Page 8 of The Lipstick Flip

I blew out a breath. I nudged an empty box with one boot. “And I shouldn’t have lost my temper with Noah. I should have kept things polite. I should have been civil. I should have set boundaries and then left when he wasn’t respecting my boundaries. I shouldn’t have let my ego get in the way of my judgement.”

“Happens to the best of us,” Ed said. “What matters is you caught yourself, stepped back, called somebody.”

I grunted; it was all I could do.

“You good tonight?” Ed asked.

“I’m good.”

“Sure?”

“Sure.”

Ed was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?”

“I’m such a fucking peach,” I said, “why can’t I be both?”

Ed laughed, and then the call was over, and the last thing he said was “Call me if you need anything.”

And he meant tonight.

I ate standing over the sink, and then I threw away the container for the frozen dinner and the plastic knife and fork. I went upstairs.

I’d taken the bedroom at the back because it had the only finished bathroom and why the fuck not? I shut the door. Wedged a towel under it because of the drafts. Turned on the space heater. Most days, the house hovered between fifty and sixty, but the nights had been getting colder, and maybe I was getting soft in my old age. I stripped. Showered. The water was gray as it swirled around my feet, and for a moment, embarrassment fluttered in my stomach. What had I looked like, showing up at MagnaCare like that? And Noah always looking perfect. Even if he was thinner.

The shock of cold after the warm water made me dry off quickly, and then I pulled on clean clothes—joggers and a sweatshirt and thick socks. I crawled under the blanket, got out my phone, and started scrolling through Instagram. I started with @secondchancewamo, making sure I caught up on the comments from the day. Someone wanted to know if the stain we’d found the other day was mold or something else. Someone else wanted to know if you had to get a structural engineer to look at a sagging floor joist. @lulumama wanted to know if I had a girlfriend. I replied with one of those horny devil emojis.

One thing about being in recovery? It gave you some perspective. And looking at that horny devil, I had this one, tiny moment of disconnect, because I remembered how much shit I’d given Theo about Auggie.

But that had been a long time ago.

I got out of bed long enough to turn off the light. I put my phone away. I lay there. I’d hung an old bedsheet—with a Batman print—over the windows because we still hadn’t picked out blinds or curtains or if we were going to do blinds or curtains. It worked all right, but it didn’t cover the window perfectly, and a little bit of ambient light slipped through a crack and made a pale shape on the wall.

What the hell was I going to do?

Maybe the real question was: what choice did I have?

I’d run away once. I wasn’t going to run away again.

I still had his number in my phone. Blocked, of course. And he probably had me blocked too. But when I called, he picked up on the first ring.

His voice was thick, and it sounded like he’d been crying, but all he said was “What?”

“What’s wrong with your voice?”

He huffed a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh but was sure as hell frustration. “What’s wrong with my voice?”

“You sound like—” But saying you’ve been crying was a good way to start World War III, so I said, “You sound different.”

“What do you want, Howie?”

He was still at work, I realized. He’d be there all night. I glanced at the time; I’d caught him during his meal break—they called it lunch, but it wasn’t really lunch. It was strange how I remembered that.

I wetted my lips. Above me, the fresh white paint of the ceiling showed through the gloom. All the hours. All the days. All the sweat and swears and all that fucking money.

Do you want to be right, or do you want to sell this fucking house?

“What do you want me to do?”