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MISHA
From my office window, I watch Cyrille pull out of the driveway. I make myself wait one hour to be sure she isn’t coming back before I begin to make my way downstairs.
If Paige asks what I’m doing, I’ll pretend that I’ve come to check that Danica and Mario are pruning and shearing as needed before the seasons turn. Lying to my wife about wanting to see her is pathetic, but that’s what it’s come down to.
As much as I despise it, telling her the truth feels a thousand times worse.
I find Paige sprawled across the patio couch with a milkshake in one hand and a copy ofPrague: The Historic Cityin the other. She’s so absorbed in her reading that she doesn’t see me standing amongst the foliage.
That’s fine with me. I’m happy to watch her for a few moments.
She’s wearing a soft cotton dress with large buttons down the center. Her legs are bent in front of her, one calf stretched long and lean and tan and gorgeous. Her bare foot twists from side to side like a windshield wiper as she reads. Occasionally, she wraps her lips around her straw and sucks. Heat spreads through my body every time she licks a drop of milkshake from her lips.
She’s not wearing a stitch of makeup and it reminds me of early mornings in Prague when I would wake up to sunlight slanting across her face.
While we were there, I slept in the bed with her. I woke up with her, too. Yet, somehow, the world didn’t shatter. The ground didn’t shift beneath my feet. I felt like a kid who’d gotten away with stealing cookies from the cookie jar, but I couldn’t help glancing again and again at the shadows over my shoulder, wondering when all of this would be ripped away from me.
Now that we’re back in the real world, the seismic shift I’d been waiting for has, in fact, arrived.
It just happened so subtly that I barely even noticed. The fact that I’m here looking for her is proof enough of that.
She puts the milkshake down and stretches. The book falls across her chest, covering the deep V neckline of her dress. She turns her head to the side and notices me standing there.
“Oh!” she gasps, dropping her feet on the tile floor. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Not long. I was just checking on Mario and Danica’s work.”
She looks around as though she’s expecting to see the gardening crew. “They aren’t here.”
I shrug like I don’t already know that. Her forehead wrinkles as she tries to decipher what I’m really doing here.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
Her frown deepens. “You mean… after our trip?”
I can feel her tentative hope. That more than anything else forces me to reconsider why I came looking for her in the first place.
“The pregnancy,” I say curtly, warding off any notion that I might be here to talk about us.
“Of course,” she says, disappointment skewing her features before she manages to fight it off. “I’m fine. I have a check-up in a few days. You can come with me if you want.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Okay.” She nods. “Cyrille just left a little while ago.”
“I saw.”
I don’t add that I’ve been dying to come out here for every single one of the sixty minutes since then.
“Did you talk to her?”
“I was… busy.”
That little line on her forehead is back. I know she hates how distant I am with everyone. The worst part about our new dynamic is that now she knows the reason why.
That’s what happens when you forget the fucking rules. This is why I don’t open up; it’s why I don’t get vulnerable. It’s almost enough to make me regret taking her to Prague at all.
But the things I’ll do to make her look at me…
