Caramel Latte & Coffee Black (A Norman Reedus Love Story)

18 | Decision To Be Made

     I headed into the kitchen, and stopped in front of his espresso machine giving it a stink eye. The damn thing had nearly burned my fingers earlier this week and I refused to even try to make it work now. I wasn’t going to touch that thing with a ten foot pole. I’d either break it or break myself. Instead, I decided to make myself a cup of tea in the worst possible way. Anyone British would have probably hung me from the neck, if they’d find out what did sometimes to get my morning tea.

     I puttered around a moment, before I actually found his mugs, and literally fought to get one down from the height that was his cupboard. Then, I hit the other cupboards in search for some tea. I chuckled at the nearly empty shelves, before I found a large pack of pomegranate tea. Filling the plain white mug with water, and then quickly stuck it in the microwave. I scrunched my nose at the thought of making tea this way - I really wanted coffee – but unfortunately his Starship Entermachine was too much for me to handle. I watched for a moment for the microwave spinning the mug inside of it, but then I reached for my cell phone, and dared to glance at my emails.

     Just as I predicted there were several notifications from Jon. Few of them were rather frantic in their tone. He was worried and anxious at the same time, and I had to reply to him at least something. With a scarcely worded message I told him that I was spending time with a friend, and that I was planning on my allotted performance for the CedarLake’s autumn roster. I knew he wouldn’t be happy about that explanation, but I couldn’t make myself word out with whom I was with and what we seemed to be.

     The sound of the microwave dinging startled me out of my thoughts and I hurried over to open the door and then picked up the mug, dropping the infuser of pomegranate tea in it.

     I glanced at the stairwell, tilting my head and trying to listen to any sounds that might have revealed if Norman was already awake. Most certainly he was still fast asleep. And if I was comfortably tired, and my muscles ached dully – not in a bad way – he was probably leveled like a ton of bricks.

     I bit my bottom lip, feeling the heat creeping up on my cheeks, and smiled at my own embarrassing thought about how I was pretty much the only reason for Norman being a flat bastard right now. I had been more than unable to keep my hands off of him, and at that time, he hadn’t mind at all. I flinched when I thought of that, and grimaced. He was driving me up the wall. He was drawing out things I didn’t even know I had in me.

     I was feeling anxious all of a sudden, as I stared into the mug, and watched the tea swirl in it as I slowly wiggled the spoon back and forth. I let the infuser bag soak in the hot liquid for a while, before I lifted infuser up and wrung it against the spoon, before dropping it into the trash.

     Knowing that he wouldn’t get up yet I decided to have a morning moment of peace and quiet at the patio and use that moment to make myself a plan as of what should I do. I walked carefully with my mug and phone to the patio door and opened it, stepping outside on the hardwood deck that felt soft and warm under my bare feet.

     The house had been slowly returning to the normalcy of being cool; it had taken Norman and his stubbornness two days to get the air conditioner up and running only after swearing profusely and one bandaged up finger. Even though I had suggested for him to leave it be, or at least call a professional to take care of it, he’d fiddled with the damn thing himself. It was merely about a fuse, but he still had managed to cut open his finger.

     He’d been such a baby about the little cut on his index finger, but I had cleaned it, bandaged it up and kissed it to make it better. I also had kissed him quite a lot in other ways, and that had lead for us to have sex on the kitchen floor. Something I was almost heartbreakingly sure that I wouldn’t have done had it been with anyone else in the world.