Julia Fierro - Cutting Teeth

“We always joke — in the playgroup — that Hank’s religious about food. But,” Tiffany paused, “maybe you don’t really see that. What was it Rip told us?” Tiffany screwed up her eyes and mouth (a thinking face), enjoying the certainty that Grace was stewing.

“ What did Rip say?” Grace asked.

“Oh, that you’re with Hank, like, no more than fifteen hours a week. Wow, that’s less than a single day! I sure am jealous.”

Grace let the knife fall to the cutting board with a thunk, turned on her heel, and left the kitchen. The breeze from the swinging doors sent a delicious shiver over Tiffany’s bare arms.

She arranged the apple slices on the plate in the shape of a pinwheel. Not a speck of skin. Sure to please even Hank.

* * *

Tiffany had just finished scrubbing the cutting board and started on the teetering pile of dirty dishes, when the kitchen door swung open, sending a blast of little children noise into the kitchen.

“Hey, Tiff,” Rip said softly. He touched her elbow. As if he were consoling her. “Do I have to apologize for Grace?”

“What do you mean?” Tiffany said, staring down at the pinwheel of apples, making sure there was a quiver of hurt in her voice. Whatever Grace had told him, or whatever Rip had deduced, Tiffany knew that in a conflict, it was always best to act like the wounded party.

“I don’t know.” He slumped over the counter and dragged his short fingers through his unruly hair.

The sun caught the stubble on his jaw, making him, she thought, momentarily attractive. In a nineties Seattle-grunge kind of way.

“What’s up?” Tiffany said. “You can tell me anything. You know that, silly.”

“Well”—he paused—“Grace came out of the kitchen. And she was wearing that look. I know that look. I get it when I’m in deep shit with her.”

Tiffany laughed. “Oh, sweetie. Everything’s fine. My skin isn’t as thin as you think it is.”

“So she did say something!”

Tiffany liked the churning anger in his voice.

It was her turn to sigh, and she did it nice and slowly. The only thing better than playing wounded was playing forgiving and wounded.

She nudged him with her hip, and the hair on his legs tickled her naked calf.

“She must feel like such an outsider with all of us moms. You know?” Tiffany said. “I feel kind of sorry for her. I really do.”

Rip lifted his head and looked at her from under arched brows, “You’re such a good person, Tiffany. I just don’t know”—he stopped and checked the kitchen door—“how much longer I can take this,” he whispered. “This life with her.”

He let his head fall heavily into his hands.

“It’s okay,” she said as she rubbed his back. His muscles were small hard hills under the curve of her hand. Had she noticed them before? Or the V that started with his shoulders, tapering to his waist?

“I can’t remember the last time she, like, asked me how my day was,” he mumbled into his folded arms. “Or when she last touched me without…” He stopped.

As her hand moved in circles, heat rising through his shirt, she smelled him. Something both sweet (honey?) and sour (the brine of the sea?).

“You do the best you can,” she said. “No one. And I mean, no one, is as good a daddy as you.”

“I’m not sure Grace would agree with you,” Rip said with a sigh.

She knew what he wanted to hear, what he’d heard from all the moms in the playgroup at one time or another. He had a way of making them want to comfort him. Poor daddy Rip.

She whispered, “Hell, you’re a much better mommy than most of them out there.”

He looked up at her. Their faces were close, close enough that she could see he really was near tears, and to her surprise, instead of repulsing her (she liked her men tough), this pulled her in with a magnetic force, and she felt that urge to jump, the way she had as a girl standing on the balcony of her grandmother’s condo in Florida, the delicious longing to give in to the very thing that would destroy you. It would be so easy to lean in. When had she last felt that shiver of recognition, a hum in the air calling her, commanding her to move closer to someone? With Leigh — yes. But with a man? Sure, she and Rip had teased each other before. A playful slap at his chest. Or their bodies pressing together briefly as they squeezed past each other in a hallway jammed with parked strollers. When they tweeted at each other — mostly comically mundane details of their parenting life — they always used the hashtag # favorite.

But this? This was different. She felt hunger.

“I better go back,” Rip said, and spun toward the door, but not before she saw him shuffle a bit. Ever-nimble Rip was a bit off-balance, which meant she hadn’t been the only one. Even as a girl, she’d known what that shuffle meant. A guy trying to hide his boner.

She moved back to the sink, turned on the hot water, and picked up another cereal bowl. The back of her neck tingled with heat. The running water sounded like the booming rush of a waterfall. He was at the door, one hand raised to give it a push, when she said, “Wait. Oh my God, I’m having that déjà vu thing.”

“I love it when that happens,” Rip said, smiling in that half-cocked way she’d grown to think of as almost handsome. The smile of a lead actor’s sidekick.

“It’s crazy. It really feels like this has happened before. Like we’ve been here. Done this already.”

“You getting all new age on me? Going to pull out your crystals and shit?”

“Whatever.” She laughed. “You know what I mean.”

A wail sliced through the door. It was Chase. Tiffany knew all the children’s cries, each with its own specific pitch.

She remembered the pinwheel of apples. The children’s snacks. If they weren’t fed before they slammed into that wall of hunger, it spelled tantrums, and she would be the one the mommies blamed. Especially grudge-holding Susanna.

“Fuck!” She waved Rip over. “Can you reach me something?” She pointed to the shelves above the kitchen sink. “See those little plates? The plastic ones. You got them?”

As he brought down the plates, his shirt lifted, and there was her favorite part of man — the hollow above hip bone and below ribs, where the pelvis arched like a rainbow down, down, down.

Follow the rainbow.

It was easy. She took a few steps forward so she was in front of him, at the sink, the sponge and a soapy dish in her hands like props, like the wooden kitchen toys the children used. Make-believe time. His breath was hot on the back of her head. He was close, but still not close enough.

“You can just put them over there,” she said, pointing at the far corner of the counter with a soapy finger, so he had to move into her — she as stationary as a block of stone. And it was so easy to take a little step back. How wrong could a baby step be, she thought, when nothing was even happening, they weren’t doing anything, and when his dick pressed against her ass, they both froze, the hot steam from the running water billowing up into her face so her skin felt dewy. As if lost in a cloud.

She picked up another dish, soaped it, and began to rinse it clean — ignoring the water that was so hot it felt like ice sheathing her fingers. She shifted her hips as she wiped the dishes dry — circles with her hands, circles with her hips — and she felt him grow harder.

She reached behind her. She wanted Rip to touch her nipples. She liked Michael to tease them over her shirt, the friction of fabric between his fingers and her nipples just right. Rip flinched when her hand grazed his thigh, and she stepped back to meet him. To return him to her, as if to say, “Come on back, boy.”