My Kind of Woman

32. Eggy Mouth

The kitchen blinds were slanted. No one was home, and the sound of the back door opening with my push echoed into the empty house. Again with it's closing; a sigh and click.

In a few days, it would be Jackie's birthday. And she would turn eighteen thinking I didn't care about her anymore. The fact made me squat down in my kitchen and rub my hands through my hair roughly. I had to fix it, I knew that, but how, I didn't know.

I went upstairs and changed out of my grassy-smelling uniform into something more comfortable; some loose sweatpants and a top. I left the bat by the back door that day, instead deciding to loosen and lie on the couch for the morning. The couch Mio and I had made feverish love on, and then coiled together, bare and far too dependent. Who else was I to depend on anymore beside her? I'd pushed all other factors out of my life so that it could only be her. It was terrible, but I couldn't bring myself to hate it at all.

Thinking of her sometimes proved to be some kind of secret call. Because just after twelve, whilst I was strewn across the couch, immersed in a Soviet Union documentary, the door knocked. It had been the same knock as the day before, so I leapt to it, my lips already raising in smile.

Memorising a knock was strange, but perhaps that was what it was to be in love; to memorise everything about your lover, down to the finer details.

Sure enough, she was standing on the porch when I pulled the door back and shaking her head. She looked disappointed, but only slightly, I could see better emotions in her features.

"I was hoping you'd go back to school today," she said.

She looked like she had prepared to stay anyway. Her hair was tied back loosely from her face and was dressed very casually, down to the slip-ons at her feet.I was leaning against the door, admiring her, perversely wondering if her underwear was pretty beneath like it had been the day before.

"Too scared," I said, stepping aside to let her walk in.

She came past me, and I closed the door, watching unzip her jacket but not take it off. "Why?" She asked.

"Jackie and I are not on great terms." It wasn't the subject to be smiling about, but I couldn't help it. My mood had instantly been uplifted, any feel of anxiety I had was melted. The woman who needed me was standing before me. She was no good for me, but at the same time utterly perfect. It was a dilemma of romance.

Mio frowned and sighed, gaze skipping between my mouth and my eyes. "Have you even eaten yet?"

I shook my head slowly. Honestly, it felt nice to have someone worrying and caring about me. Her concern made me want to scoop her up and kiss her until she could be kissed no more. But aside from the physical things, I also craved the more emotional side of the romance. I wanted to watch movies with her, fall asleep and wake up beside her, have her call me when she thought of me, go back to the beach together. But very few of those things were possible.

"Can I use the kitchen? I'll cook something for you," she said, glancing through the hall.

"Of course."

We went through into the kitchen, and I stood by her, staring lovingly, as she went about preparing eggs for me. She shortly asked where certain things were, but everything else she did alone.

I took off her jacket for her whilst she was looking for the eggs, draping it over the back of one of the dining chairs. She looked amazingly sophisticated in the most casual way possible in her white blouse and black ankle-length trousers. Her socks were cute, something I probably had in my drawer upstairs. They were white low-rise ones with lacy frills that peeked out of her slip-on pumps. She'd unbuttoned the cuffs of her blouse and rolled them back neatly to the crease of her elbow. When she concentrated, she clenched her jaw. I saw the tough muscle flexing at the side of her face as she focused. Her fingers were so perfect, so thin and long, like mine but more tanned and better shaped.