“How very predictable,” E.G. muttered. “I’ll talk to Tom if you want. Explain everything.”
“No, you won’t. I’m an adult and I’ll handle my own shit,” I said. “Fuck. This is going to be so messed up.”
E.G. shoved his hands into his front pockets. “Ricky will be here in about ten minutes. Do you need me to get the cat in the carryon bag?”
“You didn’t drive here?”
I wondered if my leaving had spiked his anxiety, but it was one of the ten thousand things I told myself I couldn’t dwell on.
“I have to tell you something,” he said, his voice dropping an octave. “It might help make sense of things. It might make everything worse because you’re about to see how deep and how far the crazy goes.”
“There’s more?” I asked him. His beloved wife was killed in a car accident while he was driving. How much worse could it-
“Allison was pregnant when we got into the car accident. No one knew but me and the doctor. Not our families. Not the media. No one.”
“E.G.” I whispered. “No.”
“My driving anxiety is about to get worse,” he admitted. “Everything is about to get worse.”
“Yeah,” I nodded. Then patted him on the shoulder. “This is going to besomessed up. Get Rocco’s toys,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ll get the cat.”
THIRTY-NINE
ANNA
She wondered, having grown up the way she had, if she could survive as a brilliant, beautiful, polished silver medal.
“Where are you taking my stuff?”I asked E.G. He’d insisted on carrying my duffel bag and it hung from his shoulder.
Ricky had dropped us off at the house after a pretty quiet car ride.
After the bomb E.G. had dropped about Allison being pregnant when she died, there wasn’t much for us to talk about.
Truth was, I didn’t know what to say now. Even with the two of us alone in his ridiculous sprawl of a house.
Well, the two of us, our cat and his ghosts.
“To my bedroom,” he answered. “I’ll make some room in the closet and dresser drawers for you.”
“Oh, that’s a heck no,” I said. Rocco meowed to back me up. “We’ll be needing our own room. I know some of the guest rooms are down there, but surely there are about…a million in this place. Don’t you have a separate wing?”
“You require your own wing?”
I hit him with my death laser glare. “You told me to act like the mother of a future billionaire. I’m going to need a wing.”
“I don’t have a wing,” he snapped. “I do have four guest rooms. But I just don’t see the point, Flowers.”
“The point is, I’m not sleeping with you, E.G.”
“We’ve had sex, Flowers. On numerous occasions. Why get precious about it now?”
I wasn’t budging. “I want my own room.”
“Sex can build intimacy,” he suggested.
“Sex can also be confusing as fuck,” I said, flailing my arms a bit. “I don’t even know what happened that day in my office.”
“We fucked.”
