Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103620 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
The bathroom in this joint is bigger than it needs to be. They always are. That’s how Alec rolls. Big bathrooms, big bedrooms, big ideas, big trouble. Big everything. Always. He just takes up a lot of space however he can. It’s one of the things I love about him. Even though I’ll never tell him that. Because his head is also big enough as it is. Alec van den Berg. Bigger than life.
I stop to look at myself in the covers-the-whole-wall mirror. I don’t look tired. Or old. At least not as old and tired as I feel. That’s good. I don’t need anyone else worrying about me. I’ve never wanted to be a problem. I want to be the solution. That’s my part in our little tragicomedy. I’m the reliable one. The stable one. I’m—
“Hey.”
Christine stands in the doorway. I see her reflection behind me in the mirror. She looks worried. Fuck me.
“Hey.” I turn to face her. She nibbles at her lip. “You okay?” She nods. “You sure?” She nods again. “Except… you’re not.” She lowers her chin to her chest, shakes her head ever so slightly. I sigh. Again. “What’s up?”
She continues staring at the floor, now swirling her head in a kind of figure eight pattern. Then she shrugs. “I dunno.”
I step toward her, lifting her chin with my finger. “Hey. Hey, look at me.” She does. There’s a sadness there that reminds me of her when she was young and wore that sadness all the time. I click my tongue to keep any other sound from intruding on the moment. You know, like my heart breaking or whatever. “What’s wrong?” I ask.
She pauses for a moment, then says, “Today? Earlier? I couldn’t feel you.”
I nod, slowly. Not in understanding. More in a huh? kind of a way. Then I lend voice to the action. “K. Uh… whaddayou mean?”
She huffs out a sigh all the way through her shoulders and says, “When everything popped off and I saw Alec chasing the kids down the street, I didn’t see you. I didn’t know where you were.” I keep looking at her. Waiting. I’m afraid I know exactly where she’s going with this.
She’s worried that I’m going to leave again. That somehow I’m going to take off on her and Alec. I’m not, obviously, but what is and what isn’t doesn’t matter to feelings. Feelings don’t give a shit. They do what they want.
Call it sense memory or just ... fuckin’ ... memory. But being up there on that roof... It had to stir it all up for her. What it was like before. The last time. It’s why I didn’t want her there to begin with. “But more than that,” she goes on speaking, “I couldn’t… I dunno. Doesn’t matter. Go take a leak. Sorry. I don’t know what I…”
She turns to leave, but I take her by the hand, stopping her exit and pulling her over to the excessively lengthy counter/basin thing. “Whoa. Hold up.”
She spins toward me, looks up again with those damn eyes. I take her other hand as well and lean back against the sink, studying her. Every inch of her face. There’s a whole epic poem of shit I want to say, but the thought that wins the battle to see what comes out of my mouth first is, “You okay to do this thing?”
“Yeah,” she says, lacking any kind of conviction.
“Because you don’t have to.”
“I know.”
“You really don’t.”
“I know.”
“So…?”
“I want to.”
“Do you?”
She thinks for about half a second before tilting her head in an unimpressive nod.
“Christine—” I start, before being interrupted by—
“What’s going on?” Alec stands in the doorway. Still shirtless.
I drop Christine’s hands. It’s weird. It somehow feels like we just got caught doing something wrong. Even though we didn’t, and even if we had been… who fucking cares? But there’s an entirely different kind of intimacy at work now.
It’s been growing since Alec, Christine and I re-consummated our… whatever. Since we’ve reconnected there’s a new intensity that wasn’t there before. And that makes everything feel elevated. Amplified. Like there’s even more at stake. I mean there is, objectively, more at stake. Notably a two-year-old who happens to be Alec’s kid, but even beyond that. More at stake between us.
It’s starting to feel like maybe we have a shot at happiness or contentment or something. The kind of shit that we’ve never really entertained having before, I don’t think. And that’s… that’s scary. It means that now there’s something different on the line. And that’s scary because that can lead one to playing defense instead of offense. And that’s a bad, bad place to be operating from in our world.
“Nothing,” I answer. “Just… getting our game faces on.” Alec nods in a way that lets me know he knows I’m full of shit. But I continue on: “Let’s get everything back into the van and—”