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By month two, I’d torn out the bathroom, getting quicker with my demolition skills and savvier with my rebuild. I watched a shit ton of YouTube videos, saving countless building channels on my phone and sitting in the cracked pink bath for far longer than I’d admit, trying to figure out how to remove the caulking and rip out the offending tub.
Griffen ordered a new wooden vanity with a porcelain bowl, brand-new toilet, and boxes full of tiles resembling mermaid scales. He’d tasked me with replacing the bath for a large walk-in shower and glass screen.
Neri hadn’t been happy that I’d removed the bath, but...I would’ve had a fit if she’d wallowed in that cesspit. I compromised with her and fucked her in the newly tiled shower. I kneeled between her legs as she stood with water streaming over her head and plunged my tongue inside her, tasting her desire, my cock agonisingly hard, her hands buried in my drenched hair to keep herself from falling.
After I’d given her two orgasms and claimed two of my own, I took her swimming at The Strand. We went to the beach as many times a week as we could. And if I’d ever been under the impression that Neri wasn’t part sea creature herself, it became glaringly obvious whenever we headed to the ocean.
The way she’d step into the lapping waves as if they were old friends. The longing kind of sigh that echoed with homesickness for the sea rather than her parents. The way she’d shiver with delight as she’d walk deeper into the brine, almost as if the salt changed the acidity of her blood, giving her back a piece of herself that she lost while on land.
I’d wait for her on our towels, heart hurting, mind whispering, bones cracking beneath everything I refused to deal with and all the feelings I drowned with. I’d once become a master of pushing aside my grief and barricading myself off from loss. But now, Neri was the master of me, and my every thought, my every need, wish, and desire all centred on her.
If I ever lost her...
Balling my hands, I shoved aside that black, depressing thought. I’d become a master of that too. A master of ignoring the heavy fog inside me that suffocated at the oddest moments.
I was happy.
Far happier than I’d been for years, yet...something inside me refused to heal. It sat sulking in darkness, hissing filth that I didn’t deserve this, didn’t deserve her, didn’t deserve this life I’d been given because of where I’d come from.
I probably overcompensated in my worship of Neri, not because I’d lost every part of me to her, but because I used her to hide from the pieces I didn’t want to acknowledge.
What I did to Ethan...
The ease with which I’d cut off his fingers.
The sick satisfaction that’d run through me as I kicked him overboard...
That part of me was dangerous, cold-hearted, and disgustingly violent.
I hated that it existed but was grateful for it too.
Grateful that I would happily sink to any level to protect Neri, all while terror filled me that the more I embraced that side of myself, the harder it would be to stay good.
By the third month of our new life, we found a rhythm that worked for both of us. She settled into her studies and shared stories of her fellow students and teachers. She complained about the number of hours spent in a lab and moaned that her eyes were sore from peering into microscopes.
Some days, she’d be given lab work that meant she had to stay past class time, using the equipment on campus to get her work done.
Those nights were the worst.
I loved that she was so diligent and dedicated to her calling, but I couldn’t settle if the sun was down and Neri wasn’t safely in our apartment. I turned to numbers on those nights, losing myself in setting up automatic payments for Griffen’s tenants and teaching myself the tax software that was said to make paying GST easier.
True to his word, Griffen dropped an envelope of cash into our letterbox every Monday morning on his way to the university, paying me for my time. When the first money came in for a full month of gathering his rent, sending reminders to those behind, and figuring out a depreciation avenue that he hadn’t been using, I’d almost dropped to my knees at the amount.
Eight percent of all the rent gathered, plus my time renovating.
Fuck me.
I’d never held so much in one pay packet.
And just like before, I had nothing I wanted to spend it on.
Nothing but Neri.
As I’d tripped in a daze back to our rapidly improving apartment, I’d been struck with an idea. Once Neri had gone to uni for the day, I ignored the risk of going out in public and headed downtown. The cash burned a hole in my pocket as I hunted through every electronic and science shop I could find before I stumbled on what I was looking for.
