“Your poem was so honest,” I tell her.
“Thank you,” she says.
“I feel like I can share anything with you after you told me that about your mom, honestly,” I say, having to look away from her because it’s been so long since I’ve been honest with anyone this way that— even more so than I normally am in my poetry— I find myself embarrassed. At least in my poetry, I’m able to dress up my feelings with metaphors and beautiful imagery. Here I have to say what I mean— even to a fellow poet— if I want to create an honest understanding. But I don’t have to give her my entire history at once, I guess, so I can at least ease my way into it.
“You absolutely can,” she says as she fingers my chest hairs. “I feel so connected to you.”
“Well, that could be because I’m still inside of you,” I tell her.
She laughs as she’s kissing me.
“Well, the reason that your poem moved me so much is because…” I get a little choked up already. “Many, many years ago, I… I also lost someone to cancer. It was my wife. She had brain cancer.”
“I’m so sorry,” she says, pulling her naked body closer against mine and wrapping an arm around me.
“It’s fine,” I say. “I’ve never really shared that with anyone. Especially not a woman. Well, there was one woman. Someone who didn’t really, I don’t know, share the fundamental values that I find important in a relationship.”
I decide I don’t need to go into more detail than that tonight.
“Well,” she says, with a sheepish smile. “Thank you for sharing it, I know it’s not easy. I sort of got the impression from your past poetry books that maybe you’d lost your wife. Your poetry is so beautiful, but sometimes a novice mind like mine has a hard time with the symbolism.”
“Novice mind?” I ask her. “You have one of the brightest minds of any poetess your age. I should know, I’ve been teaching young poets just like you for many years.”
“That’s so sweet, but I hope you aren’t just saying that because you like me. And because I just gave you my virginity, ha, ha.”
“I’m not,” I tell her. “You have a talent that comes around once in a generation.”
I slide out from under the covers and off the bed. I’m not sure about her, but I am starved.
“Can I make you something to eat? I, for one, could eat a horse.”
“God, yes,” she says with a smile. “Do I look like the kind of girl that doesn’t eat? I mean, truth be told, I haven’t eaten today, but normally, I like to mack down.”
She’s gorgeous, curvy, voluptuous, supple in all the right parts. She keeps pulling the sheets over her saying she doesn’t want me seeing her “cellulite” in the light, but all I see is the most beautiful young woman I have ever laid eyes on.
“I’m a vegetarian,” I tell her. “Is that okay with you?”
“Absolutely,” she says. “I’m a pescatarian, which most people and restaurants forget is even a thing, so I’m sure whatever you make, I’ll be okay with.”
“I make a delicious Italian pasta,” I say.
“Isn’t all pasta Italian?” she asks with a laugh, following me down to the kitchen in a t-shirt I’ve given her that’s far too big for her.
“I’m not sure, but that’s definitely worth asking the Italian professor about tomorrow,” I say. “Have you ever had spaghetti aglio e olio?”
“Wait wait wait, let me try and figure out what that means,” she says with a laugh, as she hops up on a barstool, while I start to pull the spaghetti noodle container from the cabinet.
“Olio is probably oil,” she says.
“Correct,” I tell her. “And aglio is…?”
She looks around the kitchen as if there might be a clue, then scrunches up her face and shrugs. I turn and pull a bulb of garlic out of the cabinet.
“GARLIC!” she shouts.
I laugh. “Exactly.”
It’s a simple recipe, so the meal takes less than 15 minutes to prepare. But I ask her to use the time I need to cook to tell me more about her mom and dad. She had mentioned that nothing she ever did was good enough for her dad when she was in my office last week.
“Why do you feel that way?” I ask her.
“Well...” she says. “I don’t know.”
She sighs.
“He’s an engineer. He’s very much engineer-minded. He’s always made good money. And I don’t think he’s ever taken the arts very seriously. So when I told him that I was coming to George Washington University to study creative writing, he was not thrilled.”
“He never encouraged or nurtured your talents?”
“No,” she says with a snort. “He had me in coding camps during the summer, for God’s sake. And since my mom died and he has one less person to micromanage, it’s only gotten worse. I dreaded the entire summer of this past break the entire time I was in my freshman year because I didn’t want to be trapped at home with him.”