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He sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed while I wrap my ankles around his back.
“I’d like a clean shirt,” I say.
He reaches for the floor and pulls one of my bags closer, then grabs fabric and drops it.
“Oh. Yeah, a dress would be good. It’d at least cover my behind, too.”
He’s still. Grinding his teeth. And a long moment passes.
Finally, I ask, “Can you pass me that? And a bra would be good.”
He grinds his teeth some more before he lifts my bag and slaps it on the bed, gesturing like, you do it.
Great. He’s in a fine mood this morning.
I pull out an orange bra and then stretch to reach the dress he dropped on the floor. It’s a brown, rust, and sage patchwork pattern. I’ve had it for years.
Oh.
Shit.
Images race through my mind.
This is the dress I wore that day. That’s what this attitude is about. I don’t even remember packing this when I left to come here. But I must have.
I stretch and he gets the drift, moving so I can reach for the pile of dresses on hangers thrown across my other bag. I haul a different dress from its hanger. A navy-blue ankle-length jersey t-shirt dress with long slits and pockets on both sides.
I casually stuff the other dress into the bag, knowing my cheeks must be the color of my hair.
I whip my t-shirt off, then clip the bra on and quickly pull the dress over my head, not looking directly at his face the entire time, but catching that he’s doing his best to not look at me. Still, I feel my cheeks flame all the same.
My eyes hit his face as he rises and carries me to the kitchen with a miserable expression on his handsome face. I’m mourning the expressions I used to see on his face whenever I’d see him. Before all this. Before I fucked everything up. He smiled all the time. He looked happy. I ruined that.
He haphazardly starts working on the coffee. I reach to take the pot from him so I can wash it, but he swats my hand away and grouchily does it himself, one handed, the other arm propped under my butt.
“I can help,” I offer.
“No,” he clips. “I’ll do it.”
I hold my tongue and let him do his thing. Have his temper tantrum. And it’s ridiculous. Because he has to dump the old coffee grinds and rinse the basket out, change the filter and scoop in more coffee and it takes forever because he’s stubbornly doing it all one-handed.
Once he flips it to ‘on’, he’s reaching for the fridge door and one-handedly moving casserole dishes around until he finds what he’s obviously looking for. A batter of some sort, filled with vegetables. It’s uncooked and shredded cheese floats in the concoction.
He elbows the fridge shut, peels a Post-It note off the lid, then turns the oven on.
“This all right?” he asks.
“What is it? A breakfast casserole?”
“My mother’s. Takes about half an hour to bake.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Riley’s mom.
My belly dips. Riley’s family? I want to ask about them. His parents. His siblings. I remember every word he shared about them with me that day before it all went wrong. I also know of them from ledgers and some interference done a while back, but I’m suddenly aching at the idea of extended family. In-laws. He’s the oldest of three. A brother named Brody who’s a year younger. Traveling. He’d been traveling for two years when Riley and I met. He’s actually destined to rule his own pack as an alpha. Vivi told me and I wonder if that’s happened yet. Riley also has a sister named Trina who’s probably college-aged by now.
I have married coworkers and acquaintances who bitch about their mother-in-law. About deadbeat brothers-in-law or catty sisters-in-law. I’ve always wanted a mother-in-law. Not having a mom anymore, it’s the closest thing I’d get to a mother. I have Aunt Mimi, but a grandmother to my future babies? And a father-in-law. And…
Loss sweeps through me.
I won’t get to meet his mom. If I did, she’d probably want to publicly stone me in the town square. His dad probably wouldn’t think much of me either. I know how I’d feel if I met significant others of my loved ones who treated them terribly. My heart sinks.
***
Riley’s mom’s breakfast casserole was good, though I didn’t have much of an appetite, so far in my head about how much his family must loathe me. The coffee he made was a little on the strong side and I wasn’t a fan but drank it anyway. The weather is stormy today. Like Riley’s mood.
After we ate, I told him I really needed to wash my face and brush my teeth. With all the drama yesterday and not getting a minute to ourselves, neither of us had seen a toothbrush. This was another too-intimate moment of navigating me doing that and washing and moisturizing my face and then waiting patiently while he did a quick wash up with some bar soap and brushed his teeth.
