don’t need to. I’ll come over and cook for you every day if I have to.”
That came out more intense than intended. I meant it to be jokey, didn’t I?
I glance over at her and breathe a sigh of relief that she’s smiling. Good. She thinks it’s a joke. But then the still small voice inside reminds me that wasn’t a joke. You want that.
When we’re finished unpacking, I stare down at the brown basket-weave patterned linoleum. How is it so perfect? No grimy corners. Not a single seam coming loose.
“I wish my grandmother knew yours before she died. She had to put her house down for collateral before she moved into the memory care unit. I ended up having to update everything so I could rent it out, so I could afford to pay for all of that.” It all comes out like a stream of consciousness.
Quincy sighs again, this time with watery eyes staring up at me. “Oh, Reef. I’m sorry. When did she pass?”
I can’t keep making eye contact like that when I’m so ashamed of what I did to my grandmother’s house.
I cut my eyes to the wallpaper. The fucking wallpaper, with its gold and brown sketches of tea kettles and fireplaces and fruit baskets.
My brain echoes a memory: “It’s a kitchen inside a kitchen!
” one of my aunts said about the wallpaper, because my grandmother had the exact same thing in her house.
I shake my head. “Five years ago.”
“I’m sorry,” she says again.
“There was nothing left of her after I was done with that house. I wish I would have kept it the same and let her see it. It might have given her…what’s it called…um…”
Quincy moves her hand to the side of my neck, right where my pulse is, basically forcing me to look at her. “Reminiscence therapy.”
“How do you know about that?”
“Because that’s what my sisters and I had to do with our grandmother when our mom couldn’t…well, you know. She just…couldn’t handle it anymore.”
Hers too?
“Did you send her somewhere?”
She shakes her head no. “The decline was quicker than we expected. We all tag-teamed and did our best to keep her at home, where she was comfortable. Where she had all of her familiar things. In the end we had to have a full-time nurse.”
Damn.
I pull away from Quincy and quickly swallow down the shame and the painful memories. “Cake time. It’s getting late,” I say. I let the feeling run down the drain as I wash my hands and prepare for the task at hand.
I feel like I’m looting the place as I search out the measuring cups and spoons, mixing bowls, hand mixer, cake pan, cutting boards, knives.
I can feel Quincy watching me as I do it.
“Reef,” she says. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
I examine the oven, making sure the pilot light is on. I open the door to find the inside of it as pristine as the outside.
Quincy is right next to me as I move to the fridge to grab the eggs, then to the pantry to get the oil.
I turn, trying to tell her to relax, and that I don’t need her help.
But her forearm brushes against my chest as she points up to the shelf where the vegetable oil is kept.
Her warmth and sweetness jolt me inside this small closet of a pantry, and I find my stubbornness crumbling.
I clasp my hand around her forearm where she reaches past me. “Quincy, I don’t need your help.”
She stares up at me. “You need help all right. A lot of it.”
“Quincy.”
Her eyes widen in response to some kind of reaction she sees in my face. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”
I soften instantly. “I don’t want you thinking that. I didn’t take it like that. But I don’t want to talk about it. I just need to feel like shit for a damn minute until it passes. Understand?”
Her bottom lip trembles, but she nods her head yes and backs out of the pantry.
She watches me from the other side of the kitchen, where the linoleum disappears into a darkened hallway. Her arms are crossed as she watches me do what I do.
This lasts for about five minutes.
The feeling doesn’t pass.
And honestly, I don’t want to feel like shit anymore.
I turn off the pre-heating oven and eat up the distance between us.
I back her against the far wall of the hallway and kiss her full on the mouth, locking her in my arms so I can feel the expansion of her chest as she gasps for breath.
It’s a long, claiming, thorough kiss, with my hands hitching up under her shirt to feel the damp heat of her bare skin.
“But…”
“Do you understand?” I grit out, clasping her body tight to mine so she can feel how ready I am to move on to the next thing.
Her grip on my shoulders relaxes. I reach up and take one of her hands in mine and turn it over, palm up.
I kiss the center of her palm, then spot where her hand meets her wrist, and then, slowly, drag my lips over the tender skin on the inside of her forearm.
She rasps, “Cake can wait.”
Quincy’s bedroom is so…her. It’s all bright mix-and-match furniture from different eras, a modern shag rug, dozens of blankets and throw pillows.
It's a mixture of lacy and delicate things offset by quirky and sequined items. On the walls are framed Broadway musical posters, local artwork, and a hell of a lot of macrame. A huge art print above her bed shows a dreamy-looking woman lying in a field that I recognize as Waterhouse’s Ophelia.
I’m sad to report my ability to identify this is not a result of my higher education, but of the proliferation of Ophelia paintings in internet memes.
I have thoughts about that hanging above her bed, but I keep that shit to myself.
I just feel honored she lets me into this space, with her colors and her scent and her personality splashed everywhere. Everything about it makes me even crazier about her.
As we tumble onto the bed together, we punctuate the kissing with tugging, wrestling and tearing at each other’s clothes. Frustrated, Quincy wriggles out of her work shirt with an angry grunt. She removes her bra with a sigh of enormous relief.
My heart hammers against my ribs, not just at the sight of her, but at how she seems to feel so much better without her breasts under wraps. Like she can breathe again.
She reaches for me the second I wrestle out of my shirt. The skin-on-skin contact feels better than it should. She looks like, smells like, and feels like mine. Mine.
I dip my head down, taking one of her rosy nipples into my mouth, licking over the hard tip. Quincy’s pink nails gently rake through the hair on the back of my head. I pull and pull, taking what I want, until she lets out a squeak and begins to writhe under me.
I let that nipple slip from my mouth with a soft pop.
I get rid of what’s left of her clothes and hover over her on the bed. Kissing her shining, swollen lips once more, I ask for what I want, even though I know the answer.
“Let me taste you?”
She nods and lets out an, “Uh-huh,” while nearly pushing my head downward. I can’t help the greedy smile as I get into position.
She spreads for me and I have to just stare for a moment, mindful about what I’m about to do. Everything changes after this. This is not something I do for someone I don’t care about. Care? I would burn down this whole mountain for her if it was for her own good somehow.
I lower my head and trace a line of small, licking kisses over her inner thigh, memorizing her soft skin, and teasing her until her folds are slick with her sweetness. By the time I slowly work my way back to her center, her fingers are working through my hair and her breathing is ragged.
I kiss her damp center more softly, with teasing kisses, driving us both mad.
Quincy is sweet and salty on my tongue, and every taste makes me crave more.
“Yes, Reef…oh god….”
I split open her folds and find her entrance, fucking her with my tongue. She cries out and lets go of my skull, apparently needing to hang on to something else to steady her as hips rise and thrust against my driving tongue.
She’s going to come hard and fast; I can feel the change in her breathing.
“Oh god…oh god!”
I flatten my tongue and drag slowly upward, finding her hard clit, red and erect. Fucking mine. First I drag my tongue over it, which sends her thighs trembling violently. I settle her legs on my shoulders, squeezing them against my ears as I take that clit into my mouth.
She curls upward off the bed as she cries out her release. I drink in every drop of what she has for me. I don’t let go until she reaches for me with scrambling, trembling hands.
I join her on the pillows and share her taste in a sustaining kiss as the waves of her orgasm wash over her.
Her breath eventually settles, and she makes quick work of my shorts and underwear, having found her way here before. “Give it to me,” she says greedily, happily, with smiling, flushed cheeks.
Laughing, I help her out by tugging my shorts down, letting her have her way with me.
But I’m not ready for how good she feels, with her soft hands wrapping firmly around my length, caressing, then pumping.
I’m still half-hovering over her, and she pushes my shoulder gently with her free hand. “Lie back,” she orders.
I do as she says, and then her head disappears under the sheet.
I toss it aside, keeping my eyes on her as she takes me in her mouth, slicking her wet tongue over me, cleaning the outrageous amounts of precum I’ve been leaking, leaking, leaking, probably since the moment I first saw her ass jiggling down the dock.
She’s so sweet and so perfect, it’s all I can do not to close my eyes. But I don’t want to miss a single second of this.
Her head bobs up and down, her hair brushing against my balls. She takes me a little deeper, then a little more, then a little faster, until the pleasure takes hold and I can’t hold back any longer, and I’m fucking her mouth.
The familiar sensation builds too quickly. “Baby, I’m coming,” I tell her through clenched teeth, my one fist knotted in her hair and the other twisted in the sheet.
That’s the warning. But Quincy doesn’t heed it.
She swallows every damn drop and leaves nothing left of me.
I come so hard that my vision goes foggy, and I fear she’s sucked out my soul.
Good. Perfect. As it should be.
If I die like this, so be it.