Page 77 of Gorgeous Misery

“I’m fine.” She whispers this. Then pats the bed. “Come on. Here. Come lie down with me.”

I want to. I haven’t seen her since last New Year’s and I just want to fucking hug this girl and never let her go. But I can hear Merc and Harrison talking out in my kitchen. So I hold up one finger, letting her know I’m listening.

Then there’s a sharp knock at the door. “What?” I say. It’s loud and sharp too. But I don’t open the door.

“Harrison has to get home. I’m going to the store to get food. You don’t have much here.”

That’s because I don’t actually live here full-time, you dick. That’s what I want to say. But instead I just say, “Town’s about twenty-four miles north of here. Pick Wendy up a cookie-dough Blizzard from DQ, will ya?”

She snickers softly in the bed.

“Anything else?” his snide scoff is clear, even from the other side of the door.

“Tacos.” Wendy smiles at me. “From Roberto’s on the corner of Main and Sunflower.”

There’s a long silence on the other side of the door. And I imagine Merc and Harrison shooting each other looks, coming to a conclusion on what to say next. I’m pretty sure Merc is mad about letting me take Wendy into the bedroom now that he’s stuck on the other side of a locked door. But he’s truly not here to hurt us. He just wants info. And I know he just wants info, so I’m taking advantage of his desire to keep this whole operation as clean as possible. And he’s already fucked up. I don’t know if he meant to steal Wendy’s mind—was that part of his plan? Or was Wendy about to get the best of him when they met up and the mind-fucking just turned into a last resort kinda solution?

I won’t know that until she and I can talk freely.

Finally, Merc has something to say. “Are you gonna be here when I get back?”

I look over my shoulder at Wendy. It’s her call. She’s in charge, and she nods. “We’ll be here,” I tell him.

There are a few more minutes of whispers and shuffling from the kitchen, but then the back door smacks closed. I walk over to the window, peek through the pillowcase curtains, and watch Merc and Harrison having a final conversation. They walk down the driveway towards the jet, which is parked in the middle of the lonely dirt road, and seem to come to some kind of conclusion. Then Merc walks back this way and gets into Wendy’s truck as Harrison gets into his jet.

Two minutes later, they’re both gone.

I turn back to Wendy and smile. “Hello, Mrs. Tate.”

She smiles back. “Hello yourself, Mr. Tate.”

There is no way to stop my wide grin. She bites her lip as I study her. She’s been through some shit over the past several days, but she’s here and she’s OK.

I walk over to her and collapse down onto the bed. She immediately grabs a hold of me and fits her body next to mine, her head on my shoulder, her fingers grabbing my t-shirt, one leg thrown possessively over my thigh. She lets out a long sigh. “We gotta stop meeting this way.”

It’s not really funny, but it really is funny. So I laugh. “That’s a sick joke.”

“Sick? How do you figure?”

“You know how.”

She chuckles a little. “Did you miss me?”

“Fucking missed the hell out of you.” I sigh and run my fingers through my hair. “I was really worried.”

“I swear, I’m OK.”

“We’ll talk about that later. Outside.” I look down at her and find her looking up at me. I’m not smiling now, even though I’m happy, because I’m still a little bit pissed about how this turned out. Wendy is smirking up at me like she’s got a secret. I can’t help it. I break and grin back at her. “What’s that look for?”

“I missed you too. We really gotta get together more often.”

I almost guffaw. “Yeah. That would be an alternative way to run this marriage.”

She chuckles in that cute way I love. “There’s nothing wrong with our marriage. It’s working, right?”

I shake my head and look down at her again. “You’re nuts. When you asked me to marry you last New Year’s Eve, this wasn’t what I was picturing.”

“Hold on.” She holds up a finger and resituates herself so she can look me in the eyes. “I didn’t actually ask you to marry me.”