Mise en Place | NEON LIT

The first meal she made me was a disaster.

Not the food—the food was perfect. Pasta with a sauce so rich I almost cried. Fresh bread still warm from the oven. A salad that somehow made vegetables taste like they meant something.

The disaster was me, sitting alone at a table set for two out of habit, eating food someone else had cooked for the first time in fifteen years.

My wife had done all the cooking. My wife had done everything, really. And then she'd left—walked out three months ago with a note that said I need to find myself and a forwarding address I still haven't used.

I'd been eating takeout. Frozen meals. Cereal at midnight over the sink.

My sister staged an intervention. Hired a private chef. "Just three nights a week," she said. "So you don't die of scurvy."

That's how I met Pearl.

Pearl isn't what I pictured when I heard "private chef."

I'd imagined someone thin, severe, dressed in whites. Someone who'd judge my empty fridge and my boxed wine.

Pearl showed up in a floral dress, sandals, and an apron that said KISS THE COOK in faded letters. She's big—generously big, joyfully big, a woman who clearly loves food as much as she loves cooking it. Wide hips, full breasts, a belly that curves out soft and round beneath her apron. She moves through my kitchen like she owns it, humming while she works.

She's fifty-two. I know because she told me, unprompted, during our second session.

"Old enough to know better," she'd said, slicing onions without looking down. "Too old to care."

I didn't know what that meant. I was afraid to ask.

Three months of this now.

She comes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Arrives at 5 PM, cooks until 7, leaves me with a full meal and enough leftovers to get through the days she's not here.

I'm supposed to stay out of the kitchen while she works. That's the arrangement. "Too many cooks," she'd said on day one. "I need my space."

So I work in my office, answer emails, pretend to be productive while the smell of garlic and herbs drifts down the hallway. When she leaves, I eat what she's made, and I feel—for an hour, maybe two—like someone cares whether I'm alive.

I've started looking forward to Mondays.

I've started counting the days.

Tonight is different.

She's already in the kitchen when I come downstairs—early, usually she texts when she's starting. Something smells incredible. Wine, maybe. Butter. Something sweet underneath.

"Pearl?"

"In here." Her voice is warm. "Close your eyes."

I stop in the doorway. "What?"

"Close your eyes. I'm trying something new. I want your honest reaction."

I close my eyes. Footsteps approach—her sandals slapping softly on the tile. Then warmth in front of me. Close.

"Open your mouth."

I open my mouth.

Something slides between my lips. Soft, yielding, coated in something silky. I taste butter, garlic, a hint of lemon. Shrimp, maybe. Perfectly cooked.

"Good?"

I open my eyes. She's right there—inches away, watching my face. Her fingers are still raised, glistening with butter.

"Good," I manage.

She smiles. "I've been wanting to do that for weeks."

"Do what?"

"Feed you." She steps back, returns to the stove. "Watch your face when you taste something I made. Usually I just leave it on the table and imagine."

"You could... stay. While I eat. If you wanted."

She stirs something in a pan. Doesn't look at me.

"That's not part of the arrangement."

"The arrangement can change."

She stays.

For the first time in three months, Pearl sits across from me at the table while I eat. She's poured herself a glass of the wine she used for cooking—"chef's privilege," she calls it—and she watches me eat with an intensity that makes me nervous.

"You're staring," I say between bites.

"I'm appreciating." She sips her wine. "You have no idea how good it feels to watch someone enjoy something you made. Most clients treat me like furniture. In, out, clean up your mess, see you next week."

"Is that what I am? A client?"

"That's what you're supposed to be."

"But?"

She sets down her glass. Her eyes are dark—brown flecked with gold, catching the light from the candles she'd set on the table. When did she light candles?

"But I've cooked for a lot of people," she says. "And I've never looked forward to any of them the way I look forward to you."

I don't know who moves first.

Maybe me, pushing back from the table. Maybe her, standing up and closing the distance between us. But suddenly she's in my arms—all that softness, all that warmth—and my hands are on her waist and her mouth is on mine.

She tastes like wine and butter and something sweeter underneath.

"Wait." She pulls back, breathing hard. "I need you to understand something."

"Okay."

"I'm not—" She gestures at herself. "I'm not small. I'm not pretty. I'm a fifty-two-year-old woman who cooks for other people because I never had anyone to cook for myself. I've been alone a long time. If this is—if you're just lonely, if you just need someone, anyone—"

"Pearl."

"I can't be just anyone." Her voice cracks. "I'd rather be your chef forever than be someone you regret in the morning."

I cup her face. Her cheeks are flushed, damp at the corners of her eyes.

"I've had three months of your cooking," I say. "Three months of coming home to a full kitchen and a warm meal and the smell of someone who gives a damn. Three months of eating alone and wishing you'd stayed."

"That's just—"

"That's not just anything." I wipe her tears with my thumbs. "That's everything. That's more than my wife gave me in fifteen years. That's more than I've felt since she left."

"You're lonely."

"I was lonely." I kiss her forehead. Her nose. The corner of her mouth. "Now I'm hungry. For something that isn't food."

We don't make it upstairs.

She pushes me against the kitchen counter, her body pressing into mine. Her breasts are heavy against my chest. Her belly is soft against my stomach. Her hands are everywhere—pulling at my shirt, tugging at my belt, touching me like she's been waiting to touch me for months.

Maybe she has.

"I've thought about this," she breathes between kisses. "Every time I cooked for you. Wondered what you'd taste like."

"Show me."

She drops to her knees.

Her mouth is heaven.

Warm and wet and skilled—she takes me deep, her tongue working in ways that make my head spin. Her hands grip my thighs, steadying herself, and I look down at her: this beautiful woman on her knees on her own kitchen floor, worshipping me with her mouth.

"Pearl—"

She hums. The vibration travels up my spine.

"I'm going to—if you don't stop—"

She doesn't stop. Takes me deeper. Swallows around me.

I come harder than I have in years.

She stands, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

"Your turn," I manage.

"My turn?"

I spin her. Press her against the counter. My hands find her hips—God, her hips—and I lift her, set her on the marble.

"Wait—" She gasps as I push up her dress. "I'm too heavy, you can't—"

"You're perfect." I yank her underwear down her thighs. "You're perfect and I'm starving and I've been thinking about tasting you for months."

"Months?"

"Every time you bent over to check the oven." I part her thighs. She's wet—glistening, swollen, ready. "Every time your apron rode up. Every time you licked sauce off your fingers."

"I didn't know you were watching."

"I was watching." I drop to my knees. "I was always watching."

She tastes like sin.

Rich and sweet and alive. I work her with my tongue, learning her, savoring her. She grips the edge of the counter, her thighs shaking, her moans echoing off the kitchen walls.

"Yes—oh God—right there—"

I find her clit. Suck. Her hips buck off the counter.

"I'm going to—already—you're making me—"

I don't stop. I want to feel her come apart. I want to know I did this to her.

She shatters.

Her thighs clamp around my head, her heels digging into my back. She screams—a sound I'll never forget—and her body pulses against my mouth. I lick her through it, tasting every tremor.

"Inside me," she gasps when she can speak. "I need you inside me. Now."

I lift her off the counter.

She wraps around me—legs around my waist, arms around my neck—and I carry her to the kitchen table. The plates clatter when I set her down, dinner forgotten. Her dress bunches around her waist. Her breasts spill free from her bra—massive, beautiful, nipples dark and hard.

"You're gorgeous." I position myself at her entrance. "You're the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen."

"Liar."

"Truth." I push inside.

She gasps. I groan. And then I'm buried in her—surrounded by her, consumed by her. Her heat wraps around me like a second skin.

"Move." Her nails dig into my shoulders. "Please move."

I move.

Slow at first, feeling every inch of her. Her body rocks with my thrusts. Her breasts sway. The table creaks beneath us, but neither of us cares.

"Harder," she begs. "I want to feel you tomorrow."

I give her harder. Faster. The table slides across the floor with every thrust, dishes crashing to the ground. She's crying out with each stroke, her body clenching around me.

"I'm close," she warns. "I'm—fuck—I'm so close—"

"Come for me." I reach between us, find her clit. "Come for me, Pearl."

She comes screaming my name.

Her orgasm triggers mine.

I bury myself deep and let go, spilling into her while she shakes. We cling to each other on the ruined table, surrounded by broken dishes and spilled wine, breathing hard.

"Well," she says finally. "That's going to be a mess to clean up."

I laugh. Can't help it. Pull her close and kiss her, tasting wine and salt and something sweeter.

"Worth it."

"Worth it," she agrees. "But we might need a new tablecloth."

We clean up together.

She washes. I dry. We move around each other in the kitchen like we've been doing this for years—passing plates, brushing shoulders, stealing kisses over the sink.

"So," she says, handing me the last pan. "What happens now?"

"What do you want to happen?"

"I asked first."

I set down the pan. Take her hands.

"I want you to keep cooking for me. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays. But I want you to stay. Eat with me. Talk with me. Sleep with me, if you want."

"That's not part of the arrangement."

"I thought we agreed the arrangement could change."

She smiles. Slow, warm, reaching her eyes.

"It could. But I'm still getting paid. You can't date your chef."

"Then you're fired."

She laughs—startled, delighted. "Fired?"

"As of right now. You're no longer my chef." I pull her close. "You're just... Pearl. A woman in my kitchen who makes me feel less alone."

"That's quite a demotion."

"Is it?"

She considers. Her arms wrap around my neck. Her body presses against mine.

"I suppose not." She kisses me—soft, lingering. "But I'm still cooking for you. You'll die of scurvy otherwise."

"Deal."

"And I'm keeping the apron."

I look at it. KISS THE COOK. Faded letters, worn fabric, draped over a woman I'm falling for.

"Deal."

She doesn't go home that night.

Or the next.

By Friday, her toothbrush is in my bathroom and her cast iron pan is in my cabinet and her dresses are in my closet. It should feel fast. It feels right.

"You know," she says, lying in my bed on Saturday morning, sunlight catching the curve of her shoulder. "I've never had this before."

"What?"

"Someone who wants to keep me." She traces patterns on my chest. "I've always been the one who takes care of others. Never the one who's cared for."

"I'll care for you."

"You don't even know how."

"Then teach me." I pull her close. "I'm a quick learner."

She laughs. Kisses my jaw.

"Mise en place," she murmurs.

"What?"

"It's a French cooking term. Means 'everything in its place.' You set up your ingredients before you start. Prep everything so when it's time to cook, you're ready." She looks at me. "That's what this feels like. Like we've been prepping for years. And now..."

"Now we're ready?"

"Now we're ready." She smiles. "Now we get to cook."

I pull her on top of me. Her body settles over mine—soft, warm, home.

"Then let's make something good."

She grins.

"Something delicious," she agrees.

And we do.