Free Breaking Perfect by Lydia Michaels Page B

so focused Sean didn’t know how she could have managed a conversation.
It was like she was in another place and had forgotten he was watching her. The
two sandwiches were sliced diagonally and organized like a pinwheel on a plate.
She poured a glass of juice from the fridge for him and opened a drawer to
retrieve a perfectly folded white linen napkin.
    He sat back thinking she would hand
the plate to him, but she turned and disappeared into some closet on the far
wall. She returned with a glass jar filled with pretzel sticks. After twisting
off the metal lid and retrieving four perfect pretzels and throwing away a
broken one, she laid each stick between each sandwich slice.
    Out of a bowl organized so nicely
he mistook it for a decoration, she carefully selected an orange and placed it
by the plate. She went to the closet and came back with another orange to
replace the one she just removed. Her full lips silently counted out six
oranges. Her tongue was a deep shade of pink and Sean blinked that transient
thought away. Using a large kitchen knife she methodically cut the fruit into
six even slices and placed them in a small glass bowl so they resembled a star
or a flower or some shit. He wanted to tell her she didn’t have to go through
all that trouble, but he was sort of interested to see what she would do next.
She stepped back and eyed her creations and nodded, apparently satisfied.
    He leaned back as Libby carried the
plate, bowl, napkin, and cup over to where he sat and adjusted each item until
the napkin was perfectly straight, the cup directly above it, the bowl exactly
parallel from the cup to the left of the plate, and the plate turned so that
the straight edges of the sandwiches formed a cross rather than an X.
    “Bon appetit!”
    He was sort of speechless. “Uh,
thank you. It looks great.”
    She beamed at him. Mase’s wife really
had a beautiful face. She was more cute than glamorous, bright blue eyes with
soft blonde lashes, pink full lips, and a pert little nose. She looked like an
all American girl, but also like no one he’d ever seen before. He took a bite
and shut his eyes as he groaned.
    “This is delicious,” he said with a
full mouth.
    She nodded happily and began
cleaning the counter where she’d made his dinner. He ate in silence and
continued to watch. The cleanup was as much of a production as the preparation.
She seemed to have a method for everything, the way she swept up the crumbs,
the way she disposed of things, and washed the dishes. He winced when he
noticed how red her hands were after washing the cutting board under steaming hot
water, but she didn’t seem to notice. She also filled a spray bottle with
piping hot water and used it to clean the counter after she bleached it. The
clinical scent of disinfectant was so strong it permeated his nostrils and
tainted the flavor of his lunch.
    Afraid she’d burn her hands again,
he offered to wash his own dishes, but that had the effect of a record skidding
to a stop in the middle of a party. He realized immediately he’d overstepped
and quickly muttered that she never mind. What the fuck kind of girl did Mase
marry? Was this like some sort of Stepford shit?
    After they were finished in the
kitchen she invited him into what appeared to be the living room. He’d never
realized there were so many variables of the color white. The carpets were
white. The walls were white. The furniture, the trim, it was all colorless.
There was even a painting on the wall of a naked woman’s back with only a white
sheet covering her finer parts. Oh shit, not a naked woman, a naked Mrs. Davis.
He looked away and feared he might have actually blushed.
    She obviously caught him. “Mason
had that commissioned for our one year anniversary. He insisted we hang it in
here. It used to embarrass me, but he loves it so I’ve gotten over it.”
    “How long have you been married?”
    “Five years.”
    “Were you together a long while
before that?”
    She laughed.