Dishing Up Love

“Okay, Rin, you’re starting to freak me out, so why don’t you tell me what happened?” Emmy’s soothing voice comes from the other end of the line, and I plop down on the toilet, remembering how badly I needed to pee.

“So right after I hung up with you, guess who the fuck I literally ran into?”

She squeaks, “Who?”

“Apparently he’s one of your husband’s good friends. None other than Chef Curtis Rockwell. He was there filming his show, and he picked my hobo-lookin’ ass to go home with!” I scoff.

She’s quiet for a moment, and then she breathes out an “Ooohhh.”

“Yeah. Well, I agreed, because… well, why the fuck not. YOLO and all that shit. Anyway. I felt this weird like… zing when he touched me. And he just smelled so good, and he’s so… fucking… pretty. I mean, have you seen his eyes in real life? Wait, yes. You have. Apparently, you’ve met him tons of times. Shit, he’s even been in a few places where I’ve been at the same time with you, and I never met him before yesterday! It’s just crazy!” All of that comes out in one breath, and I realize I’m in a manic state of word vomiting, so I try to slow down.

“Anyway, we filmed his show, and we had this funny banter going on. And then like, we just… connected. Like, we love all the same shows and movies, and he listens when I talk as if I might be telling him the secrets of the world. He taught me how to cook the meal and then when the crew left, he made me go on a haunted tour with him,” I tell her.

“He made you?” she prompts.

I roll my eyes. “Yeah, well, I didn’t put up much of a fight. But still. You know I don’t go on dates and shit.”

It suddenly gets quiet in the background on Emmy’s end, and I hear a door shut. “Sorry, I’m at the airport and just locked myself in the bathroom in the First Class lounge so I can hear you better, because this is all just… wild.”

“Right? Absolutely insane!” I agree.

“No, no, Rin. It’s wild, because I swear to God, every time we see Curtis, Dean always tells me when he walks away, ‘That guy would be so perfect for Rin.’ But I always blew him off, because I know how you feel about people trying to set you up, and also the reasons you never wanted to be in a relationship again. It’s just… it’s wild,” she repeats. “And hearing you talk about him now, I feel a little guilty for never introducing you sooner.”

I clean myself up, still naked on the toilet, and then flush, shuffling over to sit on the side of her tub. “Don’t you dare feel guilty about anything, Em. I could have met him at a different time and place and thought he was just a cocky asshole who thought he was God’s gift to the world. But being stuck with him during the show, seeing him behind the scenes, he’s really… not like that at all.” The last part is whispered, as I think about just how kind and caring and gentlemanly he really is.

“So what the hell are you freaking out about, Rin? You sound like you’re really happy,” she points out, and I shake my head.

“That’s just the thing! Being this happy is what’s fucking with my head. And… I told him everything. Like, everything-everything. And he walked me home after we went to Bourbon once our tour ended, after he got me to really open up to him, and we had the most mind-blowing sex I’ve ever had in my life. My. Life. Amelia.” I punctuate those last words, because she knows that’s a big deal. “I lost count of the orgasms. And he told me he could keep going, and I had to beg his ass to stop. Because I literally felt like I was about to start having an out-of-body experience. Like, full on seizures.”

She snorts at that. I’ve always told her in detail about my sex life, and it wasn’t until she met Dean that she got to spill her own deets, when she no longer had to live vicariously through me. “I don’t think you’ve ever told me a time when you had to beg a guy to stop giving you orgasms,” she points out.

I shake my head. “That’s because it’s never happened before. The only other time I’ve ever told someone to ‘please come’ was when he thought he was doing a great job, going at it for a full ten minutes before I finally felt sorry for the guy who hadn’t even made it inside me and was humping the space between the bed and my booty.” I roll my eyes.