Heidi's Guide to Four Letter Words(47)

“I’m happy to report that I have kissed my neighbor. Lots and lots of kissing my neighbor has been happening the last few weeks, which is why I haven’t had time to record any podcasts until now. But, here’s the thing. He told me he thinks I’m sexy. He said the words to me and I heard them, and they made me feel good. But I’m always the one who makes the first move. Which is great that he’s letting me have control and show him I can be confident and take what I want, and he definitely seems to be enjoying himself, and it turns out I’m not a bad kisser. I guess I just want to really believe I’m sexy. Believe it deep down in my bones. I don’t want to just act sexy; I want to be sexy. I want to be… ravished. Shoved up onto a kitchen counter, because he just had to touch me and didn’t care where it happened, as long as it did happen. I want no inhibitions and no time to think, just… do. I want the excitement of it all and the passion. I want, once and for all, to no longer care if people call me cute, because I have a guy who thinks I’m more, and I actually believe it.

“So, here goes.

“Penis, dick, cock, peen, schlong, pecker, prick, shaft, weenie, willy, wanker, woody, chubby, boner, ding-a-ling, one-eyed-snake, kielbasa, knob, manhood, member, tent pole, trouser snake, tube steak, unit, wang, tally whacker, joystick, dong, dork, disco stick.

“This is Heidi’s Discount Erotica, over and out!”





Chapter 24





“Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask Brent tentatively. “Once we cross this line, there’s no going back. This is serious business. This will change everything between us.”

“I’m sure. I’m committed, and I’m not changing my mind. This is what I want, so move your hands and let me get in there.”

With a sigh, I lift my hands from the mixing bowl on my kitchen counter as Brent starts scooping handfuls of things and dumping them in there.

“When I said you could put whatever you want in Nightmare Bars, it was kind of a joke,” I tell him, grimacing when he dumps an entire jar of maraschino cherries on top of the crushed pretzels, broken-up Hershey bars, shredded coconut, mini marshmallows, and crumbled potato chips.

“These are going to be amazing,” he muses, picking up the wooden spoon and going to town on the mixture that now resembles vomit. Or something you’d find in a baby’s diaper.

I’m momentarily distracted and can do nothing but mutter a low “Mmm” in response as I watch his biceps flex with each swirl of the spoon through the bowl. I have to grip tightly to the edge of the counter before I do something silly like wrap my hands around his muscles and say, “Oooooh, you’re so big and strong. I bet you could lift me up with no trouble at all!”

When Brent suggested we spend the day doing something else “Minnesotan” so he could learn more about where he now lives, I told him he needed to learn how to bake bars. Cookie bars are a staple around here. We take them to birthdays, weddings, funerals, and everything in between. I’ll admit my suggestion had ulterior motives. I pictured us getting in a flour fight, which would result in a lot of touching to get the flour off each other, then possibly some batter flinging, which would end in him licking it off me. Sadly, Brent is a very neat baker. He wipes down the counter after everything he touches and puts away canisters and ingredients as soon as he’s finished using them. He even washed off the wooden spoon in between mixing the dry and wet ingredients.

“Tell me why they’re called Nightmare Bars,” he instructs as he continues to stir, and I try to think of a sexy way to dip my hand in the bowl and toss some batter in the general direction of my boobs.

I’m wearing too many clothes; that’s the problem. I shouldn’t have put an apron on over my dress. It’s covering up the goods.

“When my uncle was little, he woke my grandma up from a nap to ask her what ingredients he needed to make her Seven Layer Bars,” I explain as he dumps the lumpy mixture of questionable color on top of the graham cracker crust we already spread on the bottom of a pan. “She was half asleep and just rattled off a bunch of things and then told him to put whatever he wanted in there. So he did. And shockingly, they turned out delicious. My family started calling them Nightmare Bars, because there’s no recipe; you just toss whatever you want in them, and they could turn out like a dream or they could be a complete nightmare.”

When the mixture is spread out evenly on top of the crust, I put it in the oven and set the timer, untying my apron, pulling it over my head, and tossing it on the counter.

I still can’t believe I’m standing in my kitchen, baking with a man. And not just any man, the man who I already know is quickly turning into a dream, and definitely not a nightmare. The last few weeks with him have been fun and easy, and it feels like we’ve known each other forever. It’s nice being with a man I didn’t grow up with, who doesn’t already know everything about me, and without our families being lifelong friends. It’s not embarrassing to bring up crazy stories about my childhood, like the time my dad took me ice fishing and I got so bored I stuck my tongue to a metal pole outside his fishing house to see if it would stick. If I told that story to another guy who grew up around here, he’d just roll his eyes and shake his head at me, because everyone around here knows that of course your tongue will stick to a metal pole in the middle of winter in Minnesota, and that’s not funny at all. But Brent thought it was funny. He made me tell him every single detail of how I stood there with my tongue attached to a pole, trying to scream for my dad, who kept yelling back to me from inside the fish house, “Keep it down, Heidi! You’ll scare all the fish away!”