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It’s because I’m not with him, I realize.
Because I’m falling so hard for the man behind the defensive walls and knee-jerk reactions, and every time we’re apart it’s like this hole opens and eats me up inside, swallowing more and more of me up without August there to anchor me in place.
I curl up in my bed in my pajamas, a little rose pink silk cami and shorts set with lace embroidery on the edges. I eye my phone.
My notifications are still popping at a good clip, but I can’t even look.
Some of it’s nice, some of it’s ugly, some of it’s dick pics, and after considering for a moment I just tap and uninstall the Twitter and Instagram apps.
They’re not what I’m thinking about, though.
I pluck my lower lip with two fingers, eyeing Google.
I shouldn’t.
I shouldn’t, but . . .
He already told me about Charisma, didn’t he?
Is it really that bad for me to look up how long ago she died?
It couldn’t have been too many years.
If it happened before I left for college, I’m sure I would’ve heard about it. The whole city would have talked about little else for at least a week.
I just can’t help thinking that’s part of why he puts that wall up.
I still worry that deep down, he’s still in love with his dead ex-wife.
And I need to know the truth.
I need to know where the lines really are.
Just like I need to crush this ridiculous hope inside me that maybe, maybe he could feel something for me, when I know he can’t.
Just because he didn’t push me away after sex the last two times—just because he held me and read me to sleep as tenderly as he read to those kids—it doesn’t mean anything.
It just means he was humoring me. Being nice.
The same gentle niceness he showed today at the school.
I had to call in a favor with Lena to make that happen. Just showing up at a random school and asking to play with the kids is begging to end up on a federal list somewhere. But the veterinary practice Lena works at does puppy days with the kids every so often, especially when they’ve got a new litter on the shelter side and want to socialize the dogs so they’ll get used to being around noisy kids with no concept of personal space. She’s friends with several of the teachers, so she talked Mrs. Morris into letting us weasel in for the day.
I just did it to make a point.
I hadn’t expected my ovaries to implode as I watched August bond with that little girl and patiently let her glitterbomb him.
He’s going to be pulling that stuff out of his teeth for a week.
And I’m stalling.
Why am I even having a crisis of conscience about this?
Do it. Do it.
charisma marshall date of death, I search.
Oh.
