by Aly Martinez
“No!” I scoffed. “Dear God, no. We’re friends. That’s it.”
“Okay.” She slanted her head to one side. “Then why are we freaking out about this?”
“Because I had a sex dream about Eason.”
“But you didn’t have sex with him. It was a dream. Listen, you’re used to being in charge, but you don’t get to control those. It’s nothing, Bree. This time tomorrow, you’ll be telling me about your late-night fantasies with the shorty-shorts UPS guy.” She moaned. “Those steel-toed boots do it for me.”
Her joke didn’t land a chuckle even if she was really on a roll.
I shook my head. This didn’t feel like nothing. It felt like a dormant part of me had been awakened for the first time in years. Years. Plural. As in more than one, and that was not possible because my husband had only been gone for one.
Maybe I was just desperate.
Maybe I was just hard up and in need of a release.
But why Eason? And why had I been so freaked out when he’d left? And why had my room felt smaller that morning surrounded by all of Rob’s stuff?
“I don’t know, Jillian. This felt big. Like really big. I snuck out before breakfast so I didn’t have to see him this morning.”
“Let me tell you a little secret. That brain of yours knows more than you think it does. But none of it matters until your heart gets the memo too. Until then, all you can do is sit back and enjoy the ride. You don’t want Eason? Fine. Don’t trip and fall face-first into his lap with your mouth open.”
My eyes flashed wide. “Jesus, Jillian.”
She laughed softly and her shoulders bounced. “Just relax, okay? Let the erotic dust settle and then see how you feel in a few days. I can’t speak for Rob or Jessica, but my Edgar loved me with his whole heart. Jealous as a side piece on Valentine’s Day and as territorial as a damn grizzly bear. But I like to think that, if I moved on with someone new, he’d be happy for me. Don’t underestimate the people who loved you.”
I drew in a deep breath, holding it until my lungs burned. Okay. She had a point. There was nothing to get worked up about—yet. Eason didn’t know I’d had a dream. No harm done.
Though…relaxing had never been my strong suit.
“You’re right. There’s no use in getting worked up over nothing.”
Her knees creaked as she rose from the chair. “Alrighty, but should you decide you do want to get worked up, I have a twenty-dollar-off coupon code for a fantastic vibrator. Ten speeds, waterproof, guaranteed to make you say, ‘Eason who?’”
“Okay, that’s enough. Back to work. Break time’s over.”
Chuckling, she walked to the door. “I’ll just pop that coupon code over in an email. You know, just in case.”
EASON
“Daddy!” Luna exclaimed, colliding with my legs as soon as I walked through Bree’s back door.
Sweaty and shirtless, fresh from a run, I picked her up. “Hey, sweet girl. You miss me?”
She hooked her arms around my neck and rested her head on my shoulder, giving me the only answer I would ever need. And then, in the next heartbeat, she shot up and pinched her nose. “Ew, Daddy tink.”
“Oh, holy God…” Bree mumbled, coming to a screeching halt a few feet away.
“What?” I asked.
Using her hand to shield her face, she cut her gaze to the floor. “Where is your shirt?”
I twisted my lips. “Probably in my drawer?”
“Ohhhkay, but why aren’t you wearing it?”
I blinked at her for several seconds. I didn’t exactly roam around shirtless a lot, but it wasn’t unusual if I was working out or hanging out by the pool with the kids.
“Because I just got back from a run? Does it…bother you?”
Her head popped up, but she was still using her hand to block my chest from her vision. “Of course it doesn’t bother me. Why would it bother me?”
“Gee, Bree. I don’t know,” I replied, lifting a hand to mimic her.
Discarding her shield, she rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Now that you’re back from doing pushups in the yard, can you watch the kids for a little while? The dealership that bought Rob’s Porsche is supposed to pick it up in the morning, so I need to get the rest of his stuff out and wipe down the inside. He’d lose his mind if I let anyone see his baby like that.”
I hadn’t done any pushups in the yard; therefore, had no damn clue what she was talking about. But there were more pressing parts of her statement that required my attention.
“Whoa, hold up.” I set Luna on her feet. “I thought you were going to let me take care of that.”
“Yeah, but it’s four o’clock.”
“And?” I drawled, clearly confused.
It had only been a matter of time before this happened. I just wasn’t expecting it that day.
Then again, I’d once read in a book that there is no true timeline for grief. It was always one step forward, two weeks wallowing and cussing the universe back. But, with time, the good days had begun to outweigh the bad.
For over thirteen months after the fire, Rob’s belongings had sat untouched. His coat hung on the rack next to the door, his clothes filled the closet, and his precious convertible collected dust in the garage. Bree and I had talked about her packing up his stuff multiple times, but she’d yet to follow through.
I couldn’t blame her; I still wore my wedding ring because taking it off felt like betrayal.
However, that week, something had been going on with Bree. She’d been quieter than usual, keeping to herself.
At first, I’d thought I’d done something to piss her off because if I entered a room, she made every excuse to leave. She never missed one of our nightly chats by the firepit though, even if those were weird too. Either she avoided eye contact altogether or I’d catch her staring at me from the corner of my eye.
That’s not to mention her reaction when Madison and Asher plotted a sneak tickle attack on her. My job was to pin her arms above her head, just as it had been over a dozen times before. Her face had turned shades of red I didn’t know human flesh was capable of that day. She avoided me like the plague for the rest of the afternoon, only forgiving me when I snuck three red M&M’s into her napkin at dinner.
However, on Friday when she’d gotten home from work, Bree slipped into a pair of purple pajama pants and a matching tank top and then started sorting Rob’s things. Armed with a system of keep, donate, and trash, she refused to let me help other than entertaining the kids and occasionally carrying things down the stairs or up to the attic after they’d been properly boxed for storage.
The helplessness I felt as I paced outside her bedroom door while listening to her broken sobs damn near destroyed me. I’d gotten used to being a team, but that wasn’t a goodbye we needed to say together. After the kids went to sleep, I knocked to let her know I was headed back to the pool house. Much to my surprise and staggering relief, she patted the spot of carpet next to her and asked me to stay for a while.
With two video baby monitors humming in the background, we sat on the rug in her room, laughing over Rob’s and my old yearbooks for hours. The literal and figurative closet cleaning wasn’t limited to just her husband, either. She found pictures of her and Jessica from long before I had known either of them. There were birthday cards in Jessica’s handwriting, a few scarves, and even a small pair of gold stud earrings she’d borrowed from my wife and thankfully never returned. No matter how small or inexpensive, they immediately became family treasures I could pass down to our daughter.
It was well past three in the morning before I headed back to my place, carrying a basket full of not only Jessica’s stuff but also Rob’s favorite T-shirts, the Rolex Bree insisted he would have wanted me to have, and a shoe box of ticket stubs and fliers from my shows that I had no idea he’d collected.
But most of all, by the time we said our goodnights, a weight we had no idea we’d been carrying was suddenly lifted from both of our shoulders. It was
almost like we had been too afraid of letting ourselves remember the two people we’d lost out loud sometimes, but that night—after purging memory after memory along with tangible stuff—there was a lot less pain and a lot more peace than I’d ever expected.
As bleak and sad as it probably could have been, after spending that time laughing and basically shooting the shit, carefree into the night, I found myself feeling so lucky I still had Bree. And even luckier that I got to be the one who was there for her.
Saturday was much of the same, though as the house emptied of Rob’s belongings, so did the light in Bree’s eyes. It had been a silent Saturday night around the firepit, and her one glass of wine gradually turned into a bottle. However, first thing Sunday morning, she was back at it—hungover as hell and full steam ahead.
I tried to convince her to take a break. I even suggested a trip to the park with the kids. But Bree was having none of it. Eventually, she got sick of my hovering and told me to take a hike. I’d gone for a run instead, having found it helped expel this newfound energy I had lately.
“What does four o’clock have to do with anything?” I asked.
“It’s getting late, and I need to get the car cleaned up and the kids bathed, and make dinner, and—”
Was it wrong to think she was gorgeous when she was flustered and overwhelmed? Her hair all out of place. Her shirt dirty and wrinkled. The tiny hint of smudged mascara that reached toward her temple beside her left eye.
Was it even more wrong that my first instinct was to wrap my arms around her and tell her I’d deal with what needed to be done and to hell with whatever wasn’t finished? The best part for me was just taking something off her plate and watching her exhale for usually the first time all day.
Sometimes the silent, grateful look she gave me stole my breath—a little.
“Why don’t you just go sit outside for a while and take a breather. I’ll leave you alone.” I cut my eyes away, not wanting to make her uncomfortable like she’d been around me lately. “I’ll take care of the car and the baths, and I’ll order a veggie pizza for dinner.”
“Pee-za!” Luna yelled, taking off as fast as her little legs would carry her to spread the good news to Asher and Madison.
I grinned, enjoying the fleeting moment where I was taking care of my girls all at the same time. “See, it’s a done deal now.”
“I can’t let you do that. The weekends are supposed to be your free days so you can work.” She stretched her neck, again proving the toll the long weekend had taken on her.
“Yeah, well. I’m taking a personal day to help a friend.”
Her eyes lit up, but then she quicky frowned, a crinkle forming between her eyes. “You should get new friends. The one you have now is really needy.”
The one I have now is sexy as all hell, standing in front of me, dead tired in old Birkenstocks.
“Psh, you should get new friends. The one you have now is about to sneak bacon onto the veggie pizza.”
She curled her lip. “Isn’t bacon after a workout counterproductive?”
“Not if you’re only working out so you can eat the bacon.”
“Touché.” She quietly laughed, her gaze dipping to my chest for a nanosecond. Her whole body startled as her green eyes snapped back to mine. “Ummm, you sure you don’t mind? I can handle bath time and even ordering pizza. But I’m emotionally tapped.”
“You did good this weekend. Really fucking good.” I gave her shoulder a squeeze.
“Yeah. Thanks.” She shrugged off my hand.
Jesus, what the hell was her deal? Okay. Don’t read into it. She had literally just said she was emotionally tapped. The last thing she needed was me reading into shit.
I slapped on my signature grin and fell back on my specialty skill of making a joke. “Now, just to be clear, you did hear the part about bacon on one of those pizzas, right?”
“Extra bacon. I gotcha.”
I did not do enough cardio to warrant extra bacon, but I sure as hell didn’t correct her, either.
After a quick stop for a shower, I made my way out to the garage. I steeled myself before peeling back the tan cover on Rob’s ruby-red Porsche 911. Besides the occasional start to keep the battery from dying, no one had touched the car since we’d lost him.
A wave of nostalgia stabbed me in the gut as I opened the door.
There wasn’t much to clean. Short of a thin layer of dust on the dashboard, the interior was spotless—an abandoned iPhone charger being the only proof that the car had ever been out of the showroom. I went to work flipping the visors and popping the glove compartment open. Inside, there was all the usual fare: pack of gum, sunglasses, service records, and proof of insurance, but it was a small black cell phone that caught my attention.
Immediately, I picked it up and turned it in my fingers. Rob’s cell had been lost in the fire, so I assumed it must have been a work phone or an older model he’d upgraded. Either way, Bree would want it back, so I plugged it into the charger and moved on without thinking much of it.
The small trunk in the hood was empty, and after checking under the seats, wiping down the console, and shaking out the floor mats, I called it a day.
I managed to unwedge my body from the tiny clown car only to remember the cell, so I leaned back in.
And that was when time stopped all over again.
With the battery charged, the phone had turned on and notifications from a local Atlanta number glowed on the screen. There was no name or a photo programmed in for the contact, but based on the text, Rob was more than familiar with the sender.
I can’t stop thinking about how deep you got last night.
What.
The.
Fuck.
I sank back down into the driver’s seat, leaving the door open. There was no way. No fucking way. Rob and I had been tighter than tight. He’d told me everything. If he had been stepping out on Bree, I would have known about it. At a bare minimum, I would have known he was unhappy.
I scrolled to the next notification.
Same phone number, different jaw-dropping message.
Your lips. Your neck. Your cock. I can’t wait much longer to taste them all again.
With my heart in my throat, I glanced up at the door that led to the house. The pizza should have been there soon, and if I was going to figure out what the hell was on the phone before Bree came out there looking for me, I needed to be quick.
With my jaw clenched, I scrolled to the next message. Hell, maybe it wasn’t even Rob’s phone.
Mr. Winters, promise me you’ll make time in your busy schedule to fuck me today.
Shit. There went that theory.
“What the fuck were you doing?” I seethed at my dead best friend. When I ran out of notifications, I typed in what I hoped was the code to unlock his phone.
The little box on the screen shook my rejection.
In rapid succession, I tried Bree’s birthday, the code to their alarm system, and the kids’ birthdays, and just before getting locked out for sixty seconds, I attempted a combination of all three.
All fucking wrong.
Right. Of course. When having an affair, it was probably best if you didn’t use a code your wife would guess. Not that I would fucking know anything about that. The password on my phone was 1-1-1-1.
I drew in a deep breath, but it did nothing to slow the thundering in my ears. There had to be an explanation. My mind spun in a million different directions. The who, what, when, where, and motherfucking why all remained unanswered. Luna had locked me out of my phone enough times to know that if I got my next guess wrong, I’d have to wait five minutes for it to open again. Then fifteen, an hour, and eventually it would disable it altogether.
Unfortunately, Gino’s Pizza wasn’t that fucking slow. Max, I had two guesses left before Bree came looking for me. And then what?
Did I tell her about the notifications? Could I even get back to them without the passcode? Those texts would have crushed her
. Bree was barely surviving the weekend as it was. Did I really want to dump this steaming pile of bullshit at her feet without knowing all the facts?
Had he still been alive, I would have gone straight to Rob. Demanded answers. Best friends or not, the way he lived his life was none of my business. But come on? Cheating on his wife? The mother of his children? Fuck that.
Especially now that said wife was my…well, whatever Bree and I were. An employer of sorts? A friend? Oh, who the hell was I kidding? Bree was family. And this was not shit you kept from your family.
Swallowing hard, I racked my brain. Four dots showed on the screen. I needed a four-digit number Bree wouldn’t guess but Rob could never forget.
My knee bounced at a marathon pace and my fingers hovered over the screen, restlessly waiting for the countdown to run out, all the while terrified of one wrong stroke.
Maybe I didn’t need to know.
Maybe it would be best if I dropped it in the nearest trash can.
Maybe Rob’s secrets should have gone to the grave with him.
She didn’t need to know.
She didn’t—
“Pizza’s here,” Asher said, appearing mere inches away like a damn ninja in the night.
I bumbled, dropping the phone into my lap. “Jesus, Ash.”
He smiled big and toothy, his dark hair sweeping across his forehead. “Ha! Did I scare you?”
“Um, yeah.”
Missing nothing—such was the job of a six-year-old—he glanced down. “Did you get a new phone?”
“No,” I clipped entirely too roughly. Grabbing the digital equivalent of his father’s little black book, I stood up and shoved it into my back pocket.
Asher backed out of my way—nevertheless persistent. “Whose phone is it?”
“Uhh…” I stalled, picking up the small pile of things I’d found in the glovebox and the bucket of cleaning supplies. Great. Now I had to lie too. Rob, you fucking asshole. “It’s just an old one I use to listen to music. Come on. Let’s go eat.” Not having one single fuck left to give about that damn car, I used my heel to kick the door shut.