in my tub. When there are two in a tub, a couple of fingers are only the start of getting things hot.
“You okay in there?” Pulling off my sweater, I abandon it to the chair.
“I . . .I’ll just be a minute.”
The poor woman sounds fucking awful.
“Was it the squid?” I call out, thinking about the Vietnamese we had for dinner last night. I wasn’t touching the squid and remember distinctly warning her against it.
“No,” comes an unsure sounding response.
“I bought Lulu donuts,” I call back, not exactly shouting but pitching my voice to be heard as I drop to the bed. “I hope that’s okay but they’re kind of a thank you to her for protecting my virtue in the schoolyard.” I begin to describe the encounter, stretched out against the mattress, my feet crossed at the ankles, my hands behind my head. “. . . I can’t believe the woman was so brazen. Who hits on someone in the fucking schoolyard, while he’s standing there holding a little girl’s hand?” She just sidled up to me, and started asking me all kinds of unsubtle questions, flicking her goddamn hair. “Lulu was hilarious and totally had my back when the woman had said something I didn’t quite catch she piped up with, “I’m sorry my Daddy didn’t hear you,” I say, pitching my voice higher as though someone has a hold of my balls, “but he was too busy not listening. Maybe you should please not repeat it again.” It’s was the most polite version of fuck off I’ve ever heard!”
I begin to cackle seeing her sassy little expression again. The kids is an original, all right. A one off. Her own fucking person and I can’t wait to see her take on the world.
I turn my head towards the bathroom door when it clicks open.
“Hey! Oh, fuck. You look awful.” Swinging my legs off the bed, I stride across the room when I notice she has her makeup bag in her hand. “You can’t think you’re going back to work, angel.”
“No. I . . . I’m not.” Her ribs expand with a sharp inhale. “I’m not going back to work because—”
I catch sight of Lulu’s pink suitcase, Fee’s larger silver one standing next to it. My brain immediately rejects the suggestion that she’s overpacked for our weekend away. My jaw tightens. I only know what the fucking bags look like because I’d recently sat on this very bed and watched her unpack.
“What’s going on?” I ask dumbly. Feeling fucking dumb at any rate, pushing away the realisation that something here is very fucking wrong because that’s not a makeup bag in her hand. It’s a wash bag. And those are tears running down her face. No one cries like that because of bad squid.
“No.” Fear zips down my spine as my brain acknowledges what’s going on. The logical part of it, anyway. The emotional part of is too fucking distraught to deal as I step closer to take her in my hands. My arms. To hold her and never let her the fuck go.
“No! Fucking no!” I swing away fucking suddenly, not able to see this. Not ready to go through this again. “You can’t take this back. Not again.” I can’t fucking take it. I sling my arm over my face, elbow bent over my fucking brow like a kid refusing to allow he can be seen. And if I can’t be seen, I can’t be here, and this can’t be happening. A-fucking-gain! I act on instinct rather than intellect, pivoting on the toes of my boots, I storm at her.
If she won’t speak, if she won’t deny this, but God, she’ll feel my love as I take her head in my hands, my gaze fiercely demanding hers. I just stare at her, try to make her feel what I feel, the weight of my love, not my fear. My jaw is clenched so tight because I can’t trust myself to speak. Not until I’ve mastered what I want to say, not without demanding she tell me what the fuck he has said to her. Because this has Simon in it.
She promised she wouldn’t listen to him. That she’d stay the fuck away.
But I can’t say any of that as I tilt my head and slant my mouth over hers. At first, she doesn’t respond beyond the halting gasp. Next come the words I force her to swallow back as I coax her lips to open with