“There’s a compromise here,” he says, almost to himself. “I’ll replace the current hot water heater with a similar unit, but she’ll know if I owned the property, I would have installed a high-end on-demand system.”
“Like yours?”
“Exactly.”
That shower was one of my favorite parts of the Boston weekend, and my dreamy sigh remembering it makes him chuckle. If anything’s going to make me jack up the pressure on Gin to sell, it’s that shower.
Eventually, I’d have to leave it, of course. After enough time has passed between Gin selling the house to us and our divorce so it all looks legit, the plan calls for me being the one to move out. Hayden will get full custody of the shower.
“I’ll go bring in the rest of my stuff,” he says, as if it’s a foregone conclusion he’ll be sharing this room—and this bed—with me until he goes back to Boston Sunday night or Monday morning.
“Penny’s used to your mom’s house. We should go there,” I say in a last ditch effort to change his mind.
“She has you, so she’ll be fine.” He steps closer to me, presumably so he can lower his voice. “You and I spending our time together at my mom’s would make this situation a lot easier for Gin.”
And we don’t want it to be easy. We want her to be uncomfortable so she’ll want to sell the house and go live by herself. But having Hayden in my room might be even harder on me than staying at Colleen’s.
Four nights, I think. Four nights of Hayden in my bed, with my mother across the hall.
Maybe, if I can curl into a tight enough ball, Penny will share one of her beds with me.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Hayden
Because it’s getting late and Gin has already retired to her bedroom with a very enthusiastic slamming of her door, Cara gives me a very brief tour of the house.
It’s about what I expected. Small rooms, all in dire need of updating. Generations of clutter. Old windows that probably don’t even meet the minimum standard of efficiency. A lot of old, dark wood. The effect is claustrophobic, but I keep that opinion to myself.
This is Cara’s home, and I know this isn’t easy for her. The last thing I want to do is make it harder by insulting her home.
We end up in the kitchen, and I take Penny out the back door for potties. She’s not pleased about it, so she takes her time finding a worthy spot. Being behind the house makes it obvious, even in the fading light, that they’ve been putting what work and money they can into the front of the house, where it can be seen from the street.
When we go back inside, Cara’s leaning against the counter with her arms folded across her chest. She doesn’t look angry, but there’s clearly something serious weighing on her mind.
“You can’t sleep in my bed,” she says without preamble, though in a very low voice.
“I’m too old to sleep on the floor.”
“You can sleep on the couch downstairs and I’ll tell Gin we had an argument.”
I shake my head. “We’re not doing that, especially while we’d still technically be on our honeymoon if we’d taken a trip. Until we sign the papers, you and I are happy newlyweds looking forward to spending the rest of our lives in this house.”
Her nose wrinkles at the reminder that pretense is her only way out of spending the rest of her life in this house. “Okay, I think there’s an air mattress somewhere in the garage. My dad got it cheap at a yard sale because it has a leak, but if there’s one thing we have a lot of in this house, it’s duct tape. We can slide it under my bed during the day.”
“I’m also not sleeping on an air mattress.” I’m usually open to negotiation, but not when it comes to blowup beds.
She puts her hands on her hips. “Well, I’m not going to sleep on it. That is my bed and since nothing’s been signed yet, that is still my bedroom. And you’re the one who just showed up on the doorstep with bags, your dog and no plan.”
Oh, I have a plan. She even knows the plan—get Gin out of this house. But, to be fair, I hadn’t given a lot of thought to the sleeping arrangements before showing up on the doorstep.
Actually I had, but I’d been hoping the whole what happens in Boston, stays in Boston thing would be forgotten. Not that sleeping together again is a good idea—it’s definitely not.
“We can’t—” She pauses, waving her hand like she can’t come up with the right words. “You know.”
“I know.” I hate admitting it, but I know she’s right. We dove into the deep end of the pool with this marriage. We can’t keep wading into even deeper water or we’ll find ourselves dangerously over our heads.
“Penny can sleep between us,” I tell her. “She likes to wedge herself sideways and stretch, so over the course of the night, she’ll shove us toward opposite sides of the bed. As big as my bed is, there are still times I wake up clinging to the edge of the mattress, trying not to fall off.”
