Taste of Honey by Eileen Goudge Read Free Book Online Page A

half more years to go, he hadn’t lost that fire.
    “Believe me, I’d love nothing more than to chuck the whole thing.” She didn’t tell him how seriously she was considering doing just that. Why dump it on him now? It was Christmas, and he was only in town for the day.
    “It can’t be all that bad.”
    “It’s not.” She pressed down with her rolling pin.
    “At least one of us is solvent.”
    “Barely.” She was still paying off student loans of her own.
    “I’ll make it up to you, I swear. When we’re married, I’ll keep you barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.” His speckled green eyes danced, and she couldn’t help smiling at the thought.
    “Is that a threat or a promise?”
    “Either way, will you settle for a starving resident up to his ears in debt?”
    “Which reminds me, I have something for you.” She set aside her rolling pin and wiped her hands on her apron before stepping around the open-sided counter to retrieve a small wrapped package from the living room.
    “Hey, no fair,” he protested as she handed it to him. “We agreed, remember? No presents this year. Now I look like a jerk.”
    “You don’t need me for that,” she teased.
    It was a Nokia cell phone in a jazzy shade of iridescent purple, billable to her—a bit of a stretch on her budget. When he dutifully objected to the cost, she argued that it was only temporary. “When we’re married …” It was how every sentence about the future seemed to begin these days. Words that had come to have as much meaning as children saying When I grow up … For, oddly, the closer they got to it, the further away it seemed.
    “Thanks.” Byron kissed the end of her nose. His eyes were lit up like when he was ten, the Christmas his Uncle Andrew had sent him a walkie-talkie from Hammacher-Schlemmer. “I wish I had something for you.”
    “There’s always next year.”
    “We could look at rings,” he said hopefully.
    “Engaged to be engaged is not the same as being engaged,” she reminded him in the sound lawyerly tone with which she reassured clients who had reservations about her youthful appearance (everyone was always saying she looked closer to eighteen than twenty-eight). They’d agreed a long engagement would be impractical, two and a half years just shy of ridiculous. Besides, everyone knew they were getting married, why advertise the fact?
    He put his arms around her once more, burying his face in the crook of her neck and crooning in a husky, off-key voice, “She can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan …”
    “And don’t you forget it,” she interrupted, handing him an apple to peel.
    The truth lay somewhere in the middle. Yes, she could fend perfectly well for herself … but she couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t leaned on Byron.
    She recalled the day, in the seventh grade, when she’d gotten her first period. She hadn’t known what was happening. Her mother had spoken of it only in vague terms, making reference to “when you’re a woman.” And at Immaculate Mary the sisters’ idea of sex education was a brief talk—more about the dangers of being promiscuous than anything—that had left her more confused than informed. Byron found her huddled on the back stoop, face pressed into her knees.
    “What’s wrong?” he’d asked, lowering himself onto the stoop beside her.
    “I think I’m dying,” she’d croaked.
    Byron cocked his head. “What makes you think that?” He never got worked up like her parents, which was why she hadn’t gone to them with this alarming new development.
    She lifted her head. “I’m bleeding.” She added in a strained whisper, “Down there.”
    Byron nodded solemnly and it was only years later that she realized what a Herculean effort it must have been for him to keep from cracking a smile. “You’re not dying,” he said gently.
    He told her it was only her period, except the word he’d used was menstruation. Both his parents were professors at the