by Ali Parker
I took a shower and fell asleep, the day slowly lifting from my shoulders. When I woke up the next morning, I instantly felt a flush of embarrassment when I remembered the way I’d acted toward Kristo the night before. I thought about waiting until he had left for work to get out of bed, to slink out and grab my rental and head to work and hope this had all died down by the time I got back that evening, but I knew I had to put some effort into making it work with him. We were going to be stuck with each other for a long time, after all, and all he was trying to do was help me out and make my life easier. I shouldn’t have held that against him, no matter how independent I was used to being.
I got dressed and went to the kitchen where I found him sipping on a coffee behind the breakfast bar. He cocked an eyebrow at me as I approached, and then pushed a cup he’d filled toward me. I took it and had a long sip before I spoke to him. He was acting more adult than I might have in a similar circumstance, and for that, I was grateful.
“I’m sorry about last night.” I finally spoke as I put the cup back down in front of me, tracing my finger nervously over the rim. “I shouldn’t have been that way with you. I know you were just trying to help.”
“Yeah, I was.” He nodded. “But I get it. This is new to you too.”
“Yeah, it is,” I sighed. “But I’m going to try and accept it. You know, you wanting to help out.”
“Does that mean you’re going to let me pay to fix that car up?” he asked. “You know the insurance company will take an age to get it done.”
“No, that’s cool,” I cut him off. “I have it in motion now. It would be more hassle to stop it.”
He fell silent for a moment, and I could tell he was annoyed, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he just sighed and shrugged.
“But I’ll borrow one of your cars if that’s all right,” I suggested. “Save money on the rental?”
“Sounds good.” He grinned. “You want to go down to the garage after coffee, and we can pick something out?”
“Sure.” I nodded. “I want something that’s going to have everyone at work jealous.”
“A lot of competition in the librarian world over cars, is there?” he teased.
“Oh, you have no idea,” I replied faux-seriously. “It’s practically a sports car exhibition every time I go to work.”
We finished up and headed downstairs, him walking ahead of me, and I found some of the tension beginning to lift. I could do this. I could let him in. He wanted to be there for me, and the least I could do was let him.
19
I got to my feet and began to pace around the apartment. I was exhausted already, and the day had only just begun. I always ended up feeling the same way when I worked from home, antsy and as though there was a fly up my ass keeping me from getting settled.
Stretching, I headed over to the window. Maybe I was just missing Amaya. I was used to having her around the apartment, but since I had started ducking work to avoid my sister, I’d been around the house a lot more by myself, and I was missing the hell out of her.
I had been ducking out of the office as much as I could recently, hoping Cleo wouldn’t catch on to my game and figure out she was the reason I had barely spent a minute in there the last week or so. She had been haranguing me about getting Amaya out for a trip together, and the last thing I needed was my new wife heading out on the town with my sister and her friends. Cleo had given me a lot of talk about taking her out to a club, and I had a feeling she wasn’t talking about the local golf club. I saw the pictures. I knew what she and her friends got up to when they were around town, and the last thing I needed was for Amaya to get caught up in the midst of that. She had just made a good impression on my family, and given that they always disapproved of what Cleo was up to, it was best I kept them apart for now.
I knew she wouldn’t hunt me down to the apartment, but she might have followed me down to the office to annoy me there. She was curious about Amaya, that much was for sure, but I wanted to keep them apart for now. If anyone was going to pick away that façade we had worked so hard to keep up, it would be Cleo. She had a habit of squirming into my life and getting the measure of things before even I could, and that was the last thing I needed right then and there.
“Hmm,” I sighed as I paused in front of one of the pictures Amaya had hung up for me. It really did look so much better in here now that she had tried her hand at decorating it. My nonna had always told me a wife would turn this place around in no time, and she had been right. Even if Amaya was only playing the part, she was doing everything she needed to.
I knew she’d only asked me to lend her a car, but I had managed to pay off a local garage to fix up her car. And not just the damages that would get it back on the road. No, I didn’t want her driving around a deathtrap a moment longer, so I’d pretty much handed over as much cash as it would take to get the thing redone from top to bottom. She would barely recognize it when it was done, but that was kind of the point. I wasn’t sure why I’d felt such an urge to help her. Maybe I was starting to see the good she was doing on my own life and was paying that back the only way I knew how, by throwing money at whatever issues she had going on.
It was arriving back today, and I was looking forward to surprising her with it. Though she had picked out a seriously nice car from my collection to drive in the meantime. Maybe she wouldn’t want to go back to her old vehicle. I had considered having it set up to fit her sister in the back when she wanted to take her out, but I could suggest that to her later. I wanted to show her I was in this for the long haul, the whole year. If we were going to be married, then we were going to do it as properly as we could.
I still found myself thinking about that first night with her sometimes, what I couldn’t remember. I had assumed something would start coming back to me over the weeks, but I still couldn’t remember a damn thing. It would have bothered the hell out of me if I didn’t think she was going to find her way into bed with me once again. She had been far from resistant. That evening in the cinema, she had practically melded herself into my shoulder, so reluctant was she to let go. I caught her looking at me once in a while, when I strolled past her casually topless and fresh out of the shower, and I recognized that look on her face any day of the week. I had been with enough women to know what lust looked like, and I was hoping she would come to terms with it sooner rather than later. When we had been putting up pictures in that bedroom together, it had taken all I had in me not to push her on to the bed and push my tongue into her mouth and see what memories we could bring back together.
I realized I was still just standing there, staring out of the window like an idiot. She had this kind of impact on me, where the logical part of my brain dropped out the back of my head completely. I shook my head and went to turn back to my office, but before I could, my cell rang, and I answered it at once. Probably someone from the office wondering where the hell I had been these last few days.
“Hello?”
“Hi, this is Kristo Balaban,” I replied smoothly. Even though I had been working in a pair of sweats all day, the person on the other end of the line didn’t have to know I’d been anything other than professional.
“Yes, we have the car you sent to the shop ready,” the voice replied. “Do you want us to drop it off? If you’re home now—”
“Yes, please do,” I said. “How long will you be?”
“Ten minutes?”
“Perfect, see you soon,” I replied and hung up the phone. I stretched and stepped away from the window, wondering how long I’d just been standing there thinking about her. Best not to linger on it. Any longer, at least.
I waited outside for the car to arrive and tipped my face up to the sun. The warm light on my face made me feel the way I did in her presence, soothed, comfortable, at peace. She seemed to ground me in a way no other person had in my entire life to date, to bring me back down to Earth when I needed it. To remind me there was a world outside the office, outside my family.
/> The car arrived, and it looked way better than it had when I’d sent it off. I paid the guy who dropped it off, and he leaned on it for a moment and glanced up at my building.
“I gotta say, if I had your kind of money, I don’t think I’d be driving something like this,” he remarked. I shook my head.
“It’s not mine,” I replied. “It’s my wife’s.”
“Well, she’s lucky.” The guy grinned. “Got you to take care of it for her.“
“Yeah, guess she is,” I replied, and he chuckled and went on his way. I pulled the car into the garage and then headed back upstairs, intending to get back to work but instead finding my cell buzzing on the table when I came back through the door. I picked it up at once.
“Hey.” Amaya’s voice came down the line, and I wondered if I had manifested her by thinking hard enough.
“Amaya, hi,” I greeted her. “Everything all right?”
“No,” she sighed heavily. Her voice was imbued with annoyance, and it was clear something had pissed her off, and for a split second, I wondered if it was something I had done. Could she know about the car? But she hadn’t even seen it yet, so it couldn’t be that.
“I’m going to head back soon,” she continued. “If you’re home, could you order in some pizza and, like, all the beer? I could really use it.”
“Sure, I can,” I assured her. “When will you be back?”
“An hour or so,” she replied. “I’ll see you soon.”
“See you,” I responded, and the line went dead. I felt a little shiver of anger at whoever had pissed her off that badly, but I would deal with that when she came back. Right now, she needed me to step up and help her out, and I would do everything I could to make sure she ended the night feeling better than she started it.
I made my way to the fridge to check if we had all the beer we needed. I had been drinking a little more since I met her, but I didn’t mind. I liked the way the booze loosened my tongue when she was around, lifted some of those inhibitions that had been put in place as soon as I turned eighteen and had to step up and be the adult of the family. She made me feel safe enough to share myself in ways I hadn’t before, not with anyone. But she was my wife, after all. Maybe we were both playing parts.
As I got the apartment ready, I flicked back to what Amaya had said on the phone. She had called this place home. She had told me she would be home soon, referred to this place as her own. And that warmed me in ways I hadn’t thought possible before.
I called up the pizza place and ordered a large, split down the middle with her favorite toppings alongside mine. In fact, maybe that was the perfect metaphor for the ways things were between us right now, side by side, part of a whole, but still fundamentally different in ways we couldn’t quite put together yet.
But perhaps we would. I stood there, surveying the kitchen, a few beers out on the table and the pizza on its way, and grinned. It might not be what I had imagined life with my wife to be like, but it was something. More than something. More than I’d ever let myself think it might become. And that was working pretty well for me for the time being.
20
I brushed through the door and tried to push the remnants of the day to the back of my mind. But they were still fuming there right at the front, fizzing and filling my head.
“Oh, thank fuck,” I murmured when I saw the beer sitting out on the table alongside a giant pizza. It smelled so good, it was all I could do not to dive into it headfirst. Kristo emerged from the kitchen right as I grabbed a bottle for myself, and I nearly downed the whole thing in one gulp.
“Hey, hey.” He came to me and touched me on the arm. “Drinking too much was what got us into this mess in the first place, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember,” I replied and put the bottle down. “Well, actually, I don’t. That’s kind of the problem.”
“Oh, that’s a problem, huh?” he remarked, grinning. I took another sip of my beer, and he cracked a bottle open too. I could still feel the warmth and weight of his hand on my skin, and I let my mouth glide over the top of the beer bottle. If anything was going to get my mind off today, maybe this would be it.
“Maybe,” I replied, eyeing him. He was in a pair of jeans and looked as though he had just slipped out of a shower, fresh and soft around the edges, tempting. I wanted to run my fingers through his damp hair, remind myself how it felt.
“I guess it would be nice to actually know whatever it was that got us to agree to this in the first place,” he remarked casually, taking another sip of his beer. Even though I had been starving when I’d arrived, I couldn’t even think about the pizza sitting next to us. I was hungry for something else entirely now.
“I mean, it had to be pretty special,” I went on. The booze was starting to loosen me up a little, give me the boldness I had been lacking in my interactions with him.
“You think?” he replied, a smile curling up on to his lips as he spoke. I shrugged.
“Well, it convinced me to marry you on the spot,” I pointed out. “I don’t do that with every guy I’ve ever slept with.”
“So, whatever we did, you wanted that for the rest of your life straight away, huh?” he continued, and he put his beer back on the counter.
“Well, same for you.” I cocked my head at him. “Don’t give yourself all the credit.”
“Oh, trust me, I’m not,” he shot back. “I knew from the second I saw you at the pool that I had to have you.”
“You remember seeing me at the pool?” I grinned.
“I thought you didn’t see me,” he replied, and he moved a little closer to me.
“Oh, I saw you.” I nodded. “I just thought that would be the last time.”
“I was so happy when I saw you at that gala,” he continued, and I could see him switching over into seduction mode. I could just about remember it from when he’d come on to me the first time around, the way it had made my stomach clench and my heart sing with excitement.
“Oh yeah?” I breathed. He nodded.
“All I wanted was to see you out of that dress,” he remarked, tracing a finger briefly and intoxicatingly down my waist. “But now I can’t even remember what you looked like.”
I took another swig of the beer, finishing the bottle. Liquid courage. I needed something to get my mind off today, and he had just presented me with the chance of a lifetime. I wasn’t going to pass it up, not now, not when I finally had the nerve to do what I should have done that very first morning we woke up together again.
I put down the bottle and reached for my blazer, popping open the buttons and peeling it off before laying it carefully over the back of the chair. He raised his eyebrows.
“What are you doing?” he asked, but I just turned around and pulled my hair out of the way of the zipper on the back of my dress.
“Little help?” I asked, and he didn’t need telling twice, putting down his bottle and reaching for my zip at once. He pulled it down in one smooth motion and then pulled apart the sides of my dress, letting his fingers play over my bare shoulders and back. I closed my eyes and realized I was trembling a little. I wanted this so badly, had spent so long imaging what this was going to be like, I could hardly believe it was actually going down.
I peeled off the dress slowly, letting it move down my hips until I was standing there in nothing but a pair of panties. I could hear him breathing a little faster than before, his breath harsher and ragged around the edges, and I could hardly contain my excitement as the reality of what I was doing began to sink in. I left my heels on and stepped out of the dress, pulling my hair away and swaying my hips a little back and forth. I finally snuck a look at him over my shoulder and found him staring at me with eyes that set me on fire wherever they fell.
“You still want me?” I asked softly. I needed to hear him say it, needed to know he still felt that passion for me, the one we’d shared the first night we’d laid eyes on each other. Without a word, he moved toward me, wrapping his arms around my waist and
drawing me against him. He pressed his mouth against my neck, inhaling deeply, as though he were trying to fill himself with the scent of me. One hand slipped down over my lower belly and between my legs, and I parted my thighs as though instinctively accepting him. His fingers found my clit at once, and I gasped as he began to kiss his way up my neck, his teeth on my lobe, his breath on my skin. I groaned and pressed myself into him, arching my body against his, amazed at how right this felt, at how we fit into each other like a pair of puzzle pieces, as though we’d been made to go together.
“You’re so wet,” he breathed into my ear as he pressed his fingers against my clit and began to draw soft circles against me. I found my hips moving back and forth, taking him, adoring him, needing more of him, and I finally turned my head so we could kiss properly. As soon as our lips met, something gave out in me once and for all. Any doubt I might have had, any worry that this wasn’t the right thing to do, none of that mattered as our mouths met again for the first time, and some muscle memory stirred me to a desire I couldn’t remember feeling for anyone before in my life.
As he kissed me and played with me at the same time, I pressed myself hard against him, needing him, needing more. I could feel him hardening against the small of my back, and I wanted to reach back and touch him, to feel him in my hands. Some sense memory was beginning to pick up inside of me. I still couldn’t remember what had happened that first night with us, but I could recall the desire, how badly I’d needed him, how damn good he was at this.
I turned around and wrapped my arms around him, and he reached down and hitched me up onto the counter behind us, pushing the pizza and bottles out of the way. I hooked my legs behind his back to draw him close, and he growled as he pushed his tongue deep into my mouth. He caught the back of my head, and I balled my hand in his hair. We grabbed and pushed and groped at each other, and soon, he had stripped down, letting his clothes fall away until he was naked and I was still in nothing but a pair of panties.