Chapter 19
CHAPTER 19
T hings were better after they stood up. The little bubble of whatever it had been seemed to pop and things returned to normal, as normal as they could be when two friends were starting their new life together as roommates and—quasi—husband and wife.
June texted something and set her phone on the kitchen counter. “My dad is going to send some things. A kitchen table from the basement, along with my bed.”
“I have a bed,” Aiden said with sudden remembrance.
“Do you?” June asked, smiling in amusement. “Congratulations. Good job, buddy.” She slugged him lightly on his shoulder.
Rolling his eyes, he pushed her hand away. “I wasn’t seeking approval for a job well done. I just remembered. I actually had input on our bed selection,” one of the only arguments he won, “and it was already delivered.” He gripped June’s shoulders, giving her a tiny shake. “I have a place to sleep, June. This is momentous.”
She giggled. “And so it is. And after my dad brings my bed, I will also have a place to slumber. That’s one massive task off our list and it’s only noon.” She held up her hand and they high fived.
“Let’s go stare at it and feel accomplished,” Aiden said. He wove his fingers through hers and tugged her toward the stairs. They ran to the second floor lightly together, chortling when they bumped hips and shoulders along the way. It wasn’t funny, but they were in the mood to find the tiny spark of humor in everything.
“Ta-da,” he announced, opening his bedroom door with a flourish.
“Oh, it’s…um…” June said, floundering at the monstrosity before them.
“What?” Aiden exclaimed, staring at the oversized bed in the center of the room. “That’s not the bed I chose.” His bed had been sleek and modern. Before him stood a four-poster atrocity with carved gargoyles. He couldn’t believe the one thing he thought he’d won turned out to be one more thing Erica steamrolled. She had likely called the salesperson after they left and changed their order to the bed she wanted, the ugly monstrosity now before them.
“Aiden, I’m so sorry,” June choked, but she didn’t sound sorry. She sounded like she could barely hold back her laughter.
He turned to her, dismayed, and saw her eyes shimmering with repressed tears of amusement. “I’m so sorry,” she repeated with zero sincerity.
“Why are you sorry? Because my ex-fiancée was a complete control freak who never let me have a say in our lives or because she left me with a bed that could only have been a prop from The Addams Family ?”
A loud guffaw burst out of her. She pressed both hands over her mouth, trying to hold the others in. Aiden peeled them away and the dam on her laughter broke. Tears poured from her eyes as she laughed, loud and long.
“That’s it,” he said, but he was no longer angry. Instead he now found it as funny as she did. Nonetheless he bent, tossed her over his shoulder, stalked to the bed, and delivered her in its center. “We’re trading beds. You can sleep on nightmare fuel and I’ll take yours.”
She clutched her stomach and curled into a ball, practically screaming with laughter. Aiden lay beside her and stretched out, waiting for her amusement to play itself out. Meanwhile he stared up at the bed in amazement. How? Just…how? How could Erica have done everything she did? How could she have ordered his life this way and then left him high and dry? Worse, how could he have let it happen? Was he that soft? That gullible? That stupid and easily duped? That much in denial?
“Why this bed?” June asked, using her sleeve to wipe her streaming eyes. “It seems so unlike her, so unlike the rest of the house.”
“She said…” he paused and took a fortifying breath. “She said she wanted something to pass along to our children. An heirloom.”
“And this was her choice?” June asked, tossing her arms wide to encompass the bed. “This isn’t a bed; this is nightmare fuel. How would that conversation have gone? ‘Kids, Dad and I want to tell you something: we’re giving you our bed.’ ‘What? No! Why? What have we done to deserve this? We’ll be better, I swear.’”
Aiden snorted a laugh and dabbed his own eyes, though he wasn’t certain his moisture was due to amusement. He and Erica would never have a conversation with their kids because they would never have kids together. The little vision of them in his mind was already beginning to fade. “I guess I’ll have to contact the place where we got the bed and get them to take it back.”
“No way, you should keep it,” June said.
He turned his head to regard her, sure she must be joking. She looked dead serious, though. “Why would I want to keep this?”
“First of all, it’s solid. I don’t think the fires and ashes of Pompeii could destroy this puppy.” She gave the bed a little pat. “Second, the mattress is comfy-womfy.” She wiggled a little. Aiden did the same, tossing her a nod of agreement. The mattress was certifiably comfy. Womfy, his brain added unhelpfully. “Third, it’s a testament to your resilience. Life kicked you, but it didn’t win. You’re down but not out. You don’t have to get rid of this bed to prove your survival. You can keep it in spite of your pain. And someday when you have children with whichever lucky lady, you can tell them the story, the scary bed story. The ‘you wouldn’t be here if things had worked out like I originally wanted them to’ story.”
Aiden digested that a few blinks, letting her upbeat certainty wash over him. Life wouldn’t always feel like this. Someday things would be better. He would heal, move on, begin again. “That’s really inspiring, coach. But I’m not certain I want this bed as my talisman.”
“Too bad because, based on the juxtaposition of that demon who will stare at you as you sleep, it’s going to follow you into the afterlife,” June said, staring at a precariously perched gargoyle. “Seriously, Aiden. I am not a judgmental person by nature, but the fact that your intended selected this bed didn’t give you pause? It’s a literal hell scape.”
“I guess I kind of hoped she was joking or maybe taking the opposite approach to be contradictory. Sometimes we were so alike it, well, it got a little boring. Sometimes I had the sense that she picked fights in order to spice things up and keep me hopping. I didn’t think she had any serious interest in this fright fest.”
“Hoo, boy,” June muttered. “Maybe we could go in on some sort of two for one therapy session, get a psychiatrist to make house calls and come here.”
“All your ideas are good,” Aiden said. They smiled at each other, heads turned toward each other. That same little bubble of something, an odd mix of yearning, tension, pain, and exhilaration filled his midsection. He didn’t want to want June, but even in the midst of his misery there was a sort of elation that he was now free to do so. He realized then that he’d been suppressing it all these many months, in favor of Erica, his intended. But now that Erica had—oh, so painfully—cut herself out of the equation, his heart wanted to barrel headlong toward June.
Before he could act on it, a noise startled them both. Outside they heard a loud bass rumble, followed by a deafeningly sharp blast. “Is that the Titanic ?” Aiden asked.
“Almost as disastrous. It’s my dad’s truck, and he probably brought Denver. Wait for it.” She held a finger aloft and then they heard it together, a whoop almost as loud as the truck’s horn.
“Junie! Where’s my baby sister at?”
June peeled herself off the bed and held out her hand to Aiden. “Come on, fake husband. Time for some real trauma.”
J une hadn’t been exaggerating about the trauma. She loved her dad and brother, completely. It had been only the three of them for as long as she could remember. But they were also exhausting. They so badly wanted to take care of her, to make everything okay. What they failed to realize was that their fragile inability to handle her pain had built a gilded cage around her heart. She couldn’t let anyone in for fear of disappointing them. And they smothered her, both emotionally and physically. She had no idea what people were talking about when they complained that men were aloof and closed off. Her dad and Denver were as open, warm-hearted, and affectionate as two people could be. They proved it now by taking turns picking her up and swallowing her in hugs, Denver shaking her back and forth like a dog with a chew toy before setting her down.
Once safely back on land, she tossed a glance toward Aiden to see how he was faring. His eyes were getting that look again, the sad, baleful one. Whenever he started to get that expression, she knew it was up to her to fix it. At some point he would have to deal with the coming pain, but she didn’t think he was ready yet, didn’t think he’d had enough time to process the rational side of things before he could begin to attempt to handle the emotion of it. Until she got some signal he could handle it, she would keep providing distractions and support, in whatever form necessary. And if that equaled kissing away his misery, so be it. She hadn’t been exaggerating earlier. The boy could kiss. His wooing was much like the man himself, gentle and reserved but with hidden depths.
June had liked Erica, really liked her. Up until the fateful wedding, she had considered her a friend. But there was no prevarication on her part now. She was team Aiden, all the way. And not merely because he was her…husband of sorts? But because he was the undeniable victim in this scenario. For months she had watched him try to cajole Erica out of her consuming need to control every aspect of the build. She’d had misgivings, but Aiden had seemed calm and happy, had fully believed the stress of everything was affecting her and everything would be okay. So June went with it and tried to offer her own support, talking Erica down off the ledge when she needed the support. But to trap him into a financial crisis, one of her making, and then walk away with only a note for explanation? Yeah, she was done with Team Erica. Aiden didn’t deserve that. Maybe she was biased because he was her doctor and had sweetly patched her up so many times, but she thought he could do better than Erica. Exponentially so.
The three men stood around attempting to make awkward small talk with each other. The elephant in the room was the obvious fact that her family had sold her for the price of the house they now inhabited. With everyone else they could pretend to be head over heels in love, but her dad and Denver knew the truth. This was a bare handed exchange—the house for June’s protection. It was beyond mortifying, and yet she couldn’t seem to hold it against them. Misguided and foolish as they sometimes were, they loved her completely, would do anything for her, including take a huge financial hit. It hadn’t cost her father as much as Aiden because he’d factored his labor into the deal. But even in raw supplies he was in for at least a hundred and fifty thousand, probably more. Not to mention the time and manpower the house had cost him.
“What are you making us for supper?” Denver asked then, before she could puff up in outrage, he poked her and added, “Kidding.”
He was half kidding, she knew. From an early age, she had taken over kitchen duties, after her dad and brother proved predictably bad at it. Anything above grilling was beyond them. June had taken to cooking with alacrity, much to everyone’s delight. She loved it, and it soothed her. And, despite the fact that his words said he was teasing, she knew Denver was a little worried about the new status quo. Where would he and Dad get food? All of June’s food would go to Aiden now, when he happened to be home from the hospital.
“If it’s a night Aiden’s working, I’ll cook for you,” June offered.
“You’re in luck, I work a lot,” Aiden added helpfully.
Denver picked her up and gave her a squeeze. “That’s our Junie.”
“Just as long as you don’t spend too many nights apart,” June’s dad inserted, unhelpfully, she thought. “Newlyweds need time to get to know each other.”
Kill me now, June thought, cheeks flushing. Aiden caught her eye and tossed her a wink and her flush deepened. The entire situation was so odd and mortifying. If she thought about it too much, she might slink away to her room in shame, never to emerge. As it was, she had a job to do. The three men before her depended on her for their care. Her boys. She would do her very best to take care of them completely. And who will take care of you? An annoying little voice popped from the center of her brain and oozed outward. I can take care of myself, she answered, trying hard to believe it.
Aiden, as perceptive as her ex-boyfriend hadn’t been, noticed the slight shift in her mood and stepped forward to wrap her in a warm hug. Unlike Denver’s this one didn’t swallow or overwhelm her. It enveloped her, and she liked it. Loved it, in fact. If there was one thing she was grateful for in this new normal, it was that Aiden was likewise affectionate. It would be horrible to feel cut off from physical touch, as if she were existing on a new and barren desert. Instead she could reassure herself anytime she wanted or needed, merely by reaching out and touching the cute man who now lived in her house.
Really, when I think about it, this fake marriage thing isn’t too bad.
Later, she would try to hold on to those words.