After Work

She was preparing supper. Whatever she made was always bad because she was a bad cook. However, Norm, her husband of fourteen years, always ate it all. Is that love?

The kitchen was small, cluttered, and dirty. She liked it that way, it was cozy. She could never understand white tiles and stone counter tops, she preferred old wood and American simplicity. If it ain’t broke… She chuckled at the saying, she loved messy grammar as much as she liked messy spaces and messy people.

Norm was an incredibly meticulous man, a natural born accountant, if there ever was one. How the two of them got together was beyond anyone. And if being an accountant was not enough, Norm was also short, bald, and fat. She was tall and beautiful, she used to be a dancer, could have been an actress, but she did not need that. She enjoyed cooking for Norm and waiting for him to return home.

She also enjoyed the occasional romance. In the fourteen years, she slept with ten other men, always more than once, but she never even considered leaving Norm. And he never knew, or never let her know he knew.

The pasta was almost ready when she saw his headlights in the driveway. She smiled and took a sip of wine. She always had a glass of wine when cooking and waiting for Norm.

”Honey, I’m home,” he said.

She walked up to greet him. They kissed. She loved his bad breath. She remembered it from when they had been dating and it made her feel young again.

Posted by: Paweł Kowaluk