Lucky for both of them, the timer on the oven beeped and broke the awkwardly intense moment. Cort stepped back as she moved to the side and grabbed the oven mitt. "If you still want to help," she said over her shoulder, "the silverware is in the drawer to your left."
"Got it."
He sounded almost relieved to have something to do, and Blue smirked to herself as she pulled the oven door open. She reached in for the quiche, moving to set it on a trivet to cool.
Next, she needed to hunt down the pie server and a knife.
Blue turned and took a step, then stopped.
He was setting the table.
Cort was setting the table for them, and she had a sudden urge to cry. She'd told him where the silverware was but hadn't expected him to set the places at the table. He looked up at her, and heat crept into her cheeks.
"Would you like me to pour more coffee, or were you having something else?"
Yeah, she needed the rum from the mansion, at least two bottles. "No, coffee is fine. I usually have three or four cups before noon."
"A woman after my own heart."
And just like that, with innocent words not meant to convey anything more than a shared fondness for coffee, the space between them was once more charged and awkward.
Blue smiled and nodded, not trusting herself to say anything. She found the pie server and the knife she always used in the second drawer. She hadn't looked at him again as she'd searched, and silence ensued between them, growing longer by the second until she felt him at her back.
He curved one of his hands around her hip and pressed into her from behind. Drawing a shaky breath, she set the knife down. Cutting herself right then would be a very bad idea and completely ruin whatever moment this was.
"You make me feel things I've not allowed myself to feel for anyone in the years since we met. I've kept everything impersonal with hotel room encounters and corporate apartments. I don't really know how to feel all this for you again, but I don't have a choice in it either. I felt it, then; I feel it now. Still. It never went away, Blue. Whatever it was, it never went away."
He was speaking into her hair, his breath stirring the strands on the top of her head. He made no other move, didn't try to turn her around, didn't seem to be seeking anything beyond this connection. She was good with that. For now.
She thought to ask why he kept things with women impersonal, but she'd let him reveal it on his own, when he was ready. Then again, she'd kept things with lovers impersonal too.
Silence lengthened, and she was in no hurry. The quiche could be reheated if it cooled too much. These moments of revelation with him were much more important. She just hoped she could will her stomach not to growl.
"My brother and sister and I, we're all alike. We don't get close to anyone but friends, and we don't let anyone get close to us. No idea why. Our parents had a good marriage when we were growing up, just as they do now. They were always affectionate, always loving with each other and with us. We never wanted for anything when it came to love and support. I don't know what happened to us, why we turned out the way we did."
He sounded farther away than his physical proximity to her, and she ached for his confusion.
Blue prayed her voice wouldn't betray the dryness coating her tongue and lips. "Sometimes we turn out how we turn out, and it has nothing to do with how we were raised."
Except she turned out exactly as she'd been raised: open, willing, accepting, loving, sexually confident, emotionally stable. And yet, she did the same thing. She kept people--men really--at arm's length. She didn't get close, but her reasons were different than his.
"Being in your house and staying the night was more intimate than any sexual encounter I've had with anyone, and I didn't even touch you or sleep with you. I don't know what's happening to me or what's happening between us. I don't know who you are now. I didn't know who you were then either, but... Why do you do it? Why do you let people take pictures of you?"
This time he did turn her. He'd stepped back just enough to keep their bodies from brushing against one another, but he didn't let go of her, curling his fingers into the cotton clothes she wore.
"Why does anyone do anything?"
"Blue, please."
That he said please, that this was that important to him… "Do you really want the truth?"
"Yes."
He didn't look as though he did, but she was going to take him at his word, whether he liked it or not. "Come with me." She took his hand and led him from the kitchen. She halted to turn on a lamp, then stopped in the center of the living room. Instead of letting go of his hand, she simply changed the hold and slid her fingers between his. "When I was in college with Rosie, she started dating a guy that was into spanking." Blue waited for a few seconds to see if Cort would say anything or have any sort of reaction, but he stayed quiet. She continued.
"One night he told her about a club in downtown Atlanta. It was a spanking club with the face of a dance club. Rosie and I both became heavily involved in the spanking scene. Even when she and her boyfriend split up, she still continued to go. I did too but for different reasons. I became friends with some people, one of them was a budding photographer named Neil. He took photos at the club, always masking faces so no one would know who was who and posting them on the club website. I liked it. I liked the attention of the camera, the attention of the men and women."
Again, she waited for him to say something, to pull away, to make some move or make some sound, but the only thing he did was squeeze her hand and utter, "Go on."
"Neil was very good at what he did. I have an album of all the pictures he's taken of me over the years. I spent a lot of time in fetish and dance clubs. I liked the energy. I liked trying new things, seeing new things, meeting people. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life so I explored it. I worked in various places, restaurants mostly since that's what I'd gone to school for.
I even worked for Rosie for a while, but I always did as I pleased. I wasn't in Savannah that weekend to meet anyone or to play. I was there because my aunt had died and wanted her ashes scattered in the ocean. She'd always loved Savannah, and the night I met you, I'd just come from doing what she wanted. You were like a magnet and being with you was something I couldn't and didn't want to deny myself. After I left town, I came home to find a letter Aunt V had left for me. She'd never asked me for anything, but she outlined her plans for the this property."
"A bed and breakfast?"
"Yeah. I had no idea how to run an inn. I didn't know the first thing about hospitality. I'd gone to cooking school with Rosie, but that didn't tell me anything other than how to cook.
Which has come in handy when I want to eat. I don't exactly have fast food within walking distance. So, I went back to school for a new degree, and I've taken some innkeeping courses, workshops, and have done some internships. She raised me selflessly and I wanted to make sure I did this right for her. I am part of a group that travels to inns in the surrounding areas and manages them when the innkeepers need a vacation. It's been invaluable training. But I'm one of the unconventional ones too. I have a tattoos. I don't dress in conservative, professional clothes. I drive a tricked out hot rod. I've always gone my own way and doing this for my aunt, had taught me so much more about myself and what I want. She was always teaching me and she's still doing it, even from the great beyond."
"How do the tattoo pictures come into it?"
Blue smiled. She rambled and Cort had a one track mind. "Part of my self-discovery has been tattoos. My first one was a pecan tree in memory of my aunt. It's on my left ankle. The next one I got was a brown belt because like Rosie, I have a love of spanking. It wraps around my right thigh. Neil had an idea to do a magazine spread with a couple of tattoo artists he met in New Orleans. They needed a model, someone that wanted ink and was a little different, so Neil asked me. I said yes. These pictures are from that spread as well as a few others."
"You've lead a very interesting life. Colorful."
His words were measured, slow in coming as if he were making sure he said just the right thing. She didn't want just the right thing, though. She wanted the truth, how he really felt. "What bothers you more? The tattoos themselves or the pictures of other men's hands on me?"
"Isn't the quiche getting cold?"
Blue laughed. "Nice subject change, Cort. Real nice, but I want an answer. What is it that bothers you so much?"
He sighed and shifted his feet. Forcing him to answer probably made him uncomfortable but at least he wasn't pulling away from her and closing up again. For whatever reason, they were actually making some progress and learning about one another.
"It's not the tattoos. They're beautiful. It's that there's so much I don't know about you and despite that, I want you as much now as I did the night I met you. I wanted to know everything then and I still do. Seeing these images of you, seeing your body like this, displayed in such a way..." He sighed again, and this time did pull his hand from hers. He walked away and ran his fingers through his hair.
He was agitated and for a moment, Blue felt bad for pushing him. Only for a moment, though. Whatever was between them, spanned a long ass time and was as potent as ever. They needed, she needed to explore it, and the only way they were going to be able to do that was if she pushed him to open up about this. The man wasn't going to offer his thoughts and feelings on his own.
"I'm a little odd, a little strange, a little different. I have this domestic side that thrives on being so homey, but I also have this sexual side, this need to express myself in ways that perhaps a normal woman doesn't. I learned it all from my aunt. She was both June Cleaver and June's evil twin, if she'd had one. Guess I'm the same way. I don't regret my choices in the last few years.
Including you. I shouldn't have left you sleeping and I shouldn't have left without a word. That night meant everything, even though it scared the shit out of me."
He stared at her from across the room and she was dying to know what he was thinking.
She'd poured her heart out to him, defended herself and her decisions to him, and he just stared at her. Frustrated didn't come close to covering what she felt.
" What's the real story behind you and Neil?"
"You're still hung up on him? Geez. I've told you the real story, Cort. There's nothing left to tell."
"He's really gay?"
"Yes."
One dark brow lifted. "But you were lovers, once, too?"
Blue could see where this was going and it was best to just let it play out. "Yes."
"That would imply…?" Cort looked at her expectantly and she sighed.
"Yes, Cort, that would imply that at some point during or after our involvement, he figured out he was gay." Silence hung in the air and Blue closed her eyes, waiting for the inevitable question. She didn't have to wait long.
"Well, which was it? During or after?"
Blue ground her back teeth together and through barely moving lips answered Cort's question. "During."
"So, you turned him gay?"
When she opened her eyes, a sharp retort on her tongue, she saw the smile tugging at the corners of his lips. This was followed by a full blown grin. He shook his head laughed. Ass.
"Yeah, that's it. Laugh it up. I turned the man gay." She stomped out of the living room and back into the kitchen. "I didn't turn him gay. He was already gay. He just didn't know it or wasn't ready to admit it yet."
"Is this part of the process? The woman lover starts muttering to herself so the male lover--"
He ducked as the oven mitt sailed through the air at his head. "What the hell was that for?"
"Stop laughing about it." But she was starting to laugh too. It was funny, how Neil had come to the conclusion he was gay right after they'd stopped sleeping together, but it's not like anyone needed to know it. "I tell Neil all the time he can't go around telling people that his ex-lover helped him realize he was gay. He comes here when he's recovering from a rejection or a break-up. He comes to me for a little comfort and pampering, and then he goes on about his business.
But I don't think that's why he's here this time."
"He uses you?"
She shook her head and turned back to the quiche. "C'mon. I'm starving. And no, he doesn't use me. We're friends, and I don't mind taking care of him when he's had his heart broken. It's what friends do."
"I guess."
"You've never had a woman friend?"
"No, not like you."
"Maybe you should get one. We're awesome to have around." She sliced into the quiche, making eight equal pieces, then took the dish to the table. "Have a seat, Cort. We don't stand on formality here. Make yourself at home."
His eyes widened, and she wondered what it was she said that make him look at her like that. Then she realized. Home.
She pulled out her chair and sat down. "You'll have to repay the favor sometime," she said, as she presented a piece of quiche to him. He held his plate out for her.
"Favor?"
"I'd like to know why the word home scares you. Why I scare you."
"I told you. You don't scare me."
She smiled. "I don't believe you."
He snorted and took a bite of his quiche, followed by a sip of coffee. The grimace on his face made her laugh. "Coffee's cold." He picked up her cup, and along with his, took them both to the microwave. "So spanking, huh?"