Page 9 of Spicy Nick

“No,” my daughter stops eating to frown at me. “Why would they? What are you getting worked up for?”

“What do you mean ‘why would they’? Who’d you get that idea from, if it wasn’t from them? Was it Scout? Did she say something about it?”

“About the cookies? No. I don’t think so. So, are you?”

“Wait… Cookies?”

Katie nods, then gestures at the figures lined up on the trays. “I thought maybe it was time. Like…maybe you might want to start updating your cutters? Maybe change a few out, add some new ones?”

“Oh.” I take a long drink of beer to hide my embarrassment. It’s been a few years, actually, since we—by which I mean Scout; she’s the artist after all—designed the templates for our bespoke cookie cutters. The family has both grown up and expanded considerably since then. We have no babies, at the moment, but we also have no pre-school kid cutters, either. An obvious omission. “Yeah, I think that’s probably a good idea. Smart thinking. I’ll ask Scout about making some new ones as soon as she’s back.”

“Okay, well, good. Glad to hear it. But not before this Christmas, right?”

“No. Not this Christmas.”

From there, we move on to other topics. School, mostly, on her part. Kate’s a senior now and she and Lucy’s daughter Mandy are both on the fence about where they want to go, what they want to do. It’s apparently been causing some friction between them.

I don’t care what she chooses, as long as it makes her happy. I have enough to worry about with how I’m gonna pay for it. Scout will want to use her money and I’m more open to that now than I would have been a few years ago. But it still doesn’t sit right.

Eventually, our conversation runs down. Kate finishes her meal, wishes me goodnight, and then heads upstairs to her bedroom, leaving me alone in the kitchen with my pizza, my beer, my memories. And there are so many of those.

We atepizza in this very kitchen five and a half years ago on the first night that Scout and I got back together after being apart for twenty years. It’s funny to think about it now. We’d spent the day searching for Sara, who’d gotten lost. And I was half out of my mind by the time we’d made it back to the house. Out of my mind with longing for Scout, and out of my mind due to my mistaken belief that she’d never loved me back.

I’d asked her why she’d stayed away so long, and she’d told me she had nothing to come back here for.

In truth, I should have known better than to ask that question. I should have had the sense to realize how much she was hurting. She’d lost her stepmother; she’d lost her dog (we wouldn’t find Sara until the next day—safe, if not exactly sound) and I’d done too good of a job convincing her of my own indifference. So, neither of us were in a happy mood that night…

“Do you want me to leave?”I’d asked, though God only knew what I thought I was doing with that question either. Leaving herwas not an option. Yet, what choice would I have had, if she’d said yes

“No,” she whispered. And just the sound of her voice, that husky whisper, was enough to drive me mad.

I flipped open the box and picked up a slice—out of self-preservation. The idea being that if I stuffed my mouth with enough pizza, maybe I could avoid saying anything even more stupid. “Come on,” I told her. “We better eat this. It’s not gonna get any warmer.”

She was drinking wine; I was drinking beer. We both were eating pizza with grim determination—and little-to-no enjoyment. It’s a small town, like I said. We got our pizza that night from the same place we always do. And in general, I have no complaints; they make a pretty good pie. But that night…well, I might as well have been eating the box.

So, we stood there in the kitchen, desperately searching for a way to connect with each other, while daylight—and all our hopes—dimmed around us. All day long, I’d been aware of the heat that still flared between us. Only a faint spark, compared to what we’d once had, it kept trying to catch fire, all the same. It kept trying to burst back into brightness. But everything—every cold word we spoke, all the suffocating silence in between, the smothering weight of too many years apart—seemed to conspire against it.

I didn’t want to accept it, but in my heart, I believed that it was a lost cause. With each moment that passed, I became more and more convinced that by the end of the night, we’d for sure have found some way to kill it.

In about an hour, I figured—maybe two hours, tops—I was going to have to press a last kiss to her cheek and walk out of her life, closing the door on twenty years of hopes and dreams, leaving them scattered like fallen leaves on the floor, dead and dried, and ready to be blown away. Or burned to ash. Orshoveled into a bag and driven to a landfill. And then… And then everything changed.

A cry of pain, like ice cracking, broke from Scout’s lips as she hurled herself against me, clutching at my shoulders, kissing me for all she was worth. And, oh God, the feel of her body pressed against mine, the taste of her mouth! How had I lived all those years without them?

I fell back a step, staggered by the impact. I held her close, wrapping my arms around her, and kissed her back. People talk about finding God at times of extreme emotion, and I don’t know that I’d go that far. But, in that moment, I knew beyond doubt that I’d come home; that this right here, locked in her embrace, was where I’d always belong.

“Your bedroom. Where…?” I heard myself say a moment—or an eternity—later as we grappled with clothing, as I bent my head again and again to devour her lips, her throat, her breasts. I tugged at her hair, forcing her head back, causing her back to bow, feasting my eyes on the sight of her, lost to desire. I filled my hands and my mouth with soft, soft flesh, reveling in the taste and the smell and the sound of her. And I tried, with all my might, to resist the urge to take her right there in the kitchen, to strip her bare, lay her out on top of the island and fuck her into mindlessness with all the strength of twenty years of pent-up lust, and need, and loneliness.

Somehow, we made it to her bedroom. Which was upstairs, of course, nearly a continent away.

It’s been so long;I remember thinking as the memories came thundering back. Each piece of clothing removed; each inch of flesh revealed ramped up my impatience. Had I ever been this greedy before, this desperate, this close to losing the entirety of my mind? I didn’t think it was possible.

Then finally, finally, finally, we tumbled into bed. Which was when the real problem occurred to me.

There’d been alarm bells ringing in the back of my mind, unpleasant thoughts percolating up from the depths of my brain for the past several minutes; and I’d been doing my best to ignore them. But the truth was, I hadn’t planned on doing this tonight. In fact, I’d actively refused to even let myself hope for more than a kiss—at most.

All of which goes to say, I was woefully unprepared for actual sex.

“Scout. Stop a minute,” I begged—my voice harsh in my throat, my body shaking with the effort to not plunge into her right then and there. “We need protection. Do you have anything…?”

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