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“I can’t go to Jamaica,” he said. “I’ll get fired off this job I’m doing in Dublin.”
“So you lose the job. Isn’t Amber more important?”
Tony’s fists clenched.
That she could even ask him. That it was possible for her to not know.
Did she think he worked the way he did for his own amusement? That he’d driven to Chillicothe before the sun was up to supervise the concrete pour on a lark, because it was such a joy?
He did it for Amber. For their kids. All of it.
He was short on cash. Amber didn’t know it, but if the owner of the Dublin house didn’t write him a check soon soon, Tony wasn’t going to be able to pay the mortgage on time. If he lost this job, he wouldn’t be able to pay it at all—not without taking out a loan or selling something—and he would have to make the decision he’d been trying not to make since Patrick quit.
Sell his house or give up Mazzara Homes—give up building houses completely.
In this economy, everybody was bidding low, pinching pennies, and only the commercial work—Mazzara Construction, their starter company, his father’s company—had a decent margin. It was soul-crushing, but it paid.
He couldn’t sell this house. He’d built it for Amber. When he thought of her, it was always here, in these rooms where she’d picked out the paint and the trim and the countertops.
What would they have if they lost the house? How would he be able to find her?
Tony shook his head. “It’s just … we’re hanging on by a thread, and I can’t go anywhere, you understand? I have to fix things from here.”
Janet pursed her lips. “You don’t get it.”
“What don’t I get?”
But she didn’t tell him. She picked up his plate, put it in the sink, and ran water over it. Scrubbed it clean.
He wished she would tell him what to do.
He wished somebody would.
Because he was doing everything he could think of, and it wasn’t enough.
* * *
Tony couldn’t sleep. He went through the whole ritual—shower, boring book, counting backward from a hundred. But without Amber’s body next to him in the bed, he had no counterweight against the remorseless slide of worry.
He unpacked the rosary of his fears, moving from one bead to the next and back around to the beginning in a pointless litany. Amber. Clark. Anthony. Jacob. Patrick. The mortgage. The company. His argument with Janet.
He wondered what his wife was doing. If she was asleep. If she’d had a good day.
At lunchtime, he’d sent her an updated itinerary, and she’d texted him.
Tx.
In the dark, by himself, he couldn’t pretend not to hate that reply, or to feel anything generous about the reprieve he’d offered her. Yes, she deserved a few days away from taking care of him and the children.
He didn’t care. He wanted her home.
He wanted her here, with him, where he could smell her and touch her, spoon around her and keep his mind on her, with her. He’d learned a long time ago that the key to sleep was to fill himself up with Amber, and in the empty bed he got hard thinking of all the things he wanted to do to her. How he would grip her hips if she were here, lick right up the middle of her pussy. Make her moan and push at his head. Yes, Tony. Oh, don’t. Don’t stop. Don’t.
Cupping his dick in his palm, he thought, Maybe I’ll sleep if I just … but it only made him angry to hear his hand working himself over, and he gave it up, disgusted.
He thought of the taste of his wife and tried to remember the last time they’d had sex. If she’d made any noise at all.
He put a rerun of Friday Night Lights on. Turned it off and pressed his face into the pillow and wished he had a button so he could turn his head off.
