Sample Sunday

Cotton Comes to Nina

--Three days before the Day-

Warm honey.

I don’t exactly smell it, the warm honey, but the aroma of food hits me as I enter the apartment. And knowing my husband as I do I know he’s found some use for warm honey in his dinner preparation. He’s been on a cooking-with-honey jag ever since the day he came across Nigella Bites during his lunch break. At first I was jealous but then I put aside the green eyed beast, realizing, Nigella might bite, but I lick, suck, and please this man better than any other woman could ever hope to. Every day except today that is.

I hang my jacket on the coat tree in the foyer. I can hear him humming along to the low playing radio, a salsa tune he doesn’t understand the words to. I attempt to tiptoe my way upstairs to our bedroom without him hearing me.

“Nine,” he calls out, “is that you?”

Busted.

I grit my teeth in frustration. I was hoping to avoid a confrontation. I know, just as I do about the warm honey, that he’s in there, apron on and nothing else. That’s his ritual. Cooking in the nude. I’m not in the mood for this today, three days before our second wedding anniversary. Valentine’s Day, the day of romance, the day I took that leap with this man that satisfies my every desire and craving. Satisfies me except on those three days leading up to what I refer to as the Day, and the Day itself.

“Nine?”

Nina, I want to shout out to him, Nina. Call me by my name. He wouldn’t understand, though. Wouldn’t understand how this precious nickname he’s given me can ignite every pleasure point on my body, setting me on fire, every day of the year except the three days leading up to the Day, and the Day itself.

“Yes, Anthony,” I answer.

“Come in here,” his baritone beckons, “I want you to taste something.”