Figs

We’re talking about food as we eat it.  I love doing that.

There are three macarons to be had, and I suggest we start with vanilla because comparatively, it’s the most boring.

It’s simple, but not boring.  He takes the first bite, then turns the cookie around and guides it into my mouth.  The first thing I feel is the squish of the vanilla cream against my tongue.  I bring my teeth down on the meringue and feel it crack and split.  I lick my lips, retrieving any stray crumbs and motion for him to have another piece.

“It tastes like Christmas snow,” I say, and I mean it.  I’m not afraid or embarrassed to use simile like that for him, because he cares about food just as much as I do.  The cream is very sweet, and it’s perfectly smooth.

He picks the next cookie, and in the dark we can’t tell what it is until we taste it.  It’s fig balsamic, and I like this one even better.

“Figs are my absolute favorite thing in the whole world,” he says.  I grin, because this sounds both slightly suspect and familiar.  I like figs too, a whole lot, and I tell him this.  He seems to like them more, which is fine.  He has a much firmer grasp on raw ingredient than I do – my tastes lean toward elaborate meals, multiple courses, a dining experience.  He appreciates such things but prefers food over dramatics.

We try the pumpkin macaron and it tastes just like it’s supposed to.

He asks what my absolute favorite food is, and what I would choose if I could only eat one thing for the rest of my life.

“Aren’t those the same thing?” I want to know.  He says they’re not, then gives me his answer.  I understand what he means.  I think real hard about what I’m going to say, but can’t come up with a good response.  In fact, the more I mull it over, the more I realize that I like eating much more than I like food.  I don’t tell him this, because he’s feeding me the last of the harvest-flavored cookie, and I’m trying to get every bit from his fingers.  This is the sort of thing I like.  I like this much better than the macaron.

“This is fun,” I say, pressing my cheek to his chest and running my fingers up and down his arms.  He sighs.

“I am an awful person,” he says.  “I am an awful person to be with.”

I nod.  I am too.  “I am too.”

“No, I mean it.”

I nod.  I do too.  “I do too.”

He continues, and when he speaks, he takes his arm off my waist.

“Sometimes, when I talk with people on the phone I get so annoyed, so angry that I hold the phone out away from me and I mouth the words ‘SHUT UP!  SHUT UP!  I DON’T CARE!’  He shows me what he means, expanding his arms the length of the mattress and waving his hands.  His face is angrier than I’ve ever seen it.

I understand this.  I have done this.  I have done this recently.  But I don’t know how to tell him without sounding contrived, so I just nod.

“I get moody,” is his response.

“I might lie and say I’m busy, but really I’ll just be home drinking, alone.”  The confession comes easily and feels good.  I’m on a roll now.

His voice quiets.  “Me too.”

I flick a crumb from the blanket and watch it fall to the floor.  I want him so badly.  I don’t care if he tells me to shut up on the phone.  I talk too much anyway.  His honesty feels cleansing.  And even though talking with him is the easiest thing I’ve done in a long, long time, I don’t know how to tell him this.

I think about it for a while, and then I don’t have to because his mouth and hands are on me, firm and warm.  I let him kiss me in spite of all his warning, and I am taken to a place where the hardest thing is just crisp meringue, where the figs are fresh and milky.

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