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“Better. Eli invited me to come over later. If I feel better, can I go?”
“If you feel better.” He wondered if Max was feigning it just so he’d pick him up early. “How was today?”
“Okay.”
“Care to expand?” he asked.
“No. You know, general fun.” Max pulled out his phone and inserted an earbud into his ear. “Is it okay if I listen to music?”
“If it doesn’t make your tummy worse.”
Max grinned. “Nice try, Dad. It’s my head, not my tummy.”
He laughed. Caught red-handed in trying to gauge a fabrication.
Short texts held him the three days until Friday. It was as if they didn’t want to waste words and exchanges over devices.
On Friday evening, he drove straight to her house after dropping Max off. He would have felt guilty, but there was no room for guilt. Not yet. He wasn’t doing anything wrong.
“We can’t leave the house,” she said when he entered.
“I wasn’t planning to.” All he wanted was her. He didn’t care where.
On Saturday morning, after a breakfast of protein to make up for all the energy they had spent, he stretched himself shirtless on her sofa, and she burrowed into him. He caressed her hair. “I was trying to picture your life,” he said.
“I was trying not to picture yours.”
He scoffed. “It wasn’t a pretty picture, for the most part. Pretending in front of Max stopped working. Even an eight-year-old could see there was nothing there. I filed for divorce that year and got it by the time he turned nine. It went by quietly.”
She brushed her fingers over his chest. “I had a cat,” she suddenly said. “Uriel. He adopted me, but I gave him to the kids in the house next door after a few weeks. We found him together under the fence that separated the houses. They wanted him, but it took time to convince their mother, so I kept him. We visited each other a lot after.”
“Uriel?”
“Yeah, he urinated all over my floors and couch.”
He laughed. God, he missed her.
“And did you have friends there or …?”
“I had a neighbor in the house on the other side of mine. She was a librarian, and we both kinda kept to ourselves, but she watered my plants when I was away, and I watered hers. Melanie. There were the people I worked with, and Tom. Now I have Bella here. She’s a close friend. Oh, you know her, the girl I was at the club with.”
“I don’t remember what she looked like.” He had been too engrossed in Jane that night to notice even the friend that had broken their kiss.
Her phone on the coffee table buzzed. They both looked at it. “Mom,” the caller ID read.
She grabbed it and sat up. He caressed her back while she spoke to her mother.
“Yeah, I can’t until tomorrow evening. I’m … I have other plans. I told you.” There was a pause before she said, “No, Mom, you don’t have to bring me anything. Really, I’m fine. I have tons of food, and I’m in and out of the house all the time. I’ll drop by tomorrow evening or see you on Monday.”
She shut the phone and put it facedown on the table. She remained seated with her back to him.
He lifted himself to a sitting position and circled his arms around her from behind.
She half-pivoted and buried her face in his neck. “I feel like we’re having an affair, although we’re both single,” she said against his skin.
“If there’s anyone I want to have an affair with, it’s you,” he tried to joke, but not really. He had thought of it a million times and had beat himself up over it a million and one while he had been married.
She yanked herself back. “You have no idea how many times …” She took a deep breath. “The guilt, Finn, wasn’t just yours. I wanted you while you were married, though you weren’t mine then. I even thought to …”
