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“He turns down my every ‘let’s go on a double-date’ suggestion.”
Sighing, I drove forward. “It’s not about you, let alone the fact that you’re gay. He gives not one fuck about that.”
“So what’s the problem, then?”
My hands flexing on the steering wheel, I elaborated, “He simply has no interest in going on dates.”
Sabrina stared at me for a long moment. “I don’t get it,” she finally said, her hands slipping to her lap. “Why not? It’s not as if he’s a hermit or social nightmare.”
“No,” I agreed, pulling out of the lot and onto the main road, “but we don’t do couple stuff.”
“No couple stuff?” Sabrina’s voice rang with astonishment. “At all?”
“You do remember our marriage is no more than a business arrangement, yes?”
“Well, yeah. But he promised that you wouldn’t have a cold marriage.”
“He swore that we would spend time at home together like a normal couple, and we do. As we pre-agreed before marrying, we eat together, we talk, we have sex. He’s living up to his end of the bargain, just as I am mine.” It wasn’t exactly his fault that—with the exception of when we were in bed—it all felt forced and sometimes even awkward. “He didn’t promise me romance, and I didn’t ask for it. We agreed we’d be friends, though.”
“Andareyou friends?”
“Yes. Sort of. Okay, not really.” We didn’t joke and laugh together. Didn’t have meaningful conversations. Didn’t reach out to each other throughout the day by phone. “But we’ll get there eventually.”
I’d made the occasional overture, but he begged off whenever I suggested we go for a meal or to the movies. He didn’t accept my invitations to watch TV with me. He redirected the conversation if I brought up a too-personal subject matter. And if I texted him during the day with random news, he never texted me back; he waited until we were both home and then responded verbally.
In other words, at the moment, we were pretty much bed-buddies who lived together.
“Maybe things will change once you’re more comfortable with each other,” Sabrina suggested. “You’ve only been married, what, three weeks? Not that it isn’t possible to build a friendship within that timeframe, but it often takes a lot longer.”
“Yup, especially when you’re dealing with someone as insular as Dax.” Stopping at a red light, I cast her a sideways glance. “Did you really think he was homophobic?”
“No, I thought he probably just didn’t like either me or Tamara.”
I frowned. “Then why didn’t you just say that?”
“I felt like being dramatic. You know how I am.”
I rolled my eyes. “You were never right in the head. Even when we were kids, something was wrong upstairs. We all saw it.”
She smiled. “You love me anyway.”
“I don’t know what it says about me but, yeah, I do.”
Once I’d dropped her off at the parking lot outside our office building, I drove straight home. Pulling up outside the villa, I saw a familiar car parked beside Dax’s vehicle. I knew the car belonged to Blake, so he was either here alone or with Kensey.
They came to visit regularly, as did my own parents. They were all basically keeping an eye on things and making sure Dax and I weren’t already on the path to divorce.
My sisters—who loved the villa and were thrilled whenever I invited them over for a girls’ night in—also came often to check how I was doing. But, unlike my parents and Ollie, they didn’t come expecting to discover that the marriage was beginning to go sour. My sisters were far more positive about the whole thing.
Entering the house, I heard muffled voices coming from further inside. I tracked them to the kitchen. Both Dax and Blake sat at the table, a steaming mug in front of them.
As they looked my way, I smiled and said a simple, “Hey.”
Blake’s answering smile was strained and distant. “Hello, Addison,” he greeted politely. “You look well.”
“As do you.”
“Want coffee?” Dax asked me.
