Page 35 of All Along

I pour us each a beer before joining her at the table. She lifts her glass in the air.

“To friends.”

I bite my tongue to stop myself from confessing how crappy a friend I can be – I don’t plan for her to ever find out how I messed up my friend in the worst way – and nod.

She clinks her glass to mine before digging into her steak.

“How did you prepare the steak? Did you do some kind of rub?”

Rub? What the hell is she talking about?

“Um, yeah.”

“Did you grill them outside? Or in the oven?”

She moans as she chews on her bite and my cock perks up. It wants to hear her moan when she’s naked and in my bed. Skip dinner and go straight to the bedroom.

I adjust myself before cutting myself a piece of meat. “This is good.”

Maya giggles. “You sound surprised. Didn’t you try a piece while you were cooking?”

“No.”

She unwraps her baked potato. “Wow. This is utter perfection. I love it when the outside is nice and crisp. How did you manage it without burning the skin?”

“Um…”

She leans down and sniffs the potato. “It smells as if you used some kind of herbs. What did you use?”

“Um…”

She bursts into laughter. “Your face.” She points at me. She doubles over laughing until she’s snorting. It shouldn’t be attractive but her happiness makes my chest warm.

I cross my arms over my chest and feign annoyance. “What’s funny?”

She wipes tears of laughter from her eyes and gulps in air before she calms down enough to answer.

“You pretending you made this food. With every question I asked, you got more and more flustered.”

“Pretending?”

She waves a hand in the air. “You can stop. I saw the golf cart driving away from the cabin. I waited on the road for a few minutes to give you a chance to set up.”

“You’re sneaky.”

“Hello.” She taps her chest. “I’m a smuggler. It’s in my blood.”

“I did try to make dinner myself.”

She giggles. “When you offered to cook for me, I did wonder if you’d somehow learned to cook in the past decade while you were away.”

I shrug. “Why learn to cook when you can eat at the mess hall?”

She shoves a piece of steak in her mouth. “I bet the food in the mess hall wasn’t as good as this.”

I pick up my fork and knife. “I won’t argue with you there.”

“You shouldn’t argue with me ever. I’m always right.”

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