Today however, I had all the ingredients that I could possibly need to make it a great treat for her.
“I do,” I replied. “Is spaghetti okay with you?”
“I’m not okay with spaghetti, I love it.”
I grinned. “Good.”
“Did you learn how to cook from your mom?”
I was silent as the dark memory came to mind. “No.”
The sound of my voice was like the shutting of a door and her face fell. To build the kind of intimacy I wanted with Willow, I couldn’t hold back any part of myself from her.
“She was an alcoholic,” I said softly. “My stepdad drove her to it, with his cheating, and his problems with substance abuse.”
To give her time to process it I jumped off the counter and set about putting a pot of water on the stove to boil.
She appeared by my side and slipped her hand through mine. “I’m really sorry, Caleb,” she said softly.
“It’s okay. I haven’t seen her in a very long time.”
“What do you need me to chop up for you?”
“Do you like spring onions?” I asked and she nodded with a smile.
I retrieved them from the fridge along with a bunch of bell peppers, carrots, mushrooms, and the ground beef we would need. She began to rinse them in the sink.
“Do you like shrimp?”
“I do,” she said, amused. “But that’s already a lot of meat. You want to add shrimp too?”
“I want to make sure you have a great meal.”
She rose on the tip of her toes to nibble lightly on the tip of my nose, and I couldn’t believe the audacity. I hadn’t completely got used to someone being so liberal with me and my body. I enjoyed every moment of it though. When we were younger and my hair was much longer she used to pull out her hair ties and use them to style my hair. When she was finished, she used to lean back and say, “You’re too beautiful to be a boy, Caleb.” My hair was much shorter now, but I wanted her to be as mischievous with me as she had been then.
“When did you last speak to your mom?” she asked, as she picked up a knife and began to chop the vegetables.
I thought of my mother swinging her fist into my face. “It was a long, long time ago.”
“Do you ever plan on seeing her again?”
“Can’t. She’s dead.”
A heavy silence filled the room, and I sensed she regretted her line of questioning. “I’m sorry,” she apologized in a small and breathy voice.
I went to her, encircled her waist with my arms, and pressed my body into hers. “There’s no need to be. It was a long time ago.” Then I pressed a kiss against her cheek. She turned in my arms. “Are we going to cook or fuck?”
I laughed. “Fuck?”
“That’s the wrong answer, my boy. Back to your station now.”
I walked away from her towards the fridge.
“You know, I told you I lost my parents,” she began.
I sensed her turn to glance at me, but I wasn’t prepared to meet her gaze and act like I had no clue of what she was about to tell me.
“I also lost some of my memories,” she continued. “I woke up one day in a hospital in Bitter Creek, and two years of my life, from a couple of days before my parents died, was gone. I haven’t been able to recall any of it since.”
I felt myself tense as I turned to her. I couldn’t feign surprise. That kind of audacity to pretend just wasn’t in me and every cell in my body rejected the idea of lying to her, so I made sure that my gaze on her was soft and consoling.
“You don’t seem surprised,” she said, her head tilting to one side.
“It’s a very unusual story. What happened?”
She returned to her task. “Apparently, after my parents died, I was sent to live with my uncle in Bitter Creek. He was the priest of the Catholic parish there. But then something happened one day, and the church was burned down, he was murdered, and I was found unconscious on the street not far from the house. They think I was running away from the scene when I fell and hit my head. They were hoping I could tell them something, but when I woke I couldn’t remember a thing, and it’s been that way ever since.”
My heart was pounding so violently I was sure that she could hear it. I forced myself to keep my tone as neutral as possible when I asked, “Did you ever find out what caused the fire?”
“It was a teenage delinquent from my school.” she said with a shake of her head. “Maybe he was trying to rob the house, and my uncle interrupted him. I was taken away by Social Services. They told me that he was sent to jail.”