Happy Wife, Happy Life
SLADE
Igive my brothers annoyed looks. “You guys are idiots.”
Sadie appears at Walker’s side with a blonde woman in blue scrubs beside her, dark circles under her eyes, hair in a bun with the strands escaping. It’s Cassidy, Josie’s best friend, and apparently Sadie’s good friend too.
I seize the interruption like a lifeline.
“Hey Cassidy. Great costume,” I say.
She stares at me.
“Scrubs,” I say. “Doctor, right?”
“Are you joking.” It isn’t a question.
I look at Sadie, confused. Sadie laughs, shaking her head.
“I just got off a shift,” the woman says. “I didn’t have time to go home and change.”
“Right.” I clear my throat. Cassidy is a doctor. I knew that, I think. “Sorry. I forgot.”
“Slade is what we call oblivious,” Walker tells her. “At least to anything that doesn’t involve hockey, horses, or now, his wife.”
He’s not wrong. I tend to have tunnel vision.
I wasn’t around much by the time Josie and Cassidy became friends.
I’d already been drafted into the NHL by then.
Just a rookie, my whole life consumed by hockey, by training, by the obsessive need to succeed.
I barely made it home those years. Somewhere in the back of my memory there’s a vague impression of a gangly teenager with a blonde ponytail and a mouthful of braces, attached at the hip to Josie.
Tanner, back from the drinks cooler, practically shoves me out of the way to put himself in between me and her.
“Doctor Monroe.” He bows elegantly.
Her eyes scan down him and back up, and her face goes a little bit red, whether from irritation or something else, I can’t tell.
“Dracula,” she answers by way of greeting.
“Straight from the hospital? You look exhausted.”
“Wow, thanks.”
He hands her a plate spread with a sample of everything on the table, neatly arranged. “Let me guess, you didn’t eat. I made you a plate.”
She looks at it warily. “Did you spit on it?”
His expression turns affronted. “I’m trying to feed you, Freckles. You’ve been on your feet for twelve hours.”
She takes a hesitant nibble of a cheese cube.
Tanner’s eyes dip to her mouth. “So what’s the fiancé dressed up as? The Invisible Man?”
She flinches a little. That clearly landed somewhere sensitive. Her expression hardens as she glares at him. “He’s at a medical conference in Stockholm. Where’s your date?”
“Didn’t bring one.”
“Shocking.”
“Holding out for the right woman.” His eyes don’t leave her face. “It’s a long game.”
“Players do love to play their little games.” She sets the plate down and turns to Sadie. “Let’s go. I want to meet your new sister-in-law.”
Tanner watches her walk away, jaw clenched.
Walker takes a sip of his beer. “Struck out,” he observes.
“I did not strike out,” Tanner snaps.
“Looked like a strike out. And hitting on a married woman? Low, even for you.”
Tanner glares. “She’s not married, she’s engaged. To a douchebag.” His eyes track Cassidy. “Engaged’s not married. “
Walker and I look at each other. Tanner’s on a hopeless quest here. Maybe he just likes a challenge. After all, women have been falling all over themselves over him his whole life. I guess it’s fitting he’d set his sights on the one woman who wants nothing to do with him.
“Keep telling yourself that,” Walker tells him. “You’re delusional.”
Tanner grins. “That’s what they say about all the greats.”
I can tell he’s already revving up for the argument.
Walker and Tanner butt heads constantly, but I try to stay out of it.
Everyone has always said the two of them are hotheaded and I’m cold-hearted.
That might be true, but it’s more than that.
I get enough confrontation in my professional life.
I don’t need that shit at home too. It stresses me out.
I sense my exit opportunity as soon I see Dad outside, offloading hay bales from the back of his truck. I make a beeline for outside and step in to help him finish the task.
When we’re done, my father eyes me, an affectionate smirk coming to his face as he takes in my costume.
“Are you gonna tell me I look ridiculous?” I ask.
“Nah. I’m just thinking you look the happiest I’ve ever seen you. And it ain’t because you caught and skinned the Abominable Snowman and made a coat out of him.”
“Yeah, well. It makes my wife happy.”
He chuckles. “If you only knew how many times I said the very same thing when it came to your mother.”
As we survey the house, filled with people and music, I think about how my childhood home looks most days, these days: empty. Quiet. I think about Dad all alone in his big house, all that unfamiliar silence. The loneliness he must feel.
Not for the first time, I’m in awe of his strength. To survive the loss of the only woman he ever loved, to hold it together for our family and our ranch, all the while trying to keep himself going too.
“I don’t know how you did it,” I say suddenly. “I don’t know how you went on after Mom died.”
He glances sharply at me, like I’ve surprised him. I guess I have. I don’t bring Mom up. I don’t talk about her unless I have to. But talking about her to Lila seems to have opened up some tightly-closed floodgates.
“I understand it even less over time,” I say. “How you just... kept going. Kept showing up for all of us. How you didn’t just fall apart.”
Dad doesn’t answer right away. He looks out at the valley, the last of the light dying behind the mountains. When he speaks his voice is slightly hoarse.
“Who says I didn’t?” he says quietly. “Your mother and I had twenty five years together. Twenty five years of this land, this house, raising you kids, building something. And I won’t lie to you, when I lost her, it felt like the ground went out from under me.
Still does sometimes.” He pauses. “But you know what I’d never trade?
A single day of it. Not one. Every laugh, every fight, every ordinary Sunday morning with all of us around the kitchen table.
I’d take all the grief in the world to have had every bit of it.
Every moment of happiness was worth every moment of pain.
That’s just the truth of it. That’s what love is. ”
We stand there in the cold for a moment, just the two of us.
I never understood until right now what it must have taken my father to show us how much he loved us every single day. To not close himself off. To stay open to all of it, the joy and the devastation both.
“I couldn’t do it,” I say. “I’m not capable of it. Loving someone like that. I couldn’t bring myself to even if I wanted to.”
He looks at me kindly, eyes resting on my wedding ring for a moment. “You’re capable of more than you think.”
I shake my head. “If something ever happened to Lila…”
Dad rests a hand on my shoulder. “You can’t think like that, son. Always anticipating the hit.”
“That’s what I’m paid to do.”
“So lay down your sword. Or your hockey stick, as it were. You only get one shot at this life. Loving someone and being loved, that’s all that matters in the end.”
He gestures across the windswept valley in the twilight.
“Look at these animals out here. You think they spend their lives thinking about the grief that’s to come?
Does the eagle pluck out her own feathers worrying about her hatchling falling from the tree?
Does the wolf spend summer grieving his mate who won’t live through winter?
Wild things only know how to live in the moment. Make their peace your own.”
“I’m quiet. Not peaceful. There’s a difference.”
Dad just smiles at me. “Then find what makes you feel at peace.” He tilts his chin towards the house. “I do believe I see her in there.”
Through the window, I see Lila. Pink and radiantly beautiful and so improbably mine. Dad stands beside me, both of us looking through the glass at our family and friends filling up the house with noise and light and life.
“I’m gonna go catch up with her,” I tell him.
Dad winks. “You do that, son.”
I make a beeline for Lila. As I get close to her, I realize Dad is right: she is what makes me feel at peace. Settled. Living with her is the difference between a cold dark room and one with a fire going: same four walls, entirely different place to be.
Maybe I ought to enjoy the peace that gives me while I can. Before I have to let it go.
I touch her elbow. “Come with me a minute.”
She looks up at me. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah. Just want to give you your birthday present.”
Her eyes widen. “You got me a birthday present?”
“Of course.”
I take her hand and lead her through the kitchen and out the back door. Her fingers are warm and small in mine and I don’t let go until we round the corner of the barn.
The brand new Range Rover comes into view, the subtle rose-gold paint job giving off a soft glow in the porch light.
Lila stops walking. I stop with her.
“Your birthday present,” I explain. “It won’t let you lock your keys inside and it’s got all the newest and best safety features.”
She laughs before covering her mouth with both hands. Her eyes are enormous as she walks toward it, one hand trailing along the hood, fingers catching the light. Pink nails on rose-gold paint. I put my hands in my pockets and watch her.
She turns around. “It’s pink.”
“Rose gold. To match your hair.”
“This car. You would never buy it for yourself.”
“Didn’t buy it for myself. Bought it for my wife.”
“It’s flashy.”
“It’s distinctive.”
“Ridiculously girly.”
“Delightfully girly.”
“You dress exclusively in black, grey, and navy, and you bought me a pink car.”
I shrug. “You’re introducing me to the rainbow.”
She shakes her head, still smiling, eyes bright.
“I wanted you to have the kind of birthday you deserve. Your family never appreciated you the way they should have,” I say. “They tried to snuff out your light, dull all your color. Erase everything that makes you special. I wanted you to have something that says it loud and proud.”
She stares at me.
The smile is still there but it’s changed into something more complicated.
“Slade,” she whispers.
She crosses to me in three steps and I open my arms for her and she tucks in, same as always, her head against my shoulder. Except this time her hands fist in the back of my ridiculous white fur coat and she holds on.
I press my lips to the top of her head and close my eyes. I breathe in her scent, flowers and marshmallows. Feel her body, warm and soft against mine.
I pull back after a moment to look at her, to make sure she’s okay. Her eyes are shining and her lips are pressed together like she’s trying to hold something in.
“Is it too much?” I ask. The car. The surprise party. The way I’m holding her in my arms.
She knows we’re not just talking about the car anymore too.
“No such thing,” she whispers. “You know me. More is more.”
I don’t decide to move. My hand just finds her jaw, tilting her face up toward mine.
I want to kiss her.
There are no cameras around. No audience, nothing to prove. If I did, I wouldn’t have any excuses to hide behind why I’m kissing her. It wouldn’t be for any particular reason other than I just want to kiss her. Desperately.
Her eyes drop to my mouth and come back up and something in my chest pulls so tight it’s almost painful. It’s desire and it’s something else. Something bigger and warmer and more frightening than desire, something I don’t have a name for and am not sure I want one.
Then comes the sound of hoofbeats.
We both freeze.
Rafe comes around the side of the barn on Cisco, dusty from the collar down, hat pushed back. He takes one look at us, with my hand on Lila’s cheek, the absence of any space between us, and pulls up short.
“Sorry to interrupt.” He looks away immediately as he dismounts. “Didn’t know anyone was out here.”
I drop my hand from Lila’s face. Step back. My voice comes out even somehow. “It’s fine.”
“Nice truck,” he says, dark eyes fixing on the Range Rover.
“Slade got me a birthday present,” Lila says, a little too brightly. Skin still flushed, even in the twilight.
Rafe tips his hat. “Happy birthday, Lila.”
I look out at the dark pasture and breathe.
“Are you coming to the party?” Lila asks him.
“In a minute.” He swings down and starts loosening Cisco’s cinch, giving us his back.
“Josie said she can’t come for Thanksgiving,” I say, mostly to fill the silence. “Her next assignment’s taking her to Hawaii, I guess.” Josie’s a travel nurse and never stays in one place too long. “Dad said she called this morning.”
Rafe’s hands go still on the saddle just for a second. “Good to know,” he says.
I look back at Lila. The moment between us has sealed over, solid on the surface. But I can still feel the warmth of her jaw in my palm. I can still see the way her eyes dropped to my mouth.
I hold the door for her and follow her back into the noise and the light and the pink champagne, and I watch her get swallowed up by people who love her and appreciate her. I watch her enjoy the kind of birthday she deserves and feel warmth swell up inside me.
Happy wife, happy life, Walker said.
The guy’s onto something.