Page 44 of High Water

“Are you gonna tell her therapist that in ten years when she’s sitting on a couch explaining to him why she doesn’t believe in love?”

“She’ll believe in love. We’ll give her every reason to, and the divorce can wait for as long as you think it needs to.” I want to tell her I have zero interest in a divorce. But I’m pretty sure if I tell her that now, I’ll never get her down the aisle in the first place.

“Until she’s in college. At least. Maybe longer if you think it would hurt your Grams to see it happen sooner or if it’ll be part of her conditions for the property transfer.”

I do the math in my head. That’s a little less than three years. I can work with that. That gives me plenty of time to prove to Aspen just how much she needs me around.

“Works for me.” I nod, and I see the little rise and fall of her eyebrow at my easy agreement. “What else you got?”

“I think we have to keep our distance from each other.” The next rule feels like it’s coming out of left field, given the last two.

“How do you figure we’ll do that? I assume we’ll be living in the house together. Sleeping in the same bed.”

“Yes. Well… I’m still working out the bed bit. I’m thinking I could get a daybed or something put in the bedroom. You could take the bed, and I could sleep on that. If we keep the door locked so she can’t barge in, we could make it look like we’re sleeping together without actually doing it.”

“You don’t want to sleep in the same bed as me?” The hits keep coming today, apparently. I guess this is preparation for what she’s worried Fallon will say.

“I don’t think it’s wise.”

“Because?”

“Because the proximity could lead to familiarity, and the familiarity could lead to being familiar.”

“Sex?”

She nods.

“You can say the word. We’re all adults here. Fuck, we were each other’s firsts.”

Her lashes flutter, and her brow furrows.

“What are you talking about?” she asks.

“You know what I mean.”

“I was not your first,” she insists. “Annabelle was.”

It takes me a long minute to even remember who Annabelle is, but then I remember that she went to high school with us. She kissed me once when she was tipsy from a few beers after a football game. But I never slept with her.

“Annabelle?” My brows knit together. “Nah. I think I’d remember that.”

“She said—” Aspen starts. I can imagine what she said. She never did seem to like Aspen much.

“Then she lied. You were my first. I didn’t tell you that at the time. I was… I knew you thought I was experienced and wanted me to take the lead on things. So I figured it didn’t hurt to let you believe it, but… nah. No Annabelle. Just you.”

“Oh.” She looks down at her list, her thumb tracing over the edge of the paper while she’s lost in thought for a moment. “Well, um.” She clears her throat. “At any rate, I just think we shouldn’t be having sex.”

“You want us to be celibate for almost three years?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then you’ll have to clarify it for me.”

“If you think you can be discreet, and you want to keep your place up in the Springs… then you could still, you know, have sex—with whoever.” She’s talking faster than before. “But it just can’t be here in town, or with any of the moms or anything. They’re all so gossipy, and if anyone saw you at the inn or the Avarice… well, it would travel quickly, and if Fallon heard about it…”

“Fallon? Not you?”

“I don’t really want to hear about it either. Other than knowing you’re being discreet and careful with whoever you choose for that sort of thing. And understanding that you can’t be with someone you’d risk falling in love with. Because like I said. We’d have to stay together until she finished high school and was off to college. Then we can slow-walk a separation and say we just grew apart and got busier and busier.”