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He leaves and goes to his own cabin. Our door opens and Bess steps out onto the porch. “Did you agree to keep a cat for a month?” she asks.
I nod my head slowly. “I did.”
Her brow furrows. “Just to be clear, you know you have to keep it when the divorce is final.”
“Okay, Bess, sure,” I reply. I’ll keep the cat. But I’d really rather figure out a way to keep her.
18
Bess
The next morning, I wake up when there’s a knock at the front door. My neck hurts because I slept on the couch again since Eli was in the bed. I rub my neck and walk to the door, open it, and find Aaron standing there with Sam. Sam walks past me and into the house and starts looking for her cat.
“Try the kitchen,” I tell her. “The cat was up around five this morning playing with a bread tie on the linoleum floor.” I shudder and scrub my eyes with my hands.
“You ready to go?” Aaron asks me.
“Go where?” I say, still sleepy.
He pulls his shirt open a little to expose his port.
“Oh!” I say, awake now. “I forgot that we’re doing that every other day.” I hold up one finger. “Give me just a minute to get dressed.”
I open the door to the bedroom and stop short when I see Eli standing there in nothing but a towel. He’s in front of the mirror in the bathroom, shaving.
“Sorry,” I say and I turn away quickly. “I just need to get my clothes.”
“It’s fine, Bess,” Eli says. “Get what you need.”
He walks out of the bathroom and goe
s to the closet, and then he starts to take his clothes out for the day.
“It’s not like you’ve never seen me naked,” he says with a chuckle.
“It’s been a while,” I mutter.
He says nothing because there is no adequate response. Eli and I stopped sleeping in the same room more than a year ago, and we’d stopped sharing those tiny intimacies long before that.
He sits down on the edge of the bed so he can put his socks on. “Are you going with Aaron?”
“Yes.” I get my clothes out of the drawers and go into the bathroom to change.
“Will you be gone all day?” he calls through the gap in the door.
“Probably a few hours, just like last time. Why do you ask?” I freeze and wait for his answer because if I’m moving around, I might not hear him.
“Just curious,” he calls back.
I brush my teeth, and then I pull my hair into a ponytail. Aaron certainly doesn’t care what I look like. I’ve never had to pay too much attention to my appearance for Aaron. And we all know that Eli isn’t going to look in my direction long enough to even notice what I look like.
I walk out into the bedroom and find him pulling his shirt on. “What are you doing today?” I ask him.
He pauses. “You haven’t asked me a question like that in a really long time,” he says, his voice quiet, almost reverent.
“What?” I sit down on the edge of the bed so I can pull on my socks and shoes. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You haven’t cared enough to ask me about my plans in a long time, Bess, that’s all. It just shocked me.”
