we will seek my buried inheritance

[self_composed]

Bella fixes French toast for breakfast to salvage stale bread, and, having seen Charlie off to work, hops in her own car and makes for Alice's house. She arrives at nine-thirty, and goes up to the doorbell and rings it.

Comments

[self_composed]

Walk-walk-walk. Bella awaits information.

[edgeofyourseat]

Top of the page: Things that turn me on

First entry: Cleaning ovens

"I don't know why the ovens, though," he says aloud, and adds a little arrow leading to a clarifying point: (scrubbing is hot ???)

[self_composed]

"So it's not cleaning in general?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"Um... a little bit," he says. "Good point, though."

Second entry: domestic chores in general (not very)

[self_composed]

Bella nods. "So there's that."

[edgeofyourseat]

He writes a few more things down.

"Okay, so far: cleaning ovens, i.e. scrubbing. Domestic chores in general. Pain. Getting beat up, with one exception, you know what it is, please don't make me say it. Really great clothes, on me or other people. Good food."

[self_composed]

"You get off on food," deadpans Bella.

[edgeofyourseat]

"Oh come on, in what way is Hilary's cake not a sexual experience?"

[self_composed]

"In the way that it is a gustatory experience instead."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Well, okay."

He writes a couple more things down.

"Destruction. Music. Not all music, just sexy music. Like, Another One Bites the Dust? Totally hot. Seven Seas of Rhye? Not so much."

[self_composed]

"I'm beginning to think that you just walk around in a constant state of arousal virtually all the time."

[edgeofyourseat]

"You are not totally wrong," he admits. "Like, not all the time, but a lot."

[self_composed]

"That sounds distracting."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Not really."

[self_composed]

"It's not? How is it not?" laughs Bella.

[edgeofyourseat]

"Well, I don't walk around in a constant state of desperately horny, or anything."

[self_composed]

"Fair enough. Anything else?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"...Yeah," he says, "but after this it's kind of - I don't know, hard to articulate? Like, some of them I know what they are, but I don't know what they're called."

[self_composed]

"Okay... examples, maybe?"

[edgeofyourseat]

"Um... when you called me a freak," he says. "The five percent of me that was not busy falling in love was really turned on."

[self_composed]

"So those are separate things," Bella notes. "What else?"

[edgeofyourseat]

Alice looks away; checks the map; looks back; looks away again. Apparently he is having some trouble with this one.

[self_composed]

"We going the right way?" she asks, watching him check the map. "I think we're still heading south-maybe-south-southwest."

[edgeofyourseat]

"Yep," he says, with a brief smile. "Still on track."

[self_composed]

"Is there another example of the same thing?" Bella asks.