What Happened to Eden

Having decided to forego the elaborate themed parties for New Years Eve, I gathered ingredients to cook a nice meal and relax with The Cop.

I loved to cook. Past tense. I cooked constantly to feed my family, and put in a lot of effort to please my husband. When we first met I was still learning how to not overcook poultry and keep track of the foods he disliked. By the time we were getting divorced, we were having roasted cornish game hens with maple rosemary acorn squash for Christmas dinner, followed by a spiced buttermilk eggnog cake complete with sugared rosemary wreath.

For some reason, I felt that serving nice meals would keep a man. Along with doing one hundred percent of the household chores, the majority of the childcare, keeping track of his family’s birthdays, and cutting his toenails. When I found out I’d taken so much off his plate that he had time for a girlfriend, I lost the will to do all of those things. I had started asking potential dates if they could boil water and complete basic grooming tasks, because I was out of the pedicure business.

When The Cop suggested we stay in and cook, I thought he meant me, because I was always the cook in my past relationship, so I offered. My heart wasn’t in it. My mind wasn’t in it. And it was awful. I felt strange cooking for someone new, and I was cooking something that wasn’t my specialty (he told me he didn’t like roast chicken, what kind of monster doesn’t like roast chicken?) and it was bland and also salty at the same time. What I served resembled an airplane meal. He was kind and ate it all, which made me feel worse.

I tried to explain what had happened – that cooking was suddenly a source of traumatic memories, but I made no sense at all. Why would searing fish make me zone out and panic? I tried to brush it off, but the whole evening was starting to catch up to me. What was maybe a nice foray into domestic life for a man who had been single a long time was too marital for me after just escaping my marriage with only a hint of my former poise. I didn’t want to play house. There were too many awkward silences and I didn’t know what to do with myself.

When he was making me laugh or making me cum it was the most fun I’d had in years. The times in between were like quicksand. Should we fill the silence? We weren’t at companionable silence yet, right? Should I let him pick the movies or try to throw one in that I wanted to watch? Why did my attempts to be accomodating translate to being difficult? I worried if I suggested something he wouldn’t like it, so I suggested nothing, which was also wrong, because he didn’t want to suggest things I wouldn’t like, and so on and so forth until my shoulders were up around my ears.

How do you rest in comfortable companionship with someone new when you’ve been with the same person for eighteen years, and even that wasn’t comfortable? Having so little alone time away from my family gave me an overwhelming urge to make the most of every moment. I didn’t want to take a nap or watch something boring. This was all the freedom I was allotted for a while, and a moment passing while I fidgeted nervously was a moment wasted.

It was time for a drink. I needed a reason to get up and move, to work off some of the tension I’d built up overthinking. Moving often helps me reset, so we opened a bottle of champagne and broke out the caviar. Standing at my kitchen island talking, laughing and doing caviar bumps off the back of our hands diffused some of the static in my brain and I felt better. Even if every second wasn’t filled some kind of activity, I was enjoying it all. Missing my kids over a holiday was hard, and I was more afraid of the silence than anything else.

He led me back to bed and started a movie with an actor I’d said was good looking in the last movie we’d watched. He inched closer, pulling me to him, but I noticed he was checking his watch more than usual. Who is he waiting to hear from? Who am I keeping him from?

I pushed that aside and let him kiss me. There was never a dull kiss with The Cop. He had more passion in one lip than most men had in their entire bodies. Sipping champagne had relaxed my mind enough that I was feeling more confident, something I rarely experienced, and he seemed to notice I was more present than I had been earlier. But still, he checked his watch.

When you think the man with your nipple in his mouth is looking for an update on his smart watch so he can bail, you decide to live for the moment. If it’s going to end, make the last time count. For the first time, I looked him in the eyes and told him what I was in the mood for, and he eagerly agreed. I was so immersed in the feeling of him touching me from head to toe I almost missed the last time he checked his watch.

“Happy New Year. You said you wanted to start the year with a bang.”

The time. He was checking the time.