Culinary Delights

Photo courtesy of Michelle Weber.

Those hands are my downfall. Those large hands scored with multiple burns and cuts; with their clever, nimble fingers and constant redness from being frequently washed in too-hot water.

God, I could watch those hands for hours as they go about their business. Have watched them over these past three years; but these last few months, they’ve been driving me crazy. I lose time watching those hands.

Even now, as I stand in line waiting for him to finish plating up, I can’t help being drawn to them.

Damn it, he’s not even my type! Even overlooking the twenty year age gap. That dull brown hair in its boring bowl cut. That ridiculous goatee that makes him look like a secondary school science teacher. The too-soft voice and the ring he insists on wearing despite the wife having walked out on him even before he came to work here. He’s just so plain. So dull. Soooo not me.

But then I look at those hands, and I am lost.

I am mesmerized by their gentle competence: the confidence with which they select and discard ingredients – like a painter highlighting moments of surprise within a complex canvas; the almost distracted way that his fingers tap against various textures of flesh, testing for ripeness; their dexterity in rolling and pinching and stretching – turning the familiar into something temptingly unexpected.

I wonder what it would be like to open myself up to those hands. To lie naked beneath the intense focus of his light blue gaze and have him decorate me with food. To be on the receiving end of his passion.

–

Service!

The call snaps me out of my musings. I step forward to take the plate that he slides across the shiny surface of the counter. For the briefest moment, we are conjoined. Then he turns briskly away to attend to his next task.

So I head out with a full tray, using the short walk from kitchen to dining room to recompose myself. After all, there are people to entice with menu options; orders to take and customers to charm. We’re fully booked tonight and it’s going to be another busy one.

And throughout it all, I am haunted by one thought. The same thought that has been plaguing me every day at work for the last three months.

I want those hands on me.

This piece was written and submitted as part of WordPress.com’s Weekly Writing Challenge. The writing challenges are designed to “help you to push your writing boundaries, show off your blogging chops, and, hopefully, spark more post ideas”. The posts should be specifically written in response to the challenge set.

This week’s challenge was to “tell us a story based on this photo”. You can see how other bloggers responded to the challenge, on Weekly Writing Challenge: 1,000 Words.

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