“Is your recipe a secret that you’ll have to kill me if I discover the ingredients therefore I cannot be with you when you get them?”
He didn’t reply, but he did smile again.
I kept going.
“Don’t take this as me being a clingy, pyscho girlfriend. I’m not a clingy, psycho girlfriend. I’m a talker. I talk. A lot. And it makes me feel stupid when I say something and find out I’m saying it to no one.”
His smile faded and he said quietly, “Point taken, Cassie.”
“Good. Now, is there any cereal you want in the house?”
He shook his head.
“Right,” I continued. “Carry on with your selections.”
I pushed the cart around him but didn’t get past him when an arm hooked around my belly and I was stopped.
I could feel Deacon’s heat at my back and his lips at my ear where he asked, “You my girlfriend?”
“Yes, just not the clingy, psycho variety, though I am the ornery, stubborn variety,” I replied and just got it out when his arm gave me a tight squeeze.
He liked that (well, the part about me being his girlfriend, he liked, though I had a feeling he liked the ornery and stubborn bits too).
He didn’t say it out loud, but he said it.
He let me go and turned back to the shelves.
But I liked what he said but didn’t say.
So I headed to where I needed to be, five feet away, where the canned diced chiles were located, and I did it smiling.
* * * * *
I sat with beer in hand resting on the arm of my Adirondack chair, Deacon beside me, our bare feet up on the railing and tangled, the only sounds in the gathering dusk those of the river rushing by.
In other words, life was sweet.
“Seriously, I’ve never had tacos that delicious,” I remarked to the trees.
“Told you it was good,” he replied.
“You did say that, but you didn’t say it was great.” I turned my head his way to see he was looking at the trees too. “How did you get the tortillas to do that?”
He looked my way. “Woman, you saw me fry ’em.”
I did indeed.
“Yes, but I’ve had fried tortillas and none of them were that awesome.”
His lips curved up.
“What did you do to the meat?” I asked.
He turned his attention back to the trees. “Used your chiles, added more cumin to the spice packet, the rest, I’d have to kill you if I told you.”
I aimed my eyes to the trees as well, but did it grinning. “I think you inject badass goodness into them somehow.”
He made no reply but I actually felt the humor drifting from him.