Page 10 of Coiled Tight
I didn’t say that, of course.
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On today’s episode ofLet’s not think about what a hellscape my life had become, I was now following a recipe for tamales because Sofía—the equine vet who happened to be Saúl’s sister—mentioned it was Saúl’s favorite food, and when more people lived at the main house, everyone took turns cooking. I figured that, since the freezer was half-full with food, my turn would last quite a bit to compensate.
I didn’t mind, exactly. It was only fair, too, since I wasn’t paying for any of it. Besides, I liked cooking. When I actually bothered to socialize and there were people I thought of as friends, I always joked that if I’d been born with money, I would’ve upended my life to study in some fancy culinary school abroad. Somewhere in France, maybe. In that parallel universe, I would’ve been taking private language lessons from an early age, of course, so I wouldn’t even have to struggle with the culture shock.
Granted, I’d been the kid living in a kind of shitty ranch and then the apartment with barely enough natural light tokeep it legal. I hadn’t had the marks to go to med school, but I got a full ride for vet school, so… Here I was.
In the middle of fucking nowhere, sharing a giant house with a man who did his best to stay out of my way.
At least the work was fun. All the habitats were monitored and the animals microchipped, but there was a habit of driving or riding around the habitats so that the animals got used to our scents. Everyone gushed about the wolf I’d met on my first day, and I got it—she really was an oversized puppy—but I was partial to the foxes.
They were just so chaotic and dramatic. One of them almost ripped my shirt today, but no way was I snitching on him. The poor thing just wanted more scritches than I could possibly give, and how could I fault him for it?
I was kind of shocked that, strained living situation aside, I hadn’t come into any issues. It wasn’t a secret that I was prone to those. So far, though, the lion cub was growing up nicely to the point where we’d start introducing him to the other lions next week, no new animals had arrived, no major injuries, and vaccination season was months away.
So, was I cooking for my roommate because I had nothing to do? Well, no. I could have my hyperactive moments, but I didn’t need to add tasks to my daily routine for the sake of it. Unless they involved animals, it was actually bad for my mental health to do so. But procrastination was the name of the game.
Avoidance, rather.
My therapist said that giving things the proper name was important, and avoiding calling something avoidance was… avoidant.
It had made me laugh then.
It didn’t make me laugh now, simply because now I was very aware of the thing—the email from that PI—I was avoiding.It was bad enough that I had read through the preview text and gotten the gist of it. I didn’t want to know more.
Well, I wanted to. I just knew I shouldn’t, so… Cooking tamales, it was.
Every website I checked—where, yes, I even read paragraphs upon paragraphs of information that had nothing to do with the actual process—said one should always have supervision from someone who knew what they were doing when cooking tamales for the first time.
Was I heeding the advice? Obviously not.
In my defense, I wouldn’t know who to go to. From what Sofía had said, I got the impression that Saúl wouldn’t know how to even start prepping them. Besides, if he was here, disaster was guaranteed. I’d be lucky if I only managed to burn something.
I imagined their mother would have been my first choice, but I hadn’t met the woman yet. I had met Saúl’s dad in person the other week when he came by to check some paperwork they had to file for some fundraiser, and he’d been just as I’d expected from the video call. But Saúl’s mom hadn’t been with him.
Even if she had, teaching me how to cook felt like something a mother-in-law would do, and I wasnotentertaining such thoughts. Just because a big part of the reason I got embarrassingly nervous around Saúl was the fact that he was every fantasy I’d ever had come to life—bar the kinky side, obviously, but he could be the perfect Daddy in my head if I so wanted—that meant nothing.
I didn’t even know that he was queer. He gave me queer vibes sometimes, but I’d never actually been good at telling who was part of the alphabet mafia and who wasn’t.
I blamed growing up chronically online and then only socializing with other Littles and Daddies.
I hadn’t been as exposed to actual, IRL queer circles, which was more of an issue than one would’ve thought.
There were real differences between the two.
Big differences.
“What are you doing?”
Shit!
It was a good thing I’d already prepped the plantain leaves and just had the meat cooking in the pan and the masa set aside. If I’d been carrying something, it would’ve fallen all the way to the floor, and I would’ve been the biggest, most inconsolable mess in the whole land.
My knees buckled as I whipped around to find Saúl tiredly sitting down on the breakfast table in the kitchen before taking out his Stenson. Which was a stupidly hot image, even though I cringed at the grime clinging to his face.
