Thou Shalt Not(31)

I am not by nature someone who wants to delve into my feelings. It’s just not something I was used to doing, something I was comfortable with. That had always been the case, even while I was married to Carrie. Sometimes, she would ask me things, try to probe into my life and my mind, but I would shut down. Or change the subject. That was my M.O. with Holly, the topic of Carrie had never come up, and I had never broached the topic of her failed engagement before she had met me. I had grown accustomed to keeping those things under wraps.

“Yeah, I was.”

“Really, Luke? I know it had to have been hard for you.”

I don’t know if it was because my body was exhausted from sex that I let my guard down, lowered my walls, but I could feel myself about to open up to her.

“I thought it would be tough. I thought it would be harder than the last few days, but it was easier. I was more relaxed. I don’t even know why.”

“That’s really good to hear,” she said, squeezing me. “What was she like?”

I could hear hesitancy in her voice, and I could tell she was mentally wrestling with whether she should have asked me at all.

“Robin?”

“Yeah.”

I told her all about our friendship. I told her the Dum-Dum story, which I had never mentioned to her. All she had known beforehand was that we had been close, but I had never really shared why. I knew she had picked up bits and pieces on her own, but this was the first time I had opened up about her.

“She sounds like a pretty amazing woman.”

“Yeah, she really was. She and Walt were a huge support for me through...some pretty bad times.”

There was a pause. Then she asked, “When your wife died?”

The hesitation and mind-wrestling was back, but it surprised me that for once I didn’t mind her asking.

“Yeah, when she died. I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t been for them.”

“I’m glad they were there for you. That you had somebody.”

“Yeah.”

“I wish I could have met her.”

I wasn’t sure which “her” she was referring to, but I didn’t ask.

I leaned up and rolled to my right, which in turn rolled her onto her back on the carpet. I put my left hand along the side of her face and ran it back into her hair.

“I know I was probably a miserable guy to be around this weekend,” I said, looking into her pale blue eyes. “But, I just wanted to say thank you. For putting up with me.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” she said softly.

“Maybe, but I am really glad you were here with me. It meant a lot to me.”

I leaned in and kissed her once more, a kiss that convinced me even more strongly that our friends with benefits status was very much at risk of changing, if it hadn’t already.





Holly got up to shower, and as much as I wanted to join her in there, I thought it was best to let her go at it alone. I promised her we would go eat somewhere, and showering together most certainly would have led to more sex, which would have meant dinner would be skipped.

I was walking around the kitchen in my boxers and decided I should try a couple of spoonfuls of April’s posole. I spooned a little bit out into a small bowl and popped the bowl into the microwave.

Unfortunately, as I looked around the fridge, I knew I wouldn’t be able to find any cabbage to add to it. I had oregano, but without the cabbage I wasn’t sure I wanted to use it.

“You can’t eat posole without cabbage,” I said to myself out loud. There was really no way April could have known this, but I didn’t mind. I just couldn’t believe she had made it in the first place.

I pulled the bowl out of the microwave, spooned up some beef and hominy and broth, and tasted. My eyes lit up, and my brain took me straight back to being a seven-year-old boy sitting at my Mexican grandmother’s kitchen table.

“Oh my god,” I actually said out loud.

My mom had been Hispanic, which accounted for my dark hair and relatively tan appearance. Her mother had been straight from Mexico, and on the few times we visited her, she always wowed my taste buds with some new dish I of course knew nothing about. My mom never cooked, so trips to my grandmother’s were basically the entirety of the home-cooked meals I had growing up.

I took another bite, then another, thinking that perhaps it wasn’t as good as I initially thought, that maybe I was just shocked to be eating a food I hadn’t eaten in years. But each bite got better, and in less than a minute the bowl was empty. I was tempted to get more out and fill up my bowl completely, but then I would have had no appetite for going out to eat with Holly. For a second, I contemplated saying, “Fuck it” and going for the bowl anyway.