Chapter 16
That night she dreamed the master bedroom was papered again in that black-and-gold wallpaper. Every bit of the part she had scraped off had grown back. Horrified, she desperately lunged at one wall with a scraper; it regrew the minute she’d cleared a teeny patch.
She ran downstairs in a panic only to discover all of the walls were covered in it. Outside, Mac’s face was pressed to the window; his mouth was moving but she couldn’t hear his words, though she thought she detected the word “honey.”
She turned around to see Corbin sitting on the giant brown sofa, completely nude and wanking off. “Nobody else has wallpaper like that,” he said happily and smugly. “Nobody!”
She was so horrified she woke up gasping.
Chick Pea gave a little woof.
Sweet Jesus!
She felt a little cheated. She’d had a hot kiss yesterday! You’d think she could have at least used it for dream kindling!
Maybe that’s what her subconsciouswasdoing.
She’d have to mull that one.
She snuggled with Chick Pea while she waited for full consciousness to settle in and provide a sort of emotional weather report.
The primary sensation was amazed, bursting joy, shot through with trepidation, all tied up in a bittersweet ribbon. Self-preservation suggested she shouldn’t kiss Mac Coltrane again.
And in the light of day, it somehow seemed entirely possible to resist him.
It would require not seeing him, of course. She knew that much. She admitted this to herself ironically.
She draped an arm across her fuzzy dog who nuzzled her cheek. So much better than waking up next to Corbin, she realized.
She fumbled for her phone: it was only eight. There were no urgent texts or emails from GradYouAte. There was a request for an interview from a trade blog, but it had a wide-open deadline; she could put that off.
In truth, she felt both determined and a little more fragile today than she did yesterday. As if in exposing a little of the darkness and hurt Mac carried around with him he had somehow exposed her, too. They were a little more real to each other now. But also a little more like two live, increasingly bare wires. And everyone knows what happens when live bare wires touch each other.
Today she intended to finish at least one damn wall of that wallpaper.
It was all she did. Methodically, meditatively. Without swearing very much. Her goal was to wear herself out, but she was still a little buzzy from nerves, contemplation, and lingering lust, so exhaustion didn’t quite set in the way she’d hoped.
At about three o’clock she finally stopped, took a shower, threw on a green striped T-shirt dress that Eden had donated, eschewing a bra because why subject herself to a lace-and-wire prison, and checked on the frozen lasagna she’d put in the oven a while ago.
She pivoted and glanced at the stove clock. Maybe she should try to make a sal—
BING BONG zzzt clank!
She about jumped out of her skin and even Chick Pea gave a little woof.
That effingdoorbell. Funny how back in San Francisco she would barely blink at the sound of two drunks screaming at each other about existentialism in the street, which had in fact happened about a month ago beneath her apartment window. But the quiet here in the country was so complete all of her senses were as new as a wall scraped free of wallpaper. A phenomenon she truly hoped to experience one day.
She craned her head.
She saw the shadow at the door. And knew instantly who it was.
Boom. Boom. Boom.That was her heart.
She smoothed her hands down the front of the dress.
She opened the door.
Mac was wearing jeans and an untucked green plaid flannel shirt, which did remarkable otherworldly things to his hazel eyes. His skin gleamed from what looked like a fresh shave.