Page 100 of The True Garza
“London.”
I stop, glance back at him. “What?”
He doesn’t even look up from what he’s doing. “Come here.”
Of their own volition, my feet turn in his direction, taking me to him. When I’ve rounded the kitchen island, he calmly sets the knife down, then grabs me firmly by my throat and drags me to him. In the next second, his mouth is fused to mine.
His kiss feels like an argument. Like a complaint. Like unresolved issues. But, still, it makes my heart skip.
Abruptly, he ends it and roughly shoves me back by my throat. “Greet me with a fucking kiss next time.”
Dazed, I touch my assaulted lips, my throat, then spin and leave. This man turns me inside out. Half the time, I feel like I don’t even know what’s going on.
After stealing his vehicle on Sunday night, I expected at least a text from him—but got nothing. Nothing on Monday, either. Nor yesterday. Now I get home from work and he’s in the kitchen cooking dinner. What do I even do with that?
Maybe he was mad I left, but what did he expect? We’d just spent the day together, we had unprotected sex, hecame inside me, then took great care cleaning me up afterward…but couldn’t share a damn meal with me? Screw that.
Yes, I’m still salty about it.
With warm water and calming vanilla-scented soap, I wash the day away. There are times when the job is thrilling and times when it’s deathly boring. Having a bunch of crap-talking men as colleagues makes up for the lame shifts, though. The amount of empty, pointless shit men talk about is insane.
Out of the shower, I don a pair of lounge shorts and a racerback tank, then head out because my stomach is grumbling, and whatever that man is cooking, it smells divine.
Dinner is already plated and waiting on the dining table. True is leaned over one of the chairs, typing on his phone.
“Ah, she emerges.” He pockets his phone and pulls the chair out for me.
What’s he up to?
As I sit, my suspicion is chased off by the well-presented, appetizing meal in front of me. Some sort of stuffed fish on a bed of roasted asparagus and carrots, with pumpkin rice and a side of vegetable salad. “Wow. You really made all this?”
“I’m great at this culinary shit, but I’m lazy about it.” He takes a seat. “I’d enrolled in several cooking classes with my sister to help with my disorder. The importance of remembering the steps, ingredients, and little details when cooking or baking helped me so much for a while, not to mention the reward of an appetizing product at the end. But I got too good at it. Rarely fucked up a recipe. So as with most things, I got bored and quit.”
Too famished to focus on his words, I fork in a bite of fish with some of the stuffing, andoh my god….Wow.“This is… this is good.” I fork up another bite. And then some pumpkin rice. And then some roasted carrots.Mhmm, I’ve never had carrots so soft and sweet before. Is that a glaze?
More fish… more stuffing… more rice….
With a half-smile, True sits back and just watches me eat. I’m enjoying my dinner too damn much to care.
Only after I’ve cleared half the plate am I able to register his words about cooking classes and pick up the conversation again. “Do you think that when you find something that helps you focus, youfocusso much on it that you eventually become bored withfocusingrather than the actual thing?”
He frowns, then shrugs. “Possibly.”
“I think it’s the ‘process’ of certain things that attracts you, all the moving parts. So, when you perfect the process and there’s nothing left to discover, you quit. For some people, predictability is calming, preferable. For others, like you, it’s boring. But what if instead of quitting something after you’ve bested it, you change theprocessa bit? Tweak it. Test new avenues to getting the same results. Find novelty in the old.” I take a gulp of my drink. It’s refreshing. A fruitful blend of passion fruit, watermelon, cucumber, and lemon. “It’s the taking apart of mastered ‘processes’ and putting them back together in different ways that leads to new discoveries and inventions, don’t you think? I’m convinced every genius has a disorder.”
“Maybe that’s why they’re all mad.”
“And history proves that ‘mad’ isn’t always a bad thing.”
“You think I’m mad?”
No, but you’re good at drivingmemad.“I don’t know you well enough.”
“Do you want to?”
“If it was a good idea, yes. But we both know it isn’t.”
He nods in agreement and continues to watch me eat in silence.
