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Rachel
It was nice to sweep things under the carpet.
Nice to put on a sweet apron with little heart details and scalloped edges. Nice to get a kiss from your husband on the cheek. A pinch on the ass if he was feeling frisky. To hear him humming a song you’d just been singing in the shower. Nice to lift up the corner of the carpet in the bedroom you shared, sweep the dust right under it.
It was nice to be Mason’s wife even if I wasn’t. Even if I couldn’t be. Even if we never talked about the reasons why.
It was nice to ask him which lipstick before dinner. Nice to watch his head tilt from side to side as he considered, to laugh when he inevitably said, “Neither goes with that dress, so really I think you should just go naked, darling.”
It was nice to hold his hand on the sidewalk like any other couple. To have him pull out my chair for me. To have his fingers interlock with mine beneath the white tablecloth without either of us trying to break the other’s knuckles.
“You two seem…different,” Conor said at the restaurant we’d selected for our do-over double date.
He eyed us over his glass of whiskey. Apparently he’d arrived early. Ordered a double. Threw it back and had another ready for when Mason and I showed up. To prepare, he’d said.
Aurnia swatted at Conor’s chest. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at the two of us across the table from them.
“It’s called happy, you idiot,” she said.
Conor shook his head.
“It’s called strange. It’s called ‘I don’t like it.’ It’s called ‘I don’t trust it.’”
I turned my head to smile at Mason and he turned his head to smile right back at me.
“We talked,” I said.
This was a lie. We fucked and said dirty, filthy things to one another while fucking, but we did not, in any way, talk.
“Yeah,” Mason said, squeezing my hand. Gently not murderously. “We had a nice long talk and really worked some stuff out.”
Also a lie. We worked out some stress, sure. Going at it all night, I’m sure we worked out some calories, too. But the closest we got to a nice long talk was the nice long groans we purred into each other’s ears as we rocked together on the bed. Me on top. Mason on top. Both on our sides. Him behind me. Me flipped over on top of him…it was a nice long list. Did that count?
Mason and I smiled at each other like we believed everything we said to be true. I guess we’d been doing that from the start, though. Believing we’d spend the rest of our lives together when we said it within an hour of meeting. Believing we were meant for each other when all we were meant for was a killer, brutal hangover. Believing that anything would last past the week like we ourselves could stop the dying of a star.
“So my party was a good idea after all,” Aurnia said, more to Conor than to us.
Conor rolled his eyes. “They were all over other people the whole night,” he said. “I wouldn’t exactly call that a success, baby.”
“But it forced them to see what they really wanted,” Aurnia insisted. “I mean, who they really wanted.”
Her beaming smile was so charming as her sparkling eyes danced between the two of us. She lifted her glass of wine and proposed a toast.
“To talking it out!”
The clinking of glasses masked the obvious lie in Mason’s and my voice. Or maybe there was nothing to conceal, nothing to hide.
I raised my glass to my lips. Maybe Mason and I just “talked” in a different way. Maybe our bodies could communicate what words couldn’t. Maybe we didn’t need to open our mouths except to claim lips, to wrap around cocks, to sink our teeth into that sensitive skin at the crook of the neck.
Maybe things swept under the carpet could stay under the carpet.
Because the truth was I was enjoying myself. The truth was my role as wife was feeling less and less like a role. With each passing day I felt less like a travelling stranger in this town and more and more like someone who belonged.
I knew how to get around the neighbourhood not like an actor knows how to get around a stage (stage left, stage right, exit left, exit right), but like someone who doesn’t even think. Who just finds themselves where they meant to be. Who doesn’t even realise they’d left the loft till they were putting away the groceries in the kitchen, black liquorice for the husband, peanut M&Ms for the wife.
Aurnia was chattering on about plans for a group vacation, and I found myself nodding along like it was actually something that could be in my future.
“And in August there’s a gallery opening in Marseilles,” she said, eagerly slurping up her spaghetti. “The artist is incredible, like really incredible, right, Conor? And I mean, we can get like a little beach house and bicycle to the gallery, don’t you think? And Rachel, you and I can check out the shops. Doesn’t that sound lovely. I mean, we’ll have to take Rian, of course. He’ll be a bit of a fifth wheel, but I’m fairly certain that girl he keeps drawing is his imaginary friend anyway, so we’ll just count it as six!”
