House Rules

by Ruby Lang

  “I thought pets could sense when their people were sick and try to comfort them instead of kicking them out of bed.”

  Muffin closed her eyes and Lana sighed. She wasn’t about to get any consolation from that quarter. Worse, the events of yesterday had started coming back in sharp, humiliating flashes.

  Lana sat up and rubbed her face. On the chair beside her bed sat a tray holding a glass of water, a plate of saltines, and a selection of Motrin, Pamprin, and Midol. In the bed, beside the cat, was what looked like a brand-new hot-water bottle.

  Fucking Simon, that fucker.

  He must have risen from her bed, the one she’d dragged him into, and gone to an all-night pharmacy.

  She was not going to cry.

  A knock sounded, and Lana muttered an oath. It was loud enough for Simon to take it as agreement to come in. He came up to her and knelt beside her. “You’re not okay. Go back to bed.”

  “I’m fine,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut.

  “You’re crying.”

  “I’m not in pain. It’s more...”

  It was because of everything. Because she’d fainted at work, and because she might lose her job. Because she’d had to call her ex-husband after trying to establish distance, because she seemed to need him. Because he’d been kind to her.

  The image of the array of medicines stayed in her mind no matter how tightly she kept her eyes closed.

  “Are these like those cramps you used to get, you know, before?”

  Before. When they were married.

  “Yes. I got a diagnosis of endometriosis a couple of years ago when it started getting worse.”

  “When you started passing out.”

  Something about his flat tone made her eyes snap open. She felt oddly defensive.

  “It doesn’t happen every time. So much nausea and pain, I mean. They usually prescribe a hormonal IUD to keep it under control, but I didn’t react well to that. So I take the pill, and I use an app to track my period to make sure I dose myself with painkillers before. But last month with the moving and the holidays I didn’t keep up, and I’ve been so busy I probably forgot.”

  She stopped talking. She didn’t want to tell him about the ways she couldn’t seem to care for herself. It had taken her a long time to feel competent, equal to her job, to any job, really. And now, in front of so many people, she’d collapsed.

  He stood up again and rubbed his face. For some reason, his small gesture of weariness made her feel a bit better. But when she started to get up, too, he held his hand out, almost as if to push her down, but not quite touching her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, perhaps realizing he’d gone too far.

  “I need to use the bathroom.”

  When she came back, she saw he’d sat on the floor next to the bed, his head on his knees. It was still early and he probably hadn’t gotten much sleep last night. She sat down next to him.

  “I’m doing this all wrong,” he said without raising his face.

  “No. It’s not that. You’re—” she gestured at the tray, at him, not that he could see it “—you’re perfect. As usual. You didn’t have to come for me last night.”

  He snorted. She winced over how dramatic the whole thing must have been. “Well, you didn’t have to do the rest. You didn’t have to get me this medicine or come in and check up on me or—or hold me.”

  She added, “I’m sorry about making you sleep here.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t apologize. I...wanted to. I held you in the car, too.”

  The tiredness and worry, and yes, affection seeped out of the edges of his voice, there to be heard by anyone who was listening for it.

  She shouldn’t have heard it.

  She nudged him with her knee. It was supposed to be a friendly touch, casual, to tell him she was okay, that he should go easy on himself. But it was too affectionate, too intimate. Her pajama-clad leg sliding briefly against his reminded her of how familiar she’d been with his limbs long ago, how she’d sometimes started with his calf, twined her leg with his until the rest of her body followed. She’d done some of that last night.

  Lana jerked back.

  She had her period. She had dark circles under her eyes and while she didn’t have the cramps anymore, her insides felt tender. She was in her uniform-like nightwear. There was nothing sexy about the situation.

  As if to confirm her thoughts, Simon started to get up. “You’re probably hungry. Let me bring you something.”

  “I can make my own breakfast.”

  “Please, just let me.”

  Lana took a deep breath. “Thank you. But can I at least come into the kitchen? I’d feel weird eating in here by myself.”

  He nodded and offered his hand to help her up.

  She took it.

  * * *

  They had never really eaten together in their time as roommates, Simon realized.

  But he was hungry, too. It had been a long night.

  He got butter out of the fridge and cracked some eggs a little self-consciously. His ex-wife was a chef and could definitely make fancier things than he could. But this wasn’t the time to wish for a demonstration. He pulled out a few tomatoes and sliced them, put some bread in the toaster.

  The cat came out from Lana’s bedroom and weaved around his legs. “I already fed you. There’s food in your bowl,” he said, trying to get to the stove.

  The cat yelled, first piteously, then angrily when she realized her demands were going to be ignored.

  Lana laughed, and he couldn’t help it. His heart leapt.

  He’d always loved her laugh. Big, bigger than her, it started down low and opened into a wide sound. Sometimes, when he wanted his students to sing loud and happy, he tried to laugh like that for them.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Lana, who was leaning down to coax Muffin to come to her. Her hair was loose and messy, but he could see the clear line of her neck, her soft jaw, her ear.

  He loved that ear.

  His eyes jerked back to the stove. No ears. No jaws, no delicate skin, no collarbones just visible beyond the points of her neckline, no hips, or legs, or bare feet.

  Eggs. Eyes on the eggs.

  The pan was a mess of streaky curled layers. He scraped the bottom. “It’s not the best. I always leave more egg in the pan than we get to eat,” he said apologetically.

  “Eggs and toast with butter are always the best.”

  She’d poured him a cup of coffee and added just the right amount of milk, and he didn’t—he shouldn’t—say, You remembered. But he was thinking it.

  They ate their eggs and toast and slices of tomato side by side in silence. It wasn’t exactly comfortable but he wasn’t unhappy. She was recovering and he’d slept badly, although again, not unhappily, beside her.

  This was the whole problem. It would have been easy to simply let himself go there. To tease her into smiling. To let his elbow touch hers when he picked up his mug. To forget all the painful things that were in the past and think only of the present. And it would be easier if he didn’t know she was struggling against the same temptation.

  That was the problem with knowing someone so well, even if it had been a long time ago, even if she had changed.

  So now, he was aware that she was glancing at him from the corner of her eye. He was gloriously alive to every quiet swallow, every word she didn’t say. They both got up to take each other’s plates.

  “I can do the dishes. You cooked.”

  “You’re ill.”

  “I feel fine. It’s just washing up.”

  They feinted left then right, both trying to be considerate, both trying to get to the sink, to not impose, to be good.

  They stopped. Lana still hadn’t looked up. “This is silly,” she said. “We can both do them. You wash, I’ll dry.”


  “Fine. Yes. Good.”

  They stood side by side as he conscientiously rinsed off the plates and silverware and soaped everything up. He didn’t know why he was being so careful. He handed off dishes to her, she moved off to put everything away, taking, it seemed, equal care to make as little noise as she could. At one point, their wet fingers met, and she jumped back.

  In a small corner of his mind, it pleased him that she was skittish, because it signaled that their contact meant something to her.

  “The thing about endometriosis,” she said, clearing her throat, “it means I probably couldn’t have had kids very easily.”

  He picked up the pan he’d used to cook the eggs. It was a mess. He was completely unprepared for this.

  He ran hot water over it and squeezed dish soap into it and looked at the bubbles rising.

  When they were married, of course he’d wanted children. He was a teacher. He never questioned that he wouldn’t have them. Except here he was, forty-four years old and he hadn’t had kids and, although he hadn’t really thought about it lately, being a parent didn’t matter to him that much. The only person he ever considered being a parent with was beside him, but not with him. Right now the absence of Lana seemed more important than those hypothetical lives he’d assumed he would nurture long ago. “Why are you telling me this right now?”

  “I need to remind myself why it would never have worked out.”

  “I don’t need to have kids,” he said, abruptly shutting off the water.

  Let the pan soak.

  She scoffed. “Really? You.”

  “I’ve taught a lot of people by now. I have nieces and nephews and they are...a lot.”

  “And this is enough for you? You’re still plenty young enough to go out and father some children.”

  “As appealing as you make it sound, I think I’ll stick with what I’ve got.”

  “You’ve changed,” she said slowly.

  “Of course, I’ve changed. You’ve changed. Why are you the only one who gets to do that?”

  “Well, you didn’t have to. You’re still in the life you envisioned for yourself.”

  “I’m in the career. I fulfilled some of the ambitions—”

  “Most of them.”

  “Some. I am doing those things, and sometimes I love it, and sometimes I go through the motions. But as for that whole life, well, you altered it. You, Lana.”

  “You mean I ruined that part of the plan by leaving.”

  “No. Yes. It’s not that. I shouldn’t have said it that way. It’s more that at the end of it all, when it was really over—really over—like the anger and the hurt and the numbness, when it was more or less over, I was a different person. And it wasn’t about categorically declaring things like, I will never trust again. Although I’m sure I did it. I became more cautious. About wanting things.”

  “Oh, Simon.”

  “Don’t say it that way.”

  He stopped, then started again. “Maybe it was good for me. No, I know it was good for me to learn that I couldn’t always get everything I wanted my way. It was good, but still painful.”

  Lana gave a short laugh. Her eyes came up briefly to meet his and his heart gave another painful thump. “You don’t have to make a lesson out of everything.”

  He moved closer. His fingertips were inches from hers, resting lightly on the kitchen counter. “Sometimes I wake up and I can’t believe you’re here, in the same city, under the same roof, not a hundred feet away. You’re not the way I remember in some ways, and the same in others. We’re both in a different place. It’s confusing. Because I still like you. I still want to be around you. It isn’t at all what I thought it would be like to live with you again. I can’t even say that it’s worse or better than before, because what it’s like now seems to swamp and erase all the memories of what it used to be. I’ll recall specific incidents, but it’s like watching two different people act out some words that I already know. So yeah, despite resisting it, I’ve changed. Are you so surprised?”

  She raised her head finally and closed those remaining inches. “I like being surprised.”

  A moment. A flicker. The air seemed to grow heavier between them.

  He slid his fingers carefully over hers as she rose on her tiptoes. There was a short, sweet breath of a pause between them, and his lips were on hers, her hand came up to rest lightly on his shoulder.

  At first it was as if they were simply exploring being close again, feeling each other, the texture of skin and lips. It wasn’t better or worse than he recalled; it was another thing entirely. His memory would never have supplied him with the glory of the sudden tightening of her fingers on his shoulders as she pulled him down closer. He’d never have remembered the slight breath she took as she swayed into him, her body tensed and stretched, overbalanced but not wanting to put her weight on him.

  His other hand had traveled up the intriguing strength of her arm, mapping dips and cuts of muscle that spoke of years of discipline and dedication. He moved up and around, and his fingertips traced the architecture of her shoulder blade. When had she become all of this? His mind was still marveling over her even as his body kept him from thinking too clearly.

  Then her mouth opened wider and she grunted, drawing a breath before returning to him with more intensity. At the feeling of her teeth grazing his bottom lip all he felt was want, helpless and overwhelming. He wanted to pull her closer to him, to let her fall into him, to feel her body against his. She licked him gently and the curl of her tongue made him never want to let go.

  But though she gave her mouth to him, her cheek rubbing softly against his, she didn’t pull him closer, and the thought of her restraint was enough to keep him to his own careful line. In another moment, she took one more breath, and he seized the opportunity to kiss his way up to the fine skin at her temple, to bury his nose in her hair. A sigh. A blink. He reluctantly stopped and pressed his forehead against hers.

  She exhaled long and deep, from the very bottom of her, and he felt it vibrate through him. Her hands were still touching him, caressing him, not quite letting go. He could feel the desire in her, the need to be closer, the way she held back. He closed his eyes: her want was almost enough for him, almost enough to feed his greedy soul.

  But not quite.

  She was starting to disengage herself now. Her palms smoothing a path down his shoulders, pausing a moment to cup his biceps, her thumbs kneading his muscles in a way that made him want to seize her again. But she was stepping back, her hands moving down his arms.

  And she was looking at the floor again, at their interlaced fingers.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “That should be my question to you.”

  She winced a little, as if that were enough to remind her she’d been in pain last night. He regretted his words. But he couldn’t feel that way about anything else that had happened.

  “I am...all right. I think this can be okay.”

  “Be still my beating heart.”

  It was supposed to be a joke, a bad one. She jerked his arm a little. “Hey. Hey. This is not easy for either of us. It is understandable if we’re both feeling cautious. Even if our hormones are ready to do a lot more.”

  Yes. At her words, his body once again perked up even as his brain sounded a warning.

  She was going to be sensible, despite her feelings. He had to be, too.

  He let go of her hands, and they were facing each other. Not touching.

  “We’ll be talking about this,” he said. “God knows, since we live together, we’ll have plenty of time to talk. But for now, you’ve been feeling bad, and you should go lie down again.”

  And I am going to take a shower. A cold one.

  Chapter Nine

  She was forty-two years old, long divorced, and she was sitting on the floor of
her bedroom listening to her ex-husband take a shower, and wondering if he was jerking off.

  She squeezed her thighs together and concentrated on the ache of her cramps. She wasn’t grateful for the now-dull pain. She would never go as far as that. But she needed space to think, and the gray edge of discomfort had been enough for her to want to preserve the border between her body and his. Another thing preventing her from sinking into him, another reminder of how hard she had to fight to keep herself intact, to keep herself in this place she’d worked too hard to get.

  But she still wanted him. It was hard not to long for the comfort of him, of his arms around her, of the way he listened to her. She looked at the tray, still on her chair, at the medicine he’d gone out to find. She pulled the hot-water bottle out from under the duvet. It wasn’t as warm or all-encompassing as him, but she clung to its rubbery form for a minute.

  The shower shut off. It was easy enough to think of him, his forehead pressed against the shower tiles the same way he’d leaned on her. His hair would be dark and slick, his lashes thick with moisture, his eyes closed as he remembered, as he stroked himself, as he thought of her.

  The cat bumped her knee, bringing Lana out of her reverie. The tabby probably sensed how unsettled everyone in the household was, and had finally decided it was all right to be affectionate and needy. But as Muffin settled down for pets and scritches, it seemed she was the only one getting any satisfaction.

  Absently, Lana turned on her phone. She sent off a message to her boss and another to Talia telling them she’d be coming in tonight. If she still had a job.

  Talia texted back saying they were shorthanded, and even though it probably spelled another tough night, Lana felt somewhat relieved. She swallowed a few pain pills, checked on her alarm, crawled back into bed, and fell asleep with the cat pressed against her side.

  * * *

  He was gone when she awoke at her usual workout time. She found a note saying he was at class, and he’d left her a turkey sandwich in the fridge. She found it wrapped in white deli paper, along with some fruit, several different kinds of yogurt, and various sports and vitamin drinks. She grabbed the sandwich and a banana. Why not? She’d slept without her arm braces and in the same bed with her ex-husband. She’d kissed him and kissed him. Why not go whole hog, skip the workout, eat the sandwich. It had slices of real turkey, with lettuce and tomato, mayonnaise and cheese, no mustard. The way she used to make them. He remembered.