Because what other choice do you have?
Tom’s mom would kill him.
V comes home at ten, which is three hours later than planned, and (to her) at least an hour earlier than expected. The office is inThor’s house, and he often forgets that his employees have a longer commute than he does.
“Why would you marry the same person four times?” J asks as soon as she comes through the door. If she is surprised by this, it doesn’t show.
“Addiction? Boredom?” she answers, hanging up her coat and kicking off her shoes. “Love? Loneliness? Whatever the condition, it has to be mutual.”
“It’s like a wound you don’t want to heal.”
V shakes her head. “It’s a game you keep pausing but still want to get to the next level.”
“No. It’s a flavor you forget, so you have to keep ordering it again.”
“An old shirt you keep deciding to wear.”
“A crime scene you keep returning to.”
V, who has walked into the bedroom, pops her head back into the living room.
“That one. That works.”
The drawbridge lowers a little. J squeezes in, and V leaves him alone in the castle as she reheats some chicken and watches the news, because (perversely) it helps her relax.
It’s only when J emerges from the castle ninety-seven minutes and six lines later that he asks how her day went.
“New York is off,” she says. “For now. Thor’s become a little...obsessed. He wants our person to ask for a Times Square billboard as one of the terms.”
“Has he been to New York before?”
“On a school trip. I think they took lots of drugs and wandered around the city. Whenever it comes up, he says, ‘It’s so inspiring. Such an inspiring city. An inspiration for the world, because of all itsinspiringqualities.’”
“Just don’t leave me if Secret Project suddenly becomes a big American company based in New York,” J requests.
She comes over to him and kisses his forehead.
“Don’t worry. I don’t find New York nearly as inspiring.”
“Good. And I hope this means you’ll be joining me at the wedding.”
V smiles. “A crime scene I keep returning to, it appears.”
Later that evening, J works on his song while sitting on the toilet (clothed) with his guitar, while V gives notes (naked) from the tub.
Early on, her naked presence would have been too distracting, and she probably would have insisted on his presence being naked as well. Now it feels normal for them to be like this. As J experiments with chord progressions, V closes her eyes and treats the music like steam. Were she in a different mood, J’s volume might feel intrusive. But she’s in this mood, ready to welcome his presence as part of her recovery from the workday.
Her friends had teased her at first, for dating a musician.You just want him to write songs about you. Or,Aren’t you worried he’s going to write songs about you? Or,Guys like that never stay in the same place for too long. Plus the usual concerns about his financial and mental stability.
V understood what she was getting into...but she’d had no idea what it would feel like. J’s stresses are so diferent from her own, and his ability to create something out of nothing isn’t a talent she feels she shares. It is astonishing to her how he can pick phrases out of the air and string them together into something other people want to listen to. She feels that creative part of him will never really be accessible to her—she can help him shape the final product, but she has no idea where the raw material comes from.
His work is as much a secret project to her as hers is to his. Only, he doesn’t realize it.
As it happens, V loves baths and doesn’t mind being serenaded. She thinks J’s obsession with weddings is a little strange, but she’d never tell him this. Based on her own parents’ wedlock, V is a glass-half-full person—and that half is full of poison. What Tom’s mom and stepfather are doing is insane to her.
Does J want to get married? Sometimes V thinks yes, and sometimes V thinks he’d rather have it be something other people do.
V admits to herself that she loves J more when she thinks the latter is true. But she isn’t sure why. It’s one of the many questions she’d rather not ask herself. Some people take baths so they can let their thoughts run wild. V takes them for a silence of the mind.
