4
What a Charmer
I love our house, I really do, but carrying three heavy bags of groceries from the parking area in front of the main house down the long fence-lined path to our house in the scorching sun isn’t sexy. By the time I tumble through the front door, which I nearly have to kick in, I’m a wet rat in a soaked shirt, bangs pasted to my forehead. Then, just as I reach the counter, the container of beautiful raspberries I hand-selected and was especially looking forward to enjoying hops right out of the top of the bag like it grew legs and spills all over the floor at my feet—mere seconds before I make it to the counter.
I’m still gathering them off the floor when Tanner bursts into the house. “Oh, hey, babe!” he cheerily calls to me as he runs off to the bedroom. “Sorry, in a hurry, just grabbin’ my lucky clipboard! Can’t believe my ditzy butt forgot it, of allthings. So much goin’ on at school. Did you hear about what’s-her-name who’s retiring? Everyone’s goin’ nuts, no one saw it comin’, everyone’s favorite teacher of … what’d she teach?” He’s shouting all of this from the bedroom now. “How do you feel about that, babe?”
“Y’mean how do I feel about a teacher whose name you don’t know who teaches a subject you can’t remember?” I stare down at a handful of tasty raspberries I can’t eat. “I’m gutted.”
“Can’t find my dang lucky clipboard.” He emerges from the bedroom. “Have you seen it?”
“Can you describe it at all? Or have you also forgotten whatitlooks like?”
“Red and white, plastic, long, one corner chipped from a time I dropped it in the locker room my first year as coach.” He stops in front of me, crouching down to help. “Sorry, babe, I didn’t see you down here. Damn, these raspberries look good.”
And he pops one into his mouth. Right off the dirty floor.
I gawp at him. “They’re straight from the store and I haven’t cleaned them yet!”
“Five-minute rule,” he says with a wink, chewing away. I don’t know what it is—his charming eyes, the cute way he smirks while he chews, or the fact that he’s enjoying something I’m denying myself on account of them falling on the floor—but I catch myself just staring at him blankly. “It’s my version of the five-secondrule. Waste a lot less that way.”
My eyes drop to his lips.
Their plumpness. The corner that always curls up when he’s trying not to laugh. The sound of them smacking as he chews on that tasty, unclean, floor-bound raspberry, making it sound like a treasure in his teeth.
“You left your clipboard by the, uh, couch,” I finally answer, words slow and distracted. “From last night. Writing in it.”
He snaps his fingers. “That’s right. Of course. Couch.” His eyes find my lips, too. A beat passes. He looks pained, then happy, then pained again, working through something in his mind before he finally lets out the confession. “I wanna kiss you right now.”
I stop collecting raspberries.
Honestly, I want him to kiss me, too.
But everything lately has been so stressed and strange. Even with our efforts to maintain normalcy. To go about our lives. To act like nothing’s wrong—especially for the benefit of our kids. Marcus has only just recently stopped giving me those suspicious sidelong glances. It feels like we’re making progress. Or at the very least burying everything more effectively. You know, like healthy couples do.
But I can’t bring myself to give him even as much as a peck. I am the worst husband in the world. “Said you were in a hurry.”
“Not enough of a hurry to steal a little sexy-sexy, kissy-kissy time with my man.”
He’s been cuter lately. Sweeter. More playful.
I can’t help but fear it’s all just a ploy to seduce me away from my own thoughts and complex feelings, which Tanner still has yet to properly acknowledge, even all these weeks later. Has it been weeks already since that night he told our families we’re renewing our vows?
How can I trust any sexy-sexy, kissy-kissy anything from him?
“Heard you took somethin’ off the menu at T&S’s,” he says.
I look down at the floor, struck. “Temporarily.”
“The Football Sundae Special was our thing. Coach Larry just asked me ‘bout it. I … didn’t know what to say.”
I feel instant guilt. Then frustration. Then finally a childish, dismissive sort of flippantness I can’t explain when I say, “Itneeds some work. I’m … I’m workin’ on it. Took it off the menu. Why is everyone in our dang business?”
Smartly, Tanner seems to leave well enough alone. “That’s okay, that’s alright, no biggie. Told the guy my hubby has his reasons for everything. He didn’t pry.”
He even supports me in my passive aggression.
Of course I’m not working on it.