The Other Half

by Jess Whitecroft

  “Whipped roux frosting?”

  “Waldorf Astoria recipe, according to this. None of that cream cheese crap.”

  I reach for the envelope, curious, half an ear on the conversation.

  “Who even started that? That doesn’t belong on a goddamn red velvet cake. It’s for carrot cake. Why would you mess with that? Carrot cake is already the perfect cream cheese frosting delivery system…”

  “…oh, the white cake is good, too, though. Try that one.”

  “Is that the one with the almond flour? Is that worth it? I know you can stick allergy advice warnings all over these things but there’s always someone who’s going to ignore it and break out in hives. Or go into anaphylactic shock. Oh God, you don’t want that at your wedding. Chris, are you even listening?”

  “Yeah.” It’s from a New Hampshire law firm. It’s Aunt Becky’s will. “Jo, did you get one of these?” I wave the envelope.

  “Is that from Aunt Becky? Sure. I got one.”

  I set it down, puzzled. Anyone who knew Aunt Becky would be duty bound to admit that she was definitely an individual, but this is strange, even for her. “What did she leave you?”

  Jo arches her eyebrows, as if she’s a stranger and I’ve flat out asked her how much she makes per annum. “I’m not saying,” she says. “You first.”

  “No, you.”

  “I asked first. You answer first. That’s how it works.”

  “Doesn’t have to.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  Mom silences us both with a look. “Josephine,” she says, in a warning tone. “Tell your brother what you got in the will.”

  Jo sighs. “Fine,” she said. “I got the estate. Happy?”

  “The estate?”

  “Yeah. Becky’s literary estate. All those history books she wrote. They get reprinted and translated every now and again, and I get the royalties. I’m like Christopher Tolkien, although hopefully a little less obvious about the cash grabs.”

  This makes even less sense than it did before. “But I’m the one who works in publishing.”

  “I know, honey,” says Jo. “But I’m the academic and you sell Hunger Games knockoffs.”

  “Mom!” I say, reflexively.

  She steps in to referee. “Jo, that was mean. Apologize to your brother.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m just saying. He is in marketing.”

  “You didn’t have to be such a dick about it.”

  “Jesus tap-dancing Christ,” says Mom. “How are you two thirty-two years old? Christopher, what’s the matter with you? What did she leave you to knock your nose out of joint? That collection of skeevy-ass love letters she had from that time she hooked up with Martin Amis?”

  “No,” I say, refusing to be sidetracked by the Amis hookup, even if it is fascinatingly gross. “She left me the house.”

  Jo shrieks so loud that she claps both hands over her mouth and stares at the baby monitor in silence for a moment. The fight hangs in the air, but we’re all three of us frozen, straining our ears for a murmur from the bedroom. There’s a coo. Jo’s eyes widen, but then the coo is followed by a fart, and then blessed silence.

  “You got the house?” she says. “That is so unfair.”

  “Says the new executor of her literary estate. Her estate makes money. Her house? Not so much. You saw the place. I’ve inherited the frigging Money Pit. No…sorry, correction. I’ve inherited half of The Money Pit.”

  “Half?” says Mom.

  “Yeah. The other half goes to someone named Jody Ohanian.”

  “Irish?” says Mom, and I’m reminded of that time Jo said she was deracinated. In this moment there’s not enough melanin in the world to keep my mother from sounding whiter than Edie Bouvier Beale.

  “O-H-A-N-I-A-N,” I say. “No apostrophe, so Armenian, I’m guessing. What does it matter, anyway?”

  “That’s nuts,” says Mom. “I always thought she’d divide the house between the two of you.”

  “No shit,” says Jo. “I’m still part of Generation Rent while he gets an 1876 Eastlake stick style house in fucking New Hampshire.”

  “Half of one. And it’s falling apart. I thought I was going to put my foot through the stairs at one point. If you want it you’re welcome to it. I’ll run the literary estate and you can play house with Jody O’Random.”

  “Stop it,” says Mom. “I’m having flashbacks to that Christmas where you wanted the Barbie and you wanted the Tonka truck.”

  “How was that a problem?” says Jo. “We switched gifts and we were happy.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to be that easy this time, Josie. Not without an assload of legal fees.” Mom reaches out and takes the letter. “And it looks like this Ohanian person has filed the will already. Apparently it’s already in probate.”

  “So what does that mean?” I say.

  She holds the letter closer to her eyes, squinting to read. She’s forgotten her glasses again. “I’m not sure. It’s not the will I expected, I must admit, but we’ll figure it out. I’m sure Becky left something behind to explain what the hell she was thinking when she did this.”

  “And in the meantime?”

  She taps the edge of my empty glass with a fork. “In the meantime, Baby Boy, you should probably have another mimosa.”

  I have three. Maybe even four, which is enough to take the edge off. I eat so much cake it makes me feel ill. Eventually Artemis wakes up and everything is about her again, which is fine with me. I’m not good at being the center of attention, to the point where that’s the part of the wedding that keeps me up at night. That and that kiss. I have never done anything like that before. Ever. My conscience was always clear on that score. In uncharitable moments I’ve wondered if Sebastian wasn’t entirely kidding when he joked about pushing me into the arms of an intern. Just to muddy me up a bit, rub off my sheen, so that we make a better matched pair.

  “Are you okay?” says Jo, on her way out of the door.

  “I don’t know,” I say. I want to tell her everything, the way we used to, but she’s got enough going on. Besides, I think she’s talking about the house. “It’s just weird. The whole situation with this Ohanian guy. It’s not just me, right? It’s weird.”

  “It’s very weird,” she says, settling the sleeping baby in her stroller seat. She looks up at me and straightens up, her expression serious. “I know I seem like a brat sometimes, but I don’t mean to be. I know the estate sounds amazing, but at the end of the day Aunt Becky wasn’t Tolkien. She wrote some history books that might go out of style in a few years when there’s a new wave of thought – like post-post-post revisionism or whatever. And then, brother-dear, I’m right back where I started in my usual non-salaried situation. The one where I’m only as good as my last book and equally in danger of going out of style.”

  “You could never be out of style,” I say. “Your style is your own. Always was. You’re timeless, Brosephine.”

  She hugs me and wipes her eyes. “Okay, knock it the fuck off, because I’m a hormone monster right now and you’re making me cry.” She squeezes my arm. “And I’m sorry about what I said about The Hunger Games knockoffs. That wasn’t true.”

  “No, it wasn’t. I also sell Harry Potter knockoffs. And plenty of Twilight ones, too.”

  Jo laughs, but I’m still not completely sure we’re okay. The truth is we haven’t been the same for a long time, not since marriage and babies entered the picture and made me realize how close we’d always been. I head to the couch and lie there, exhausted by the presence of the baby. I’m not cut out for adulthood.

  It’s almost night when Sebastian comes in. He turns on the light and nearly jumps out of his skin. “Oh my God. What are you doing there in the dark?”

  “Trying to scare off a migraine. I had too many mimosas over the cake tasting and now I feel gross.”

  “Poor baby.” He perches on the edge of the couch and unwinds the white cashmere scarf from his neck. “What a hard day you must have had. A
ny progress on the cake front?”

  “There was a white cake that was really good,” I say. His hand is cool on my forehead. “But it had almond flour.”

  “Oof. What about people with nut allergies?”

  “I know. I thought the same thing. Maybe we can hand out epi pens as wedding favors.”

  “That sounds expensive.” He thumbs at the corner of the envelope. I left it on the coffee table next to the tub of $95 moisturizer he likes to massage into his feet while we’re watching television. “What’s this?”

  “Oh. That. That would be our newest financial liability.”

  He frowns down at me. “Please don’t tell me you’re pregnant.”

  I laugh, for perhaps the first time since I did that terrible thing. Even loving him hurts now, because it reminds me of my betrayal. How can one stupid, stoned moment poison everything so completely? “It’s Aunt Becky’s will,” I say. “I got the house.”

  “In New Hampshire?” His eyes are like stars. He toes off his remaining shoe and straddles me. “Are you kidding me right now?”

  “Nope,” I say, although I don’t tell him the rest of it. We’ll get to that later, if there’s ever a time to tell your fiancé that the house you just inherited is actually half a house, and the other half now apparently belongs to some random Armenian that neither of you knows from Adam. “I am officially the inheritor of an 1876 Eastlake stick style farmhouse.”

  He leans down to kiss me. I smell champagne on his breath, and there’s a streak of glitter in the crease of one perfect eyelid. Photographers can never resist dressing him up in silver and white like a frozen erlking or an erotic Jack Frost. “Oh my God,” he says. “Can you imagine what we could do with that place?”

  I don’t. Admittedly the first image that pops into my head is Sebastian in tighty whities and Doc Marten boots. He’s clutching a sledgehammer and Blue Steeling it up like Zoolander in the coal mine, and with about as much understanding of manual labor.

  “Wait,” I say. “You want to move to New Hampshire?”

  “No. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. Give me a moment to think. This is all brand new, but I don’t hate the idea. I might even love it.”

  “Honey, you’ll die up there. You know that, right? Everyone drinks beer and nobody knows how to mix a sour appletini.”

  “Chris, listen to me,” he says, leaning forward on his knees. “Maybe this is the universe telling us something. Maybe it’s tossing us a break.”

  My left lower eyelid shudders. The twitch is back. I don’t need a self-help book to interpret that particular sign from the universe. “And maybe that’s a line from American Horror Story. You know, the one with the yuppies and the house full of murderous ghosts.”

  “You don’t believe in ghosts,” he says. “It could be great, Chris. We could make a fresh start.”

  “Again, American Horror Story.”

  “Stop it.”

  I stop. He’s serious, and I’m scared. I feel the confession rise like acid in the back of my throat, the way it has many times since my mistake, but it always sticks there, hanging out just beyond my tonsils and giving me heartburn. I don’t want to tell him, but I need to.

  “Why would we need a fresh start?” I ask, the jittery nerve under my eye going full force, like a poker tell. I hope he can’t see it.

  “Because you’ve been off,” he says, and my fear ratchets up another notch. “And distant. And cold.”

  I got high at Aunt Becky’s funeral and kissed a total stranger. How hard is that to say out loud, for God’s sake? Why can’t I do it? “I really need to talk to you,” I say, instead.

  Sebastian peers down at me. The light catches another smudge of glitter at his hairline. “That sounds ominous.”

  “I love you.” I say it because I have to say that first, before anything else. And because I do. I must do, because this dirty secret is killing me.

  He smiles and bends down to kiss me. “I know. I love you, too, but I think we need to get out of New York for a while.”

  “What? Where is this coming from?”

  His fingers work between the buttons of my shirt. “I’m stressed,” he says. “And so are you. Don’t deny it. Today at the shoot I was listening to a bunch of infants talk about diets and cocaine and surgery and…ugh.” Another champagne scented sigh. “I’m over thirty. I’m reaching my expiration date and I need something new. And this could be a gift for us, Chris. An old house. An adventure. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing to start our marriage with? We could fix it up. Start a blog.”

  “A blog?” The conversation is getting away from me and there seems to be no way to salvage it. The worst part is that I don’t want to.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Lifestyle. Decorating. Seriously – almost every twentysomething chick named Ashley is doing it these days. They buy some fixer upper, decorate everything in shades of white, cream and beige, abuse chevron patterns like it’s 2011 and make six figure incomes.”

  “Um, how?”

  “Sponsors. Affiliate links. And brand shoutouts on Instagram. They take a picture of their granola, tag the oats and get kickbacks from Quaker or whoever.”

  I hate the idea so much that it’s funny. “You’re insane,” I say.

  “Maybe,” he says, breaking into a grin. “But you’re smiling.”

  He bends his head again and teases my lower lip with kittenish flicks of his tongue. I feel his weight shift on the couch and settle over my hips, and as he rocks I begin to rise in spite of myself. I’ve been avoiding this, because I don’t deserve it. “I still need to talk to…mmm…”

  But he cuts me off with a kiss and I’m too weak to resist any more. My head is full of the taste of smoke, of that boy with the black eyes and the arched eyebrow, and I push my tongue deeper into Sebastian’s mouth, determined to taste only him alone. “Make love to me,” he whispers. “Please. You haven’t touched me for almost two weeks. I’m starting to think I’ve done something wrong.”

  He hasn’t, but I have. When we start to slide off the couch it’s my cue to say we should take this to the bedroom, where we’d get undressed and maybe slip into the bathroom to make last minute adjustments to personal hygiene. But I don’t, and instead we end up on the floor next to the coffee table, with our pants around our ankles.

  I dive into him. He’s muscled but so thin, so breakable, and my mind is an asshole. It keeps going back to that unnamed him and the wiry, whipcord solidity of his body when I pushed against it. I’m huge with guilty lust, my cock leaking precome all over Sebastian’s belly. And he’s on fire the way he was before he left for Milan, working his pants off with his feet until the motion of his legs makes me frantic and I lie flat on top of him. I grab his arms and pin them above his head. There’s a flicker of alarm in his eyes, but I can’t stop. He needs to stay still because I want his mouth. I need to taste him. I let my weight settle on top of him and hold him down as I kiss him and kiss him and kiss him. At times he shakes his head, turns his face away to gasp for air but then he comes back, his tongue thrashing against mine and his hips rutting against my resistance. He’s hard and eager and so damn beautiful, but my head’s full of boy again and I need more. I need to blot him out. I need to bury myself in Sebastian until there’s nothing left in the world but him.

  God, why am I tearing myself apart like this? It was one kiss. It wasn’t like I got coked up at a party and let someone else inside me. “Please,” he says, and I realize he’s fighting for air. I shift my weight and let go of his hands. His blue eyes are almost black, his lips rubbed red from my kiss. He’s wearing nothing but a t-shirt bunched up around his nipples and he’s never looked more naked or dirty or wayward. My glance falls on the tub of moisturizer and it’s like a devil whispering in my ear. I want to outrage him, appall him with the strength of his own desire. And more than anything I want him to know that he’s mine.

  He makes a brief, horrified noise as I unscrew the lid, but I think that’s got something more to do with thirty b
ucks worth of the stuff landing on his cock and balls all at once. It’s also cold, although it doesn’t stay that way for long, because he’s almost sizzling down there. The goop warms and oozes down over his tight, waxed balls, and I’m all the way out of my mind as I hitch his foot over my shoulder and work the moisturizer inside him. I go straight in with two fingers and he shoves himself down onto them and cries out, so slutty that I can’t help but shove in a third. I’ve never handled him so roughly before and I’m so turned on I can hardly see straight.

  “Turn over,” I say. “Give me your ass.”

  He’s on his hands and knees in under a second. I slick another handful of moisturizer over my cock and plunge straight into him. God, that’s it. That’s what I was looking for. There is nothing on my mind right now. There is no room for anything but the sweet, slick heat of him and the roar of my own desire to get off.

  “I love you,” I say, going deep and hard. “I’m gonna marry you. And when you’re my husband I’m still going to fuck you just like this.”

  Sebastian arches his back, lifting his ass to meet me. As he turns his head I see the flush blazing across his cheekbones. He has his weight on one elbow, his other hand on his cock and he’s making the most incredible noises – gasps, sobs, tiny screams. He comes fast and loud, so that he’s still moaning softly as I flip him back over and finish inside him, watching his flushed, sated face the whole while. He’s looking at me like he doesn’t know who I am, and I’m not sure any more either. All I know is that I love him so much that I could die right now and float off to heaven perfectly happy. I’m still in him, but the angle is all wrong and I have to slip out to kiss him. His legs flop open on the rug and I crawl over him to claim his mouth again.

  His lips are dry and he peers up at me with those big, blue Siamese cat eyes. He says something but I don’t catch it.

  “Do you know?” he repeats, and he looks scared to death.

  “Know what, honey?”

  His eyes search my face for a moment, then he winds his hand into the back of my hair and pulls me down for another kiss. “How much I love you? How much I’ve always loved you?”