Page 51 of Hold on Tight

She wasn’t sure whether or not they were still talking about a Monopoly game. She only knew she wanted him to keep looking at her that way, as if he had a specific, dirty plan for her.

Uh-oh.

Sam came back with Monopoly.

“I’ll get the chili going; then we can play,” Jake told him.

“Go read in the living room for a bit,” Mira said, and Sam went.

Mira watched Jake as he browned beef and cut up onions, admiring his ropy forearms, his strong, serviceable hands. She watched the bunch and movement of muscle under his T-shirt as he opened cans of tomato products and beans, the way he strode from corner to corner in search of ingredients and tools as if he owned the place. It was the same way he’d kissed her, with mastery. Without hesitation.

She wondered if that was how she was when she painted. She’d taken out her watercolors and paper the day after he kissed her, as if being with him had reminded her of her long-ago lost self. She’d covered the kitchen table with paper and spread out the tubes, setting Sam up across from her with his own kiddie row of paints.

“What are you drawing, Mommy?” he’d asked.

“I’m not sure.”

She’d made some sketches, but none of them satisfied her.

She had put the paints away without using them. But she’d taken them out every night since, after Sam had gone to bed.

While the chili cooked, they played Monopoly—which Sam indeed won—and then Munchkin, an absurd card game that made Sam belly laugh and Jake smile a near-full smile that twisted her heart.

The chili was amazing—rich, thick, and tomatoey. Not too spicy, the meat falling-apart tender. She eyed Jake covetously as he spooned chili into his mouth. Hunched over slightly, as if he’d had one too many army meals he’d had to eat quickly, ravenously, shoulders working, forearms lean and twice as edible as the dinner. The way he ate was not so different from the way he’d kissed her, like she was something he had to get enough of before she got snatched away from him.

Jake had made cornbread, too, which they slathered with butter and honey, and she ate so much of it there was an ache high up in her stomach. She’d read once somewhere that if your body wanted something it couldn’t have, it would compensate with excessive hunger in other areas, which was why it was important to get plenty of sleep and drink plenty of water and have plenty of sex if you wanted to lose weight.

Or conversely, important to get lots of sleep and eat well if you wanted to resist sexual temptation.

She consumed another, ill-advised, piece of cornbread, but it didn’t make any of the hollow spots go away.

Because he’d cooked dinner, she made him chocolate chip cookies. When she took them out of the oven, he ate them straight off the cookie sheet, the soft cookies sagging over his fingers, chocolate everywhere. He licked his fingers clean and it was too much, the juxtaposition of her two hungers. She had to not look or she’d be sucking chocolate off him before she got Sam into bed.

She had to get rid of him before that. That was going to be the key, if he was going to babysit and she was going to keep things platonic between them. No inviting him to stay for takeout, no sending Sam upstairs to brush his teeth and giving them those few, dangerous moments together that had led, last time, to that ill-advised, marvelous, never-to-happen-again kiss.

“Well,” she said, pushing her chair back, rising from the table. “Thank you. Thank you for everything today. For coming to our rescue and making us dinner, and—”

“Sam,” Jake interrupted.

“Yeah?”

“Go brush your teeth and get ready for bed, please.”

She glared at Jake, but he gave her a smug smile and waved Sam off.

“That wasn’t your place,” she said, when Sam had gone.

“You were trying to get rid of me,” he said. And he gave her the same look he’d given her when she’d accidentally mentioned rolling onto her back and showing him her vulnerable parts. Said vulnerable parts tingled, hot and fierce, like the traitors to the cause they were. “Do you want to get rid of me?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Really?” He pushed his chair back and stood, and she had to retreat.

“Yes. We talked about why this can’t happen. You’ve got places to go and enemies to shoot. I’ve got a life to make for myself and Sam.”

“This doesn’t have to disrupt any of that. This can be Sam, and sex. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.”

The way he was looking at her was melting her resolve. Quickly.

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