His words echoed in my ears, tickling the sensitive bones deep in *there*. I stood glued to the floor, incomprehensive with shock. “What did you say?”, I whispered.

“We’re out of olive oil”, he muttered, not looking at me.

My world spun as the words tumbled from his full, lush lips; lips I’ve dreamt of biting and kissing until his entire body was swimming in my digestive juices. I shook my head and hugged myself as if trying to keep the gravity of the situation out of my heart. Out of olive oil? I always knew that I was not good enough for olive oil; it didn’t make sense that it would want to belong to me. I’m nothing special – just a normal woman of above average intelligence and enormous breasts that heave and jiggle in the golden light of the tropical rainforest I call home; with a good job in a first world country, never lacking for anything – yet for some reason, I feel as though this bottle of oil is so otherworldly and special that it doesn’t rightfully belong to me. I grip the counter to steady myself, and lift my eyes to his.

“None at all?”, I ask in a voice that trembled much less than my legs. I was fairly proud of that.

“Nope. We’ve got vegetable oil, though. Just use that”, he suggested as though nothing had changed between us. I knew, though, that things would never be the same again. Even as I silently cursed olive oil in my head, I wanted to throw myself at the empty bottle and beg, plead, offer anything if it would only give up one drop to me. I blushed furiously at the memory of last week, knowing the oil had been deep inside me, significantly lowering my risk of coronary heart disease thanks to the higher proportion of monounsaturated fats. Memories are all I had left, though – I raised my head high and steeled myself to look into his luminous eyes, throwing my hair back and pretending his words didn’t cut me to my very core.

“I don’t believe you. Let me look in the cupboard.”

I stormed past his astonished face and flung open the pantry doors. Frantically, I pawed through the canned foods – who could possibly need that many beans?, I wondered – until finally, just as I had given up hope, I spied something buried under sixteen opened boxes of pasta: a bottle of olive oil.

—

Later, as I curled up on a couch reading a book written in the mid-1800s because I can’t run the risk of having to compare myself against other female protagonists with some semblance of spirit and spunk, I let the tears come. Damn olive oil, anyway. Damn the no more than 0.8% acidity and the superior taste that comes from only the finest olives in all of Mediterrania. Hot, salty tears splashed on my alabaster cheeks as my insides wracked with agony – not physical pain, but pain from FEELINGS. Would I ever learn? How could I trust his what he said when I tingled down there; down in my most secret moist places that I, as an adult woman, can’t possibly refer to in clinical non-coy terms? I clenched my legs, feeling a reluctant thrill through my frilly froo-froo fur cave. Why? Why, damnit? WHY?