How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [50]
“I don’t want to mess it up.”
“Don’t be silly.” He held it patiently. “It’s warm.”
Taking the towel off my shoulders, I pulled the sweater over my head. I had to tug it down over my belly, but that didn’t stretch it out. A heady scent came out of the wool—cloves and oranges and something that made those prickles along my back stand up again. I got goose bumps all over, and without thinking I lifted it to my nose to sniff it more deeply. It was then that I realized it was his smell, and he was watching me with a funny expression.
He balled the towel up in his hands, tossed it back and forth like a basketball. Looked over his shoulder. “Quite a storm.”
“Yeah, it is.” I felt weirdly dizzy. We were kind of close. A lock of his hair had fallen out of the ponytail, and I suddenly wondered what it would look like if it was loose, falling over his shoulders. I wondered how it would feel, that shiny thick brown hair. Even though a rubber band held it back, I could tell it was slightly wavy.
I couldn’t think of anything to say, and I sat down on the stool by the counter, pulling the sleeves down over my hands a little bit. After a minute, he put the towel down. “Want a cup of tea?”
“Yeah! Can you make it here?”
“Sure can. Be back in a sec. I’ll just start the kettle boiling.”
When he was gone, I lifted my sweater-covered hands to my nose and inhaled deeply again, filling my lungs, my body, with his smell. It gave me the oddest feeling—swaying, unsteady, like being in a boat when a water-skier went by.
The music had been rock and roll–ish and now it changed to classical. “Do you know what this is?” he asked when he returned, carrying two mugs of tea. It smelled of oranges and spice, and my stomach growled slightly.
“Guitar?” I guessed.
“Right. Very good. It is a man named Andrés Segovia. He’s a Spanish guitarist. It’s very rich music. I think you might like it.” He picked up a small suitcase from the counter behind him, which was scattered with papers and an adding machine and pens and rubber bands and notes. “Do you play backgammon?”
I had never heard of it. Anxiously, I shook my head.
“It’s easy. I’ll teach you.” He glanced toward the weather. “These storms never last that long, but while it’s going, we’re stuck.”
“Okay.” It made me feel grown up, a taste of what adults did to pass the time. He opened the suitcase to show a dark felt board with alternating white and brown leather arrows sewn onto it. The pieces were white and brown, too, smooth cold disks he showed me how to lay out around the board. The guitar music danced around us, lilting and then solid, quiet and lacy, thoughtful then passionate. I cocked my head, listening, and suddenly the baby started to move. “I think she’s dancing!” I said with a laugh.
“She?”
I shrugged. “It sounds better than ‘it.’ ” She was swirling, doing somersaults. It made me feel slightly off-kilter, and I began to hum with the music, rubbing the elbows and knees and body parts inside my belly. For a minute I was lost in it, thinking of the elbow, her hands, the swirl and sway, as if she really could hear the music.
“That must be pretty amazing,” Jonah said. “To have a person inside you.”
“It’s kind of weird.” I looked up. “And interesting. I think she does like the music.”
“How about you? Do you like it?”
“Yeah. It’s not what I usually listen to, but it’s nice.”
He nodded and began to tell me how to play the game. I didn’t get it at first, mainly because my brain was roaring with a thousand things—like the way he kept his bad hand tucked in his lap and played with his left, and the look of his long throat in the quiet light, and how close our knees were.
Finally, though, because I didn’t want to look like an airhead—which I wasn’t at all—I concentrated and played for real. Although I didn’t win the first round, I got close.
We played again. And as we played, our eyes on the pieces, we talked. About when my baby was due and how long he’d been living back in Castle Rock. I told him I liked watching MTV, and he said he did, too—but only