“It says pats,” he tells me with an easy shrug. “I have no idea what that means, but I guess we spread the butter out across the top of the casserole. It's a make it work moment.” He snaps his fingers above his head and then grabs a knife, spinning it around his fingers in a way that makes me raise my brows. “Time to tackle this chicken.”
Zay slaps a breast onto the plastic pink cutting board I once remember my sister using and then starts to slice into it with careful motions. He's so animated, I wonder what he'd be like if he were angry? Would that emotion take over his whole body the way his joy does? Would his eyes burn and his hands clench into fists?
I look back at the butter and start cutting thin squares off the end until it's half-gone.
“How much?” I ask as Zay glances over at me and smiles, his body grooving to a Kelly Clarkson song that I hate. I smile again.
“Looks about right. You want to start mixing shit together?” I nod and dig into a drawer for a can opener, examining the three soups in front of me. Cream of chicken, celery and mushroom. Hmm. I start opening them one at a time. “That claim thing I said this morning?”
I feel myself stiffen up, but I don't stop what I'm doing.
“Yeah?” I feel Zay's muscular arm bump against mine and wonder how such a simple move could feel so good. “What about it?”
“I'm not so sure why I even said it,” he admits as he drops chicken into the clear glass casserole dish sitting in front of me. At Zay's direction, I add the soup in after it and stir it all around with a plastic spoon. “I think I'm just getting all male around you, you know what I mean?”
I wrinkle my face up as I tug Zay's phone from his back pocket and check the recipe. Two cups of instant rice. Got it. I put the phone back just so I can have an excuse to touch his ass through the jeans. It's so firm! I breathe in deep.
“I'm not sure what that means, no. Keep explaining maybe?” I glance over at him and find him smiling weirdly, not as happy, more like he's creeped out by something. Is that something me? I hope not. If so, I can't figure out what I've done. He dumps the rest of the chicken into the dish and then stops to wash his hands.
“You know, getting all excited because I'm your first and all that.” Zay turns and dries his hands off before grabbing one of the empty cans, leaning his hip against the counter and swiping his finger around the inside of the metal. I wrinkle my nose again as he slides the finger into his mouth and sucks on it. Not because of the gesture though, that's actually hot. It's his words that are making me wrinkle my nose up.
“Seriously? Zayden, no offense or anything, but my decision to have sex had pretty much nothing to do with you. So don't get all excited or anything.”
“I'm not,” he says with pouty lips, dipping his finger back into the can again. The motion makes his red tank ride up and flashes me tantalizing hints of skin. I want to put my mouth on it and kiss my way down, see what it'd be like to take his cock into my mouth.
My eyes snap back up to Zayden's face.
“All I'm saying is that I like you. We have a pretty hot connection, don't you think?”
“This might sound like a dumb question,” I say as I spread the chicken-soup-rice mixture around the pan. “But isn't it always like this? The sex and the … all of this.” I point between us, trying to encompass the obsessive attraction I'm feeling. I'm not stupid, just inexperienced. Honestly, my ex, Anthony, and I never had anything like this heat I've got with Zay. I figured it was just because we hadn't had sex yet.
Zay smiles softly at me and shrugs his shoulders loosely, shakes his head a little. It's a conflicting answer to my question.
“Not really,” he says as tosses his can into the sink and turns the water on, rinsing it and tossing it into the recycling bin near the back door. Zayden grabs one of the other cans, fills it up about halfway and then adds it to the casserole dish, sliding his fingers over my hand and taking the spoon away.
“Not really?” I ask as he spins it around and then drops the spoon in the sink, taking my pats of butter and spreading them out across the top of the casserole like a crust. “I'm even more confused than I was when I left this morning.”
Zayden finishes with the butter, wipes his hands on a dish towel and pulls the oven open. He pops the food into it and heels the door shut, pausing to look at me with his hands on his hips.
“It's not usually this … intense,” he says, eyes sliding over to Sadie. It feels more like he's talking to himself than he is to me at this point. Maybe it's not me that has the problem? “We haven't done anything all that different and honestly, you're kind of amateurish.”
I purse my mouth as he chews his lower lip and nods his head like he's trying to convince himself of something. I cross my arms over my chest again and tip my head down, trying to give him a fierce look over the tops of my glasses.