The Fling

27

When we were done with breakfast, Abigail insisted on doing the dishes, so I sat down on the couch with Cosmo who thoroughly enjoyed being scratched behind his floppy ears.

She joined me when she was done. "If you want to talk, we can, but it won't change anything."

"Actually, let's talk at five-thirty."

"Why then?"

"Because it puts a time limit on the discussion, and it gives us the day to enjoy without any hurt feelings. If you tell me right now that we're never seeing each other again, I'll have to leave," I explained.

"But-"

I held up a hand. "All I'm asking is that for the rest of the day we pretend like this isn't an issue."

"You want to play house?"

"That's one way of putting it."

She moved so that she was closer to me. "I'm in. Are we definitely sticking to the no sex rule? Because if we're going to authentically play house together, then that would be an essential factor."

"You want me bad, eh?" I said through a wide grin.

"I just watched you cook for me, something no man has ever done before, wearing nothing but tight undies. Do you blame me?"

"What turned you on more, my cooking or my body?"

"The cooking for sure!" she answered.

The wheels turned in my brain. Was the way to Abigail's heart through her stomach? "Good to know. Since that's the case, I'm making dinner, too. We can skip lunch and eat early."

"Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of food on hand. I was planning on shopping after I drop the kids off at camp tomorrow."

"I'll place a grocery delivery order," I told her as I tried to think of something good to make. My repertoire was very limited, but surely I could come up with an easy delicious meal.

Abigail and I got dressed and went outside with Cosmo to start on the weeding. After she showed me which things were plants she wanted and which were not, we knelt side by side, removing the bad stuff and putting them in a large bucket. She told me that it got dumped into a composter when it was full, which I respected.

As we worked, I filled her in on what I'd been doing with my life lately. I recently jumped headfirst into writing new music, and she seemed enthralled by the creative process, asking lots of questions about how it worked. I sang a few bars of a song I'd been focused on the week before.

"That's beautiful," she said breathlessly. "What inspired you to write that?"

I grabbed a weed, making sure to get the roots. "You."

Abigail stopped what she was doing and stared at me with a shocked look on her face. "What?"

"It's about how you can meet someone and have an instant connection, which we had in Palm Springs. So, yeah, it's about that."

"The song is about a lot more than sex."

"I know," I replied with a chuckle. "I wrote it."