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“And lots more of the sexy stuff. She goes to a happy place when she thinks about that stuff with you.”
I say nothing to that, not remotely willing to talk sex with my sister, but now I’m wishing the house had cameras so I could rewind to see what Grace is referring to.
“Gonna dash,” she says. “See you tomorrow night then. We got her dress and shoes all picked out. She’s going to look stunning. I dropped off your pocket square, too.”
She always looks stunning. Especially when she first wakes up in the morning. Sleepy. Fresh-faced. Hair fanned out.
“Oh, and Derek?”
“Yeah?”
“Get home. It’s only days since you got married. You shouldn’t be at work. She said you guys aren’t speaking but you can’t fix that if you’re not home.”
“Did she tell you why we’re not speaking?”
“No. Do you wanna tell me?”
“No,” I say, scratching my jaw some more. “Gotta go, Grace.”
“Okay, love you, bye!”
She hangs up.
It’s after nine o’clock when I walk in to a quiet house that smells like lemons.
I go upstairs and see the light filtering around the door to the master bedroom. I walk the opposite way to the spare room I’ve been in the last two nights, but I stop in the doorway, surprised. The bed is made, and the room has been cleaned. The room smells like laundry soap. She must have washed the bedding. The clothes that were on the floor earlier are now folded on the chair. She did my laundry.
A half bottle of bourbon still sits on the table beside the bed, but the empty one is gone.
My stomach nags at me for food and it hits that I haven’t eaten for twelve hours, so I back out of the room, intending on going downstairs to see what might be there, but here she is, in the hall, in a pink tank top and matching short shorts. Very short shorts. No fucking bra.
Something primal rises in my system. Something else also rises. Immediately.
She startles. She must not have heard me come up. She hangs onto the doorframe, eyes dropping to point at her toes, and before I can calculate it, I’m in her space, using my index knuckle to tip her chin up so our eyes meet.
She backs up a step. I follow with a step, which makes her back up some more. This goes on again and again and now we’re deep into the bedroom. It’s lit with a soft glow from the lamp. It smells fresh in here, too.
Her phone is lit with a cooking video on the bed beside the paperback she’s now reading. A book I bought her the other day.
My eyes scan her face, her body, assess her body language. She seems afraid. And I don’t like it.
“You’re acting afraid of me,” I say.
“That’s because I am,” she whispers.
“I’d never hurt you, wife.”
She frowns. “But that’s all you do, Derek.”
An unpleasant sensation grips my insides and squeezes.
“And you’re obviously mad at me,” she says, “which is also scary.”
“I don’t just hurt you. Did buying you this house hurt you?”
“Yes,” she whispers.
I shake my head. “Did buying you that book hurt you?”
