Chapter Nineteen
WE ARE SOMEWHAT DRESSED—her braless and wearing one of my WCU T-shirts with a pair of my boxers, me in thin cotton sweatpants—and when I try to put on a shirt, Nora yanks the gray cotton from my hands and tosses it across the room.
Shaking her head, she grabs my hand and pulls me out of the room. Nora holds me tightly, her hands always so warm. So we walk, hand in hand, into my kitchen, where she goes straight to the fridge. I lean on the counter and she busies herself.
Her head pops out from behind the open fridge door. “Do you like cabbage?”
I recoil. “Does anyone?” My mom’s cabbage rolls would smell up the whole house for at least two days. It was horrible.
A smile creeps across her face. “Have you had it recently?”
I shake my head.
She nods and closes the fridge. “Will you try it my way? If you don’t like it, I’ll make pizza.”
I can name about thirty things I would rather do than eat cabbage. Twenty-nine of them have to do with Nora’s naked body . . . Unless I get to eat the cabbage off it?
I wonder how hard it would be to get her to agree to that.
Nora walks to me, a whole cabbage head in hand. I back away with a smile, and she advances on me, her smile even bigger than mine.
“How about this?” She moves the head of cabbage behind her back. “If you promise to take two bites, I’ll make cookies, too.”
As she takes a teasing step back, she licks her lips, and I don’t tell her that with a mouth like that, I would do many, many things for her.
“Hmm.” I press my fingers to my chin, pretending to be weighing the bargain in my head. I love to tease her and watch her eyes crinkle and sparkle, and the sassy smile that fills her face gives me the instant gratification I was searching for. “And you’ll feed the cookies to me?”
She nods, beaming. “And the cabbage.”
I walk over to her, lean into her body so that the fridge touches her back, and bring my lips to her ear. “You’ve got yourself a deal, little lady.”
She’s breathless when she pulls away from me.
A few minutes later, when the oven is preheating and Nora has already cut and pulled apart the cabbage leaves, I decide to try to connect a few more pieces of the puzzle that is her.
I start with simple questions. “Did you grow up in Washington?”
She shakes her head. “No. I lived in California for a while when I was young. Then we moved to Las Vegas, then to Washington.”
“Wow.” I remember the move from Michigan to Washington, feeling like my little world was being flipped upside down. For the first two months I missed my house, my school, my girlfriend. Well, I missed Dakota all the time, until now. Guilt rumbles somewhere inside me. I miss her sometimes still.
I’ve never been to California or to Las Vegas. “How was Vegas? Is that where you were wild?” I tease.
As if in reply, she asks me to grab the olive oil for her, and I walk to the cabinet to look for it. I didn’t even know we had olive oil.
When I find it, she reaches for it. I lift it high in the air. “Is Vegas where you were wild?” I ask again, lifting the bottle too high for her to grab.