Tanner wraps an arm around my shoulders. “Let me tell you a little story about the birds and the bees. Remember when we were kids and it was breeding season for the horses? Now, when a stallion loves a mare very much?—”
“Do not compare my wife to a horse,” I growl.
Tanner and Walker study me, then give each other a look, some silent communication passing between them. Two matching smug smiles appear on their faces.
I narrow my eyes.
“All right,” Tanner says, sipping his drink. “So you’re too chickenshit to sleep with your own wife. It would almost be sweet if it weren’t so pathetic. How’s everything else going?”
In rare moments, between all the insults, my brothers do occasionally demand a moment of genuine connection.
Reluctantly, I offer, “She’s easy to live with. We talk. Watch TV together. Normal stuff.”
“You being a good husband?” Walker interjects. “After letting her ankle get fucked up like that?” He takes a drink, green eyes gleaming.
Nobody can provoke a reaction out of someone like Walker. He’s a born firebrand. I can’t fall into his trap.
But I suspect I do anyway when I find myself saying, defensively, “Yes, I’m taking care of her. I’ve been wrapping her ankle for her every morning. Doing calf massages for circulation.”
They exchange a look. Tanner presses his lips together, eyes dancing. “For circulation. Of course.”
“And whenever she falls asleep on the couch”—her head on my shoulder, though I omit that part—“I carry her to bed so she doesn’t have to put weight on her ankle.”
Tanner’s drink pauses halfway to his mouth. “You carry your…friendto bed.”
“Her ankle. She can’t?—”
“Right, right. The ankle,” Walker interjects, nodding very seriously now. “What else?”
“She doesn’t eat breakfast,” I say. “Never did before, at least. So I’ve started leaving a plate for her. Veggie omelette, protein oatmeal, nothing complicated. She needs to eat something or she’ll be running on coffee until noon.”
Tanner puts a hand over his mouth, like he’s trying to hide a shit-eating grin.
“What?” I snap.
“Nothing,” he says, voice slightly strangled. “Nothing.” His voice drops. “But what I mean is, how is it living with a woman?”
Fuckingamazing.
The house smells like her now. Her fancy candles, her baking, traces of her perfume caught in the throw blanket on the couch. It just feels cozy to come home to someone. When I get back in the evening, stripping off my dirty work clothes and boots, she’s at the kitchen island with her laptop and her paperwork spread everywhere, a glass of wine or cup of tea at her side. Or she’s on the sofa with her feet tucked up under her, wrapped in that fuzzy cardigan she wears when she’s cold, completely absorbed as she pages through a design book or sketches something out.
When I come home, it’s not to a cold, empty, dark house anymore. I’m coming home to warm golden light, to music and the fireplace going, to a dog happily wagging her tail and demanding to be petted.
Best of all, I’m coming home to my wife. She greets me with her beautiful smile and her soft warm body pressed against me in a hug, and a “how was your day, honey?”
The truth is, seeing her is the highlight of my day, every day.
It’s so simple, and yet… it’s everything to me. Just her, in my house, living her life, her softness and soothing energy radiating through everything she touches. And she looks happier than when I first met her, less stressed. It makes me feel like I’m doing a good job providing a softer life for her.
Nothing has ever given me so much satisfaction.
“It’s good,” I say. “She bakes a lot. Stress baking, I think. She’s been stuck inside with the ankle. Cookies, brownies, this cinnamon muffin thing last week. I don’t know. I eat whatever she puts in front of me.”
Dead silence.
“You eat it,” Tanner says carefully. “You. Who has had the same meal prep routine since you were nineteen years old and counts out your macros every day to the milligram. You eat her… muffin.”
“It would be rude not to.”
