Page 40 of Forbidden Dance
Lita rolls her eyes, but leans down and presses her lips to Blitz’s forehead as if he is a child.
“You know you love me,” he says.
“I do.” She laughs and shakes her finger at him. “Bring your mama around. I haven’t seen her in too long.”
“Will do.”
The other server comes up and sets down more plates. A bowl of pale orange rice. A plate of refried black beans. Then a pile of something green, flat, and somewhat squishy looking.
I don’t want to ask what it is in front of Lita. She looks over the plates that have been placed on the table and nods in approval. “Let me know if you need anything else,” she says.
“It looks great,” Blitz says. “Thank you.”
Lita waves her hands at him as she leaves, the server trailing in her wake.
When she is gone, I poke at the green things. “What are these?”
“Nopales.”
When I look at him quizzically, he adds, “Cactus.”
“Oh!”
“It’s really good when done correctly,” Blitz says. He adds one to my plate. “And Lita really knows how to prepare them.”
I poke at it tentatively. “I’m game to try anything.”
“Really?” His fork halts in the middle of spearing a piece of shrimp. His smile is positively devilish. “How are you with handcuffs?”
My face blossoms with heat. I scoop a spoonful of beans and plop them on my plate.
“Too cliché,” he says. “I knew it.”
When I still don’t look at him, he places his hand over mine. “I’m sorry. I forget sometimes that you’re real, not part of a studio audience.”
I can’t look him in the eye. It’s not that I’m offended by him mentioning handcuffs. It’s just how casually he treats sex, like it’s something you do with anyone, like sharing a pair of headphones to listen to a song. Or passing over a cup so someone else can sample your peppermint coffee.
I almost want to bring up the paternity suits. If there were fifteen of them, there had to be a lot of women. Like a ridiculous amount. But instead, I open the tortilla warmer and pull out a fluffy warm tortilla, flour, just like Lita said.
Blitz sits back in his chair. “I’ve wrecked things,” he says. “I’m really sorry.”
He sounds so contrite that I take pity on him.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m probably more uptight than you’re used to.”
I want to tell him that I’m not really prudish. I’m more passionate than he can imagine. I can ignore anything, even the red sirens going off that tell me I’m wrong, so wrong, because I am buried in such bliss.
But I don’t say it. I’m not sure it’s even true anymore.
“I don’t believe that,” he says. “I’ve danced with you.”
Our smile at that is genuine and the tension falls away.
We dig into the meal. Lita checks on us, opening the tortilla warmer and squinting at the dishes to make sure we are eating to her satisfaction.
It’s delicious. There’s some sort of spice on the shrimp that builds with every bite, but the fat in the refried beans cuts the heat so that I can keep going. The food starts to make sense, like culinary chemistry. It’s so much better than the plain meat and potatoes that serve as the base of most of our meals at home.
I want to keep the mood light, so I lean over to Blitz and say, “So if you do choose a wife from your show, are you going to make sure she knows how to cook like this?”
