by Sionna Fox
“Okay.”
“Good.”
When they went upstairs to get ready for bed, she was about to squirt toothpaste on her finger and call it good when he pressed his toothbrush into her hand. Considering that earlier in the evening she’d asked him to spank her until she cried then fuck her, the intimacy of the gesture shouldn’t have thrown her. But it did. This warm, fuzzy Ian wasn’t the man she’d known. A fresh wave of guilt swept through her that he had probably been this person all along, and she had been too self-involved to notice.
Ian dropped off to sleep long before she did. She lay there wondering if it were possible to move past the people they had been to each other and become what they needed. She was afraid it wasn’t. That it would be too easy to slip into old patterns that left neither of them happy or satisfied, that being together tonight was another in a long list of mistakes.
She slept eventually, wondering which man she would wake up next to. The one she had been with for five years? Or the one whose arms held her close even as he slept? And what would she be to him when she woke up?
Nine
Ian would have happily kept Kate in bed all day—he didn’t have anywhere else to be, after all—but he didn’t dare ask. She had her routine, her pages to write in the coffee shop, her preparation for teaching in the upcoming semester, and it was too soon, too fragile between them to ask her to stray from it.
She’d need space to think, and so did he. That wouldn’t happen with her naked and tied spread-eagle to the mattress, as deeply appealing as that image was. Still, he proved he could make breakfast before he drove her back to her little sublet.
He rattled around the house looking for things to do. He wasn’t good at time off. He’d taken vacation days for family events or travel, but he’d certainly never taken days off to just…do nothing. He could log into the VPN and check email, make sure there were no fires to put out, but Jeff had explicitly told him on his way out that everything would forward to Alice, and Ian knew she was more than capable of handling it.
He needed a project. Anything to keep his hands and at least part of his mind occupied.
He texted Kate.
Ian: Where did we keep things to dust with?
Kate: Cleaning supplies are under the sink in the laundry room. Why? What are you doing?
Ian: I am so bored I am going to clean the office bookshelves.
Kate: It’s been less than twenty-four hours.
Ian: I know. I don’t know how to do time off.
Kate: Use a microfiber cloth for the books, wood cleaner and a cloth for the shelves. Start at the top and work your way down. Anything old, pull by the whole spine, not the top edge.
Ian: Thank you.
He found the cloths and spray under the sink, brought everything upstairs and started at the far end, top to bottom, like she’d instructed. When he’d bought the drafty old house, he’d installed heavy, dark shelves in the third upstairs bedroom for his office, and deep walnut wainscoting along the open walls. Its one window was shaded by a large maple tree, keeping the room in subdued shadow at all times. A heavy desk with a large, battered leather blotter, and a well-worn club chair and ottoman in the corner completed the room.
No wonder Kate had never liked to work up here; it looked like a movie set for a Victorian gentleman’s club, complete with the brass bar cart and decanter of Scotch. Aside from the club chair and the Scotch, and his sleek laptop looking terribly out of place on the desk, Ian didn’t recognize the person who bought those things.
He opened the shades and turned on all the lights, pulling books from the shelves and carefully stacking them in the order they came down. They’d been an alphabetical jumble of subjects until the last time Kate had taken it upon herself to deep clean in there. She’d rearranged by topic, then author, putting her undergraduate work-study job in the library to use.
He sprayed the first empty shelf and wiped away the dust that had accumulated around the spines, leaving behind a pleasant smell of sweet almonds. He worked his way down, penned in by his stacks of books, until the first set of shelves was clean from top to bottom.
He picked up the first stack and carefully wiped their covers and the tops of the pages. Fancy editions of classics bound in gold-stamped cloth. Some he’d read while he was in school, some had been there because he’d thought they ought to be. Not a single one had been picked up to read since he bought them.
He picked his way through the piles and found an empty shipping box in the basement. Someone would appreciate these. Kate would know what to do with them. But he should ask Sarah. Because if Kate thought he was leaning on her to be his housekeeper again, he’d ruin every shred of a chance of proving to her that it could be different.
He boxed books as he worked his way around the room, putting more aside to give away than ended up back on the shelves. In the end, he barely needed a single one of the dark, heavy units. Between old books he’d never pick up again, the things he’d bought to look impressive, and the plethora of outdated textbooks that had lived on the bottom rows, he’d rid himself of most of his collection.
He picked up his copy of Winnie-the-Pooh. He’d salvaged it from his parents’ house when they’d downsized into a retirement condo years ago. Its cover was battered, the pages worn and stained in some places. He’d loved that book, given to him by some great aunt or other he’d probably met once. Someone who would have chosen a book nearly sixty years old at the time because they remembered it fondly from their own childhood. He’d learned to read because he’d driven his babysitters batty with requests for it.
Then he’d known how to escape. Ian could bury himself in a story, and it didn’t matter that he was an awkward, uncoordinated boy who desperately wanted to play games with his peers, but had trouble understanding the shifting social rules that governed them. He could memorize an encyclopedic amount of information about their games, but being able to quote statistics about baseball or soccer or hockey didn’t help when he flinched every time the large, red rubber kickball sailed his way in gym class. Or when he took the soccer coach’s instructions to stand there too literally and allowed the ball to pass him, engrossed in watching bumblebees totter from dandelion to dandelion while his father yelled from the sidelines.
He’d grown into his limbs eventually, though he’d never be terribly coordinated. Cross country had been a godsend in high school. And being able to synthesize large swaths of information in a short period of time had proved rather valuable when the adults had picked up on it.
He sat flipping through the pages, tracing his fingers over the expressive illustrations. How he’d wanted to escape to the forest with them. He’d given this to Kate, a piece of himself, doing the voices the way he’d imagined them as a child, and it had somehow changed everything. He wanted to understand why.
His phone buzzed.
Kate: How goes the great library clean-up?
Ian: Where is the best place for me to send many, many boxes of old books?
Kate: Depends on what they are.
Ian: Classics, old textbooks, paperbacks I bought and read once and have no desire to do so again.
Kate: You can put the textbooks in one of those paper recycling bins. Donate or yard sale the rest. Sarah might have better ideas. But I can come over and take a look if you want?
She was making this too easy. Or she was slipping back into the role she used to play. He wanted to check on her after the upheaval of the night before, but he couldn’t let her come over to the house and get up to her elbows in a project for him.
Ian: I’ll ask Sarah about it.
Kate: Okay.
Ian: But do you mind if I stop by later to check in?
She had to know he was going to ask. That he took these general rules of conduct seriously. He didn’t do a scene with someone that made them cry and not check in the next day.
Kate: Okay. I’m at home whenever.
He hated that she used the word home for that tiny fuchsia room. H
e knew she meant in the general sense, home as her current place of residence and not emotionally, but it still stung.
Ian: I’ll be by in a bit.
He moved the books he hadn’t been able to box in neat stacks on the floor along the base of the shelves. He could probably sell the shelving units he no longer needed. Or replace them altogether with something lighter. Take down the dark paneling. Get a smaller, more functional desk. Make it a space they would both want to use.
He imagined he’d still find her spread out at the kitchen table, still wanting to be in the middle of everything, to be distracted momentarily by his comings and goings, a small touch to the top of her head, a kiss on the cheek as he passed. The way he’d remind her that there was a perfectly good office upstairs and she’d roll her eyes and tell him she liked the table just fine.
He boxed up his old textbooks. Anything on those pages, he could look up online in an instant if it hadn’t been long ago deeply entrenched in his memory. He put them in the trunk of his car and found the nearest paper pulping bin in the parking lot of a grocery store a few miles away. Heaving them over the side, and the loud thump they made as they hit the stacked books and papers already lining the bin was oddly satisfying. He should have done this years ago.
He drove to Kate’s feeling lighter, like it was more than old textbooks he’d gotten rid of. Like he was actually proving himself capable of change, of not hanging on to the past and the person he thought he was supposed to be. He could do it. For her. Because of her.
* * *
Kate had seen how much Ian wanted her to stay that morning, but she was grateful for the ride back to her place. He respected her routine, the boundaries she still had. For now. She needed to think, to work, and none of that was going to happen with the two of them in the same room.
But instead of going down to the coffee shop and cranking out a few more pages, she got domestic. She hauled a pile of T-shirts and leggings and hoodies down to the basement coin-op and did her laundry. She tidied up the apartment, cleaned the bathroom, had another go at scrubbing the mystery grease out of the oven that smoked lightly every time she turned it on.
As she scrubbed, she replayed their conversation from the night before. They’d said a lot, but not nearly enough, then had been distracted by sex. And that was the perfect summary of their entire relationship. The sex was never the problem. The talking to each other about anything other than the how and when of the sex was the problem.
When she’d left last year, she’d believed it was his fault, that she didn’t love him and didn’t want him. She’d been so, so absurdly wrong about the wanting. And she might love him, this person she was getting to know for the first time. The kind of man who did the voices in children’s stories and spooned her to sleep. She scrubbed harder, peeling back years of other tenants’ grime. By the time she was done, she was mentally worn out and sweaty, and a long, hot shower was overdue.
She hadn’t cleaned up before she left Ian’s. Using his bathroom was like using his toothbrush, too intimate for the shaky ground they were on. She didn’t want to get attached. She didn’t want to hurt him. But the puppy-ish enthusiasm with which he’d made her eggs and toast told her she was going to anyway. As did their intermittent texting as he desperately searched for a project to occupy his brain.
She craned her neck to check her butt in the small vanity mirror. No bruising that she could see, but she was muscle sore and her skin was a bit tender. All the better to get under hot water.
She zoned out under the flow while the tiny bathroom fogged up until she was almost asleep on her feet. She’d forgotten about this part. The bone-deep tiredness after an emotional release like the one she’d had the night before. She’d told him he could come by to check on her, because she knew he wouldn’t be able to settle until he did. He was already throwing his house into the kind of upheaval she’d never witnessed by clearing out the office. She’d been amazed that he was actually considering donating his fancy editions of books he’d never opened. And she wondered what was in his keeper pile.
She’d take a nap. Then her head would be clearer and she could show Ian she was fine and maybe get some work done before dinner.
The sound of the buzzer—finally fixed after half a dozen emails to the landlord—shot her out of a deep sleep. She stumbled to the door and pressed the button to let him up. Not the image she meant to present to him, but she’d forgotten to set an alarm and had apparently been asleep for hours. She scraped her fingers through her hair in the mirror, undoing some of the bed head, and opened the door.
They did an awkward dance down the entryway, with Ian looking like he wanted to kiss her and not being sure if he could, and Kate wanting him to do it, but not being sure if he should.
She sat at the table, trying to keep this conversation as far away from the bed as possible.
Ian sat next to her and rested his elbows on the chipped and peeling Formica, dressed down again, his hair a little wild, his face stubbly, dust all over his hoodie. “How are you?”
“I’m okay.”
“Are you?” He raised an eyebrow.
“I’m fine.” The words came out with a defensive edge.
“Kate.” He reached for her hand across the table, playing his part. “Last night wasn’t easy for either of us, and you weren’t expecting to react the way you did. I’m guessing you just woke up from a nap and you haven’t eaten anything since I dropped you off this morning? And that’s okay. You’re allowed to be unsettled or unsure or tired or depressed or angry, or whatever you feel. But you can’t tell me that you needed me to check in more, then get annoyed when I do it.”
She sighed. “I guess I’m getting what I wished for, huh?”
“You did point out that I wasn’t doing a very good job of it. And if we’re…doing this…” He shrugged as he trailed off.
Her heart twisted a little. Ian hated playing without a script and she knew it. This nebulous thing they were doing wasn’t easy for him either. “I don’t know how I feel. I’m tired. And I’m hungry. But that’s the best I can do.”
“I can work with tired and hungry and unsure. That’s still more honest than saying ‘fine.’”
“And how are you?”
“Fine.”
She glared at him across the table.
“See? You don’t like it either.” He laced their fingers together and glanced at the ceiling. “I don’t know, kitten.”
“So what do we do?”
“I think that’s up to you. I told you last night I still wanted you.”
“I don’t think it’s the wanting that’s ever been our problem.”
He snorted. “No, I suppose not. Do you want me, Kate?”
“I don’t know. It’s… We have all this history, but I feel like I don’t know you. Like I have history with a character you played, and I don’t know how much of it was real and how much of it was what you thought I wanted. And I can’t make sense of that.” She squeezed his hand. “But I think I like you. This you. But what if you don’t like me when I’m not playing the role I used to play? And I’m scared that we would only get sucked back into the way it used to be, anyway, because we know how to do that, and it’s easy. What if we try again and nothing changes? Or we find out we don’t like each other?”
“That’s always been the risk, with any relationship, kitten. You know that.”
“But it’s new and not new, you know? You still call me kitten, which is fine, but it feels like putting on my old collar and pretending it’s brand new. We can’t pretend there isn’t a history between us, but what if it just weighs us down?”
“I know.” Several moments passed, their fingers still entwined, before he spoke again. “Should we take care of one of your uncomfortable feelings and feed you?”
“That might not be the worst idea.”
They ordered takeout and sat at her tiny table eating straight out of the boxes, trading containers mostly in easy silence.
“Can I a
sk you something?”
“Of course, kitten.”
“What the hell really happened that Jeff sent you on an involuntary vacation?”
He grimaced. “Ah. The last year has been… I’ve realized some things. Like the fact that at least with the team I manage, they don’t actually need me. Alice is perfectly capable of handling both clients and project management.”
“And they can pay her less.”
“I advocated quite strongly at her last performance review for her to get a significant raise based on her workload.”
“Which tipped them off to the fact that you weren’t doing much of anything.” She’d always had a better understanding of office politics than he did. Helping him parse it out, refine the language of never quite saying what he really meant, no matter how much that annoyed him, had been one of her jobs. She was pleased to hear that he’d advocated for Alice, even if it had cost him. Kate had always liked her, and she’d deserved a hefty salary increase for years.
“Got it in one. I’m fairly certain Jeff thinks I have a substance problem, but really, it’s a my job is outmoded and frankly boring problem. And not having someone to take care of, to give meaning to sitting in the office… I ran out of fucks without quite realizing it.”
Kate laughed at the startled expression on his face. “And you just figured that out, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Well, and I talked to Evie about it. She also seemed to be of the same opinion that I was a bit slow on the uptake.”
“You’re not slow.” She pressed her palm to his stubbly cheek. “You just don’t think about what it looks like when you tell your bosses that your team member is doing both her job and yours, leaving you to twiddle your thumbs in your office looking for stuff to do. So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. But I have at least a week before anyone checks in to figure it out.” He sucked in a breath. “And it gives me time to do this.” He leaned forward and carefully touched his lips to hers.