i burned the garlic the first time. not badly, just enough that the kitchen smelled like a mistake for the rest of the night. he didn’t say a word about it. he just looked at the pan, then at me, then tapped his thigh twice with two fingers like he was calling a dog that had already come.
i had not been expecting that. i was in the apron, wooden spoon in one hand and a bunch of parsley in the other, and i stood there for maybe three seconds doing math about the stove.
“come here,” he said.
I turned the burner to low because I’d gotten the flames wrong the first time and I’ve learned from my mistakes.
then i went and knelt on the kitchen tile in the black lace set he bought me, the one with the garter straps that dig in if you sit wrong. i took his belt off with both hands like it was the most normal thing in the world, which by now it kind of is.
he’s big. i’m not going to be coy about it. he’s a tall black man with forearms like he’s been carrying groceries for a living, and when he’s hard he makes you look at the math on it. i got him out and wrapped my hand around the base, and he was already thick and heavy and warm in my palm. i felt that little drop in my stomach that means i’m about to be useful.
“good,” he said.
i kissed the head first, soft, then licked a stripe up the underside where the vein is, slow. i practiced that on a banana in the bathroom three nights running before i had the nerve to try it on him, and i’m not ashamed of that. he made a low sound and his hand came down onto the back of my head, big and warm and not pushing yet, just letting me know where it was.
“my pale girl,” he said, flat, like he was reading it off a grocery list. “look at you.” no softening on it. he said it once and let it sit there.
“david,” i said, around him. not a name he gave me. just one i’d decided on.
he hummed, low. “keep that one to yourself.”
i took him in past the head, slow, one inch and then another, my lips stretched and my jaw already complaining. when it started to really hurt i pulled back, breathed through my nose, and went down again, deeper this time. he filled my mouth up completely and the sound i made around him was not dignified, and i don’t care.
“stay there.”
i stayed there. his hand tightened in my hair and he held me down until the choice stopped being mine. my eyes went watery and spit started running down my chin and onto the apron, and i gagged once, hard, and he didn’t let go. i came back up gasping, wiped my mouth on my wrist, and went right back down before my throat could argue.
the timer went off somewhere behind me. the chicken was in the oven, which was the only thing in that kitchen that was going to get any attention tonight, and it was going to have to wait.
“what’s for dinner,” he said, while i was busy being dinner adjacent, and i came up just far enough to breathe. “chicken,” i said, wrecked, and he looked down at me with the flat amusement he gets maybe twice a month. “that’s not what i asked.” then his hips started moving, small hard thrusts into my mouth that he wasn’t in any hurry to control, and i kept my tongue flat under him and worked the head on every pass back up, cheeks hollowed, the wet sloppy sounds filling the kitchen. he pushed up again every time he heard them. the apron stayed on the entire time. i noticed, that first night, that he didn’t take it off, didn’t move it, didn’t care what it got on — and i understood exactly then what the apron was: the uniform comes with the job, and the job doesn’t stop for anything, not even itself.
“finish up,” he said finally, and i did, throat open, hands flat on his thighs for balance, the grout printing itself into my knees in a shape i’d be wearing under my leggings all week like a souvenir.
the floorboard above us creaked — neighbor’s footsteps, late night, ordinary. he didn’t pause. his hand in my hair didn’t even tighten.
he didn’t warn me. he came down my throat in three hard pulses, hand fisted in my hair, holding me right there through all of it. i swallowed around him, throat working, eyes streaming, and i stayed exactly where he put me until he eased his grip and let me breathe.
he looked down at me like a man reading a gauge. “good girl,” he said, quieter, like it was just a fact.
i sat back on my heels, wiped my chin with the back of my hand, and smeared a little spit across the tile by accident. the apron was ruined. my knees were going to be bruised tomorrow in the exact shape of the grout. i didn’t care.
“go check the oven,” he said.
i got up, fixed my garter where it had twisted, and went to check the oven. nothing was burnt. i checked twice.
that was october. it’s february now, or close enough. it’s a tuesday thing. it’s a whenever-the-pot-is-on thing. he taps the thigh and i go, and it’s happened mid-sentence, it’s happened with the rice at the exact two-minute mark, it’s happened twice in one evening with dinner in between, like a man taking a smoke break. the second time that night he didn’t even look away from his phone. i knelt down and took him out and he scrolled with one hand and rested the other on my head like you’d rest a hand on a dog asleep next to you, and that — the phone in one hand, me down there doing the work of the household, nobody’s heart rate changing — is the single hottest thing that has ever happened to me.
i have an index card taped inside the cabinet now: garlic after onions, never before. he’s never asked about it. i think he finds it funny. he’s never asked about the set either, or the kneeling, or any of the terms of the thing that runs this apartment. and that’s the part i can’t explain to people who ask me how i am: nobody explains it to me either. it doesn’t need explaining. it’s just the way this house works: he eats at seven, i clean up, and between the two there’s a tile floor with my knees in it, and every single time he taps that thigh my whole body answers before my brain gets a vote.
it’s not a relationship, and i’m fine with that. relationships end. nobody’s ever walked away from a standing order.
the chicken was perfect. he didn’t say anything about it. he just ate, cleaned his plate, and set his fork down with the particular calm of a man on schedule. i was halfway through the dishes when he tapped his thigh again — two fingers, twice, the same signal as always, except the burner wasn’t even on this time and there was nothing left to check.
so the routine ran itself, no instructions required. i dried my hands. i went. the tile found my knees in the same grooves it always does, and his belt came open under my fingers like a door that knows its hinge, and i had his cock in my mouth again before the sink finished draining — heavy on my tongue, thick the way he is, my lips stretched around the head of him while my throat remembered the shape it was built to take.
i went down slow, the way the end of an evening deserves: down until my nose was in the hair at his base and my throat was full, held there while the tap ticked down the drain; off with a gag, spit stringing off my chin; back down before i’d finished breathing. his hand came onto the back of my head, heavy and patient. “again,” he said. i went again. “hold.” i held — eyes watering, tongue flat, jaw aching in the way that means the whole week will remind me of tonight — and swallowed around him, the wet sound of it loud in the quiet kitchen. he breathed out through his nose and started to move, short thrusts, using my mouth at the pace of a man with nothing left to prove and all night to not prove it. the last of the sink water went down. the kitchen clock ticked. “good girl,” he said, quiet, both hands in my hair now, and then he came down my throat in three pulses and held me through every one, and i stayed and took it and swallowed and licked him clean and swallowed again, until he let go and i sat back on my heels with my jaw wrecked and the kitchen light humming above us.
he looked down at me and said absolutely nothing, which is this arrangement’s highest honor.
then he rinsed his own mug, which he never does. i’m still thinking about it.
