Cheer Up!

I was awakened the next morning by the harsh sound of shrill beeping. I sat up like a bolt, trying to figure out where it was coming from. I finally ascertained that it was Luke's alarm clock, which, like him and all the rest of his stuff, had moved into my house last night. He himself was sleeping peacefully, sprawled out on his stomach on the bed, unperturbed by the beeping.

"Luke! Luke!" I nudged him. "Your alarm clock is going off."

"No izznot..." was the muffled reply.

"It IS going off. Can't you hear it?" I asked.

"No." He rolled even more onto his stomach, burying his face in the pillow.

I sighed heavily, draping over him to grab at the clock. I fumbled with it for a while, trying to figure out how to shut it off. It just kept shrieking at me, so finally I had to just pull the plug out of the wall. I had never had an alarm clock before. I kind of just got up whenever and started doing my chores. No real schedule for me. But Luke had a job, even if his dad was the boss, and he had to be there at a certain time.

I nudged Luke again. "You'd better get up, Luke. You're going to be late."

"But I wanna stay in bed with you..." he mumbled, grabbing onto one of my thighs and hugging it. I also wanted to stay in bed with him, but the sensible side of my brain knew that we couldn't.

"Well, I'm getting up now," I said, even though I would have preferred to sleep longer. Since I was next to the wall, I had to crawl over him to get out of bed. I yelped when he grabbed my ass as I made my way over. "Luke!" I cried out. I looked back at him, and he was grinning cheekily, his eyes closed. I just sighed and went into the kitchen.

As I was making coffee, I finally saw him get up and go into the bathroom. After what had to have been the world's fastest shower, he reemerged from the bathroom, his eyes barely open and a towel around his waist. To my great surprise, he threw the towel aside as he sat at the table. Yes, my new husband of less than 24 hours was sitting absolutely stark naked at my dinner table. I set down a cup of coffee in front of him and cleared my throat.

"Thanks, Honey, you're the best," he said, sipping the coffee.

Even though I flushed a little with happiness at him calling me an affectionate pet name, I tapped my foot. "Are you going to eat breakfast with no clothes on?"

He grinned up at me. "Why not? It's always been a dream of mine to eat breakfast naked."

I gaped. "Are you serious? And anyway, it's probably not sanitary to do that." He just shrugged, but after a little pleading and coaxing from me, he finally got dressed. He sat back down at the table, and I smiled at him. "Okay, much better. Now, what would you like for breakfast?"

He mused the question for a moment. "Spinach cake."

I gaped at him once more. "Spinach...cake? What is that?"

He shrugged like it was the most normal thing in the world. "It's cake made with spinach in it. It's yummy." I fought the urge to gag.

"Well, I don't have any of that. What would you like instead?"

He waved his hand. "Oh, anything with spinach is fine."

I stared at him long and hard. This is what I got for marrying a man I hardly knew. I realized that we had never eaten breakfast together before, and it dawned on me that he might actually be serious. He ate spinach for breakfast on a regular basis. Between this and the catastrophe of trying to get him up, I didn't know if I was going to be able to handle being married to him. But then he looked up at me with those sparkling golden eyes, making my heart melt, and I remembered why I was doing this.

I smiled. "I don't have any kind of spinach, so...how about eggs instead?" He nodded, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Spinach was not one of my favorite foods, and while I was more than aware that it was his favorite vegetable, and I didn't mind making it for him for lunch or dinner, I didn't think I would be able to get used to the smell of it cooking in the morning. I scrambled us both some eggs, and of course he put mayonnaise all over his portion. I just kept that smile on my face.

When he finished eating, he stood up and kissed me goodbye, promising to come home for lunch. He took my face in both his hands. "I love you so much. You're like, the most awesome thing that has ever happened to me." I flushed happily. He skipped out the door, as cheerful as ever.

I set to work on my farm chores. I had to let my chickens out to graze, collect their eggs, then go and inspect each chicken to make sure she was healthy. I then moved on to watering my crops. The one time harvest crops had already played out their time in the season, so all that was left was the tomatoes and corn. After watering, I harvested a few ripe ones and took them inside. I would be going through a lot more food now that I had Luke living with me, so I decided that I better start setting more crops aside from now on.

When Luke came home for lunch, he was toting several bags with him. Curious, I peeked inside one. It was full of cans of spinach. A quick examination of the rest revealed that they were all full of cans of spinach. I gave a low laugh. "What, was this your personal stock from your dad's house?"

"Bingo!" he exclaimed, and I had to hide my face. I had just been kidding! "Yeah, anyway, Bo and Pops don't eat spinach, so they said it was cool if I took it all. Oh yeah, and I have this too." He reached into his carpenter bag, pulling out a faded, tattered piece of paper. I unfolded it and and squinted to read the words there. The handwriting was as bad as Luke's.

"That's my mom's spinach cake recipe. You know, just in case you want to make me some." He looked a little sheepish, and my heart was about bursting with love for him for some strange reason.

"Sure, I'll make you some..." I leaned in and gave him a little kiss. "I wasn't even aware that it existed."

"Oh, it doesn't, not really. Pops said that Mom made it by accident one time, when two pages of the cookbook stuck together. The first page was sponge cake, but the page that got stuck had spinach casserole on the back. She wasn't always the best cook, Pops says...anyway, it was a disaster, but I was like five then and I thought it was delicious. I still do. So she copied down everything she had done 'wrong', and voila, Spinach Cake." He grinned. "I'll eat ANYTHING with spinach in it. Pops sometimes made me some for breakfast. He could bake one cake and I could eat it for the next three or four days."

I figured that was pretty manageable, so I smiled. "So...what can I make you for lunch?" He grinned widely, showing all his teeth. "Let me guess," I said, pretending to think really hard, "...something with spinach in it?" He nodded, and I rolled my eyes, still smiling. "Okay, you got it."

We ate grilled fish and sauteed spinach for lunch; though admittedly, the greater portion of the spinach ended up on his plate. Not that he minded, of course. He took a big drink of water and set his glass down. "Okay, so..." he glanced at the clock, "I have thirty minutes until I have to get back to work..." He turned those mischievous golden eyes on me, and the next thing I knew, we were undressing each other in a frenzy. His vest went flying one way, my pants went flying another. He kissed at my mouth hungrily as he tore my clothes off, backing me towards the bed.

When we got there, he sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled me to straddle him. Even though we had never done it in this position before, it was pretty easy to figure out how it worked. I held onto his shoulders, getting my balance, and then I positioned myself above him. I was already very wet, and I eased myself down carefully on his length, whimpering a little with desire. He held onto me by my hips, throwing his head back and hissing at the sensation as I took him in to the hilt. Once he was in all the way, I rocked against him for a few moments, then I lifted myself up and down. He groaned in ecstasy, wrapping his arms around my back tightly and pressing his face into my shoulder.

"Ohhhh...Angela..." he moaned, his face buried in my skin, "It feels so good..." He cried out in delight as I bucked faster against him, working towards my climax. "Angela...Angela...if you...keep doing that...I'm gonna come..." he warned me.

I leaned down and whispered in his ear, "Go ahead." He groaned loudly, grabbing onto my hips and jamming up furiously into me. The burst of passion from him as he released made me climax, and I cried out in sheer ecstasy. "Luke...oh, Luke..." I murmured as I came down from my delirium. He stroked at my back, and we kissed each other sweetly. I climbed off of him carefully, and we both got in our clothes again.

He sat back down next to me on the bed, nuzzling his face into my neck. "That was amazing," he sighed.

"Yeah..." I breathed. "For that, I can make some spinach cake." He laughed.

"Okay, I'm going to hold you to that," he said, kissing me on my nose.

So, after he left to go back to work, I set to work as well, reading over the recipe. Sure enough, it started out like a cake recipe, with flour, eggs, and butter, but ended up with spinach. I just followed the directions word for word, and an hour later, I had a piping hot spinach cake on my kitchen counter. I stared at it warily. It looked like a normal cake, a pleasing yellow shade, except for the flecks of green that permeated it. It was a little nauseating looking, to be honest, like a moldy cake. I sure wasn't going to be eating it. But, if that's what Luke wanted...I'd give him anything he wanted. That was evident in the fact that I had married him on a whim. I couldn't believe that 24 hours ago, I had been a single woman, and now here I was, baking a cake for my husband. It was almost too bizarre to be true; but it was true, after all.

I appraised the twenty seven cans of spinach that now were stacked in my pantry. I suddenly had the epiphany of something I could make him for breakfast with spinach in it, besides the weird cake - an omelet with spinach in it! Oh well, I could save that for when he ate all of this spinach cake.

Fall was coming in just a couple days, so I ran to the seed shop to go ahead and purchase seeds for the upcoming season. Anissa, the owners' daughter, greeted me at the door as she was exiting the shop, which was also her house. "Congratulations, Angela! I heard that you got married!" I smiled and thanked her, then thought of something and asked her how she knew I got married. "Well, it was on the news this morning."

I gaped at her. "The...news?" I squeaked.

She laughed, waving her hand lightly. "Oh, you know, that little one minute island round up thing that Elli records in the basement of the town hall every morning and puts on a continuous loop all day." She smiled, leaning in a little. "There's not much news on this little island sometimes, so she must have jumped at the chance to report on something that people actually wanted to hear!"

I went in and bought my seeds, then returned home. Luke was already there, and he was admiring the spinach cake on the counter. "It looks awesome, Angela! You're such a cool wife!" he exclaimed, wrapping me up in his arms and rocking side to side. I just smiled up at him, then I told him that we were the big news today.

"No freaking way! I'm on TV? I gotta see it!" I switched on my crummy little TV set, and sure enough, there was Elli.

"Yesterday, our newest resident, Angela, got married at the town hall to our very own Luke." The camera cut away to show a picture of a younger Luke fighting a raccoon.

"Aw, hell yeah!" Luke yelled, his mouth full of spinach cake. I just laughed hard. Being married to Luke was definitely going to be fun.