Page 33 of Zeppelin
“Are you hungry? I can make you breakfast.” That’s not Ginny’s way of backing down or letting me off. She’s sweet, but she’s also firm and this is important. She wants to give me the time I need. How can she sense that I need to just expel this so that it’s not inside any longer, festering, eating at me?
“You’re absolutely not doing that.” Wrong words. Don’t tell this woman that she can’t do something. Her determination solidifies right in front of my eyes.
“I’m starting to feel better. It was brutal when it happened, but it’s passing. The crackers and tea helped. If you’re hungry, I’ll try and eat something too.”
How can I protest? I can’t. She knows it.
“Stove’s already hot,” she urges. “Might as well cook on it before it heats the place to ungodly levels. I’ll throw some eggs and bacon on for you. You can have some of the buns I made. I’ll have a banana and I’ll maybe try some toast.”
She pulls away, slipping off my lap and out of the blanket. I have to let her.
It doesn’t mean I’m going to let her do any of that cooking alone.
I take care of the bath, bucketing it out into the sink, dumping the rest when it’s not so heavy and messy, and thenhanging it back up on the wall. I drink most of the tea so that it doesn’t go to waste. Me. Drinking mint herbal stuff.
I never thought I’d see any such day. It’s not even that unbearable. I have no idea what’s happening to me.
I try to help with the rest, but Ginny won’t let me. It’s remarkable how she suddenly is feeling well enough to threaten me with a cast iron frying pan if I don’t sit my ass down at the table and stop bothering her.
She goes to the cellar and comes back a few minutes later with a handful of eggs and a side of bacon wrapped in brown paper. Watching her prep everything so much more efficiently than I ever could, getting two places ready, flipping eggs and bacon in two separate pans and grilling toast in another, is so much sexier than it should be.
She’s still not fully recovered, even if she’s making this massive task look easy, but that doesn’t prevent me from envisioning a time like last night, when she’s both in charge, and simultaneouslybeggingme to worship her. Alright, it wasn’t so much worship last night as it was a spending of desire. I do want to worship her. I wouldn’t mind spreading her out across this table, stripping her down, and sucking on her rosy nipples, eating her sweet pussy instead of a meal, and teasing and kissing every inch of her golden skin for dessert.
Right. Yeah.That doesn’t help the raging erection situation that I have going on under the table.
Ginny asked me what happened. I know I don’t owe her anything. She’s never made it seem that way. She asked me because she cares. She wants to know what my life was like before so she can try and understand it now. She had the courageto invite me to share, but if I don’t want to, or if I just can’t, I know she won’t press.
I don’t know if I’m ready, if I’ll be able to order shit or convey it, or be articulate, or whatever it is that people say makes for successful communication. All I can do is open my mouth and try.
Chapter 9
Ginny
Cooking is my love language. And what the actualfuckis that?Love.
If I was brutally honest in my definition of it, I’d say it’s the fairytale that people get sold on young so a whole bunch of other people can make a lot of money on them all throughout their life. We’re told that the love of another person will complete something that we’re born missing. We’re told to go to the ends of the earth to seek it. It’s the one concept that so many people have so much trouble defining, yet there seems to be an overabundance of literature and art in every form to contradict that notion.
Love is something different to every single person.
My parents would say that it’s a feeling and a fact. It’s hard work, selflessness, communication, patience, grace, forgiveness, growth, and a lot of self-improvement. They’ve both told me that if you want to make it work with a person and you want it to last for a lifetime, then you need to be able to change many times and fall in love over and over again as that person changes too.
I had the notion of wanting to get married and have a family one day, but the problem was that I never got closer to inserting myself into the traditional ways of getting there. I’m okay with myself. I don’t need anyone to complete me. I never needed another half. I couldn’t find a way to fall blindly. I never had those feelings. Does that make me incapable of love? Did it mean that I never found the right person?
Those are heady questions for an early morning, especially one like this.
They’re heady questions when I’m still a bit of a mess, though my stomach has settled down. It seems that once my body purges itself, it realizes that it’s responsible for making another human and it needs to calm down and get with the program of letting me provide nutrients without trying to kill me in the process.
I flip the eggs over and turn the bacon before it burns. I use the flipper to turn the toast too. The wood stove is a learning curve, mostly with timing since there’s not much in the way of heat adjustment.
I can leave this, can’t I? What we did last night. The tenderness that Zeppelin showed me this morning, caring for me with an innate selflessness and instinct that you just can’t teach. Love language is just a saying. I can be practiced platonically, or for people I care about, like my family and friends. Even in the most literal sense, good sex and tenderness doesn’t amount to deep romantic attachment. Not if it’s not given time to flourish.
I’m about to ask Zeppelin if he likes his eggs over medium or scrambled, but his deep voice in an almost reluctant tone, cuts me off. “We lived in Canada, so the risk of tornadoes was pretty low, but we got some wicked storms now and then. You know where Alberta is?”
I don’t turn around. I’m afraid that if I do, and we make eye contact, he’ll need to run from it, or I will, and that will be the end of this. I plate the eggs and toast and nod.
“We lived in a trailer park in an old singlewide trailer from the seventies. No basement. The plow winds could flatten the place. One day, that’s exactly what happened. My momwasn’t home. No fucking surprise there. She almost never was. Did Jack tell you about that?” His throat sounds scratchy, like he’s coming down with a cold.
It’s his way of showing emotion. Most people would say that he’s not capable of processing much past his bike, motors, grease, and tools, but most people don’t dig deep enough or take the time to take a second look.
