Chapter 10 Surprise
TEN
SURPRISE
LUCY
The first few days were definitely weird, but a few weeks into my stay at the penthouse, I’m starting to figure out the rhythm of living with Dallas Collins.
Mornings are quiet. Afternoons stretch long and slow, usually filled with a new book or another television show. And the evenings? They belong to my husband.
He works long hours, always returning with his hair wet, his clothes fresh.
I haven’t seen him in a pair of coveralls yet—though he insists that his boss, the French-sounding Sebastien, makes him wear one—since he always seems to wearing what I consider Dallas’s uniform: dark denim jeans, black boots, and tight t-shirts that show off his body so amazingly, I’m glad that he has coveralls on at work.
Otherwise, I might have to worry about the female clients hitting on my husband while the sick and broken wife stays at home.
Thinking of how ruggedly striking Dallas is, probably half of the male ones, too, as if I need to give my brewing jealousy any ammunition...
I can’t help it. Maybe it’s because I just finished a mini-series where the wife suspected her husband of lying, of cheating, but the way he always comes back to me as though he only just stepped out of the shower…
I know I should trust him. That Dallas hasn’t given me any reason not to trust him.
Still, after it happens again, I finally have to point it out.
“I don’t want to smell like exhaust,” he tells me. “Grease under my nails isn’t exactly romantic.”
He said it lightly, as though he knows what I’m really asking, and he’s gently chiding me for even having a hint of suspicion at all. But… I don’t know. I’ve noticed something strange.
His hands are never rough. Not really. I mean, there’s strength in them.
Scars, too. There’s no denying that odd mark on his palm, the one that looks like he burned himself on purpose.
I can’t quite make out what the design it, but I get the feeling that it is a design.
And, yet, when I ask him about that, he mutters something about being ‘a stupid kid’ and joining a ‘dumb club’ before he inevitably changes the subject.
So I let that pass, and focus instead on how his hands—when they’re holding mine, when he’s stroking my hair, when he gripped my body after my nightmare and helped me ride him—don’t have the kind of wear I’d expect from a mechanic who works on engines all day long.
He says he is. I believe him. I have to. So I don’t push. After all, Dr. Brannigan says that’s no good for me, and I let all of the questions collect quietly in the back of my mind until they pile up enough that I blurt one or two out.
That I have to ration them… that’s a ‘me’ problem. Dallas has made himself clear. Anything I want to know, all I have to do is ask. If he can answer me, he will, even if he brushes off the topics that seem sensitive to him.
His parents.
Our estrangement.
Why it feels like it’s better if he keeps me upstairs, hiding me…
Oh, I know why he does it. He’s worried about me. I’m not recovering as fast as he thought I would, and I’ve had a few setbacks. None were as bad as how I withdrew into my room for a few days after I went crawling into Dallas’s bed. Only… that wasn’t my amnesia that had me avoiding him.
No. It was the morning after regret at how I basically threw myself at him.
He told me he would wait, but I was like, ‘no, Dallas, give me dick now,’ and I’m surprised that he didn’t try to reject me a second time?
Of course he’d take the chance to fuck his wife, especially if we’d been separated for so long, but I felt…
I don’t know. Like he’d think differently of me for how eager I was to reconnect physically with me.
I was being silly, of course. When Dallas finally figured out the true cause of my distance—embarassment, not my amnesia—he made it his point to assure me that that night… it was one of the best he’d ever had.
I moved from my bedroom to his after our conversation, and for the last two weeks, we really have been living as husband and wife.
Do I feel like something’s going on? I do.
Do I wish that Dallas would either take me out or introduce me to the friends he tells me about over meals?
Uh-huh. Do I understand that he’s keeping me all to himself so that I don’t get overwhelmed with so many people that I once knew, but no longer go?
Yeah. And I get that. I’m grateful that he’s looking out for me.
I know I shouldn’t complain, but… it’s hard.
It’s hard when I feel more like a responsibility he’s been saddled with that he’s trying to keep occupied while he still lives the ordinary life he’s led since we were apart, rather than the wife that still doesn’t know why we were separated in the first place.
So, yeah, I stay to the penthouse. It’s easier that way, especially when the world below the windows I’m still careful to avoid feels like too much.
I read. Watch television. I journal, eager to write down the fragments of some of my dreams—other nightmares—before they fade, another lost memory.
Sometimes I get the nerve to press my hand against the glass and look out at Harmony Heights, fighting the strange flutter in my stomach that heights seem to trigger.
Obviously. Whether it’s four floors or forty, I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable around heights again…
Dallas comes home every evening around the same time, already ordering a new meal from the restaurants and the Fortress’s kitchen for me to try.
One thing about not remembering shit? I can discover my likes and dislikes all over again, something that gives Dallas great pleasure when a plate he picked for me hits the spot.
Tonight, though, when I hear the front door open, he’s at least an hour early. I get up to greet him—or scream if it’s a stranger— and, when I notice that it is my husband, I’m just about to ask him why so early when I notice the clear wrap on the right side of his neck.
A bandage.
My breath catches as I rush toward him, my fingers outstretched. “Oh, Dallas. What happened?”
“It’s okay, Luce. I’m alright. It’s just… I finally had a chance to do something I’ve been meaning to for a while now. I know a guy. He was able to squeeze me in, but he said not to take the wrap off for a couple of days unless it oozes.”
What—
“Here. Look.” He bends his knees enough to close the gap in our height. This way, I can look through the clinging wrap and see that, beneath it, he has a tattoo of—
My belly jolts. “Is that… is that a dandelion?”
He nods. “Do you remember how you used to call them wishies? The ones with the fluffy white seeds? How you’d pluck them from the ground, puff out your cheeks, blow the seeds all over, and make a wish?
Well, my wish came true when you found your way back to me, and I thought…
” He taps the black spade tattoo on the opposite side of his neck.
“Since I have this one here, I put this one here.”
I don’t even know what to say at first. I’ve heard him call me ‘Dandelion’ a handful of time, almost as though it’s a habit that he tried to break, but can’t.
I never asked what it meant, and I wonder if his story about ‘wishies’ is the reason why he’s inked a black dandelion puff with the individual seeds blowing away is because I once told him that.
Do you remember?
Tears sting my eyes. Ducking my head, I refuse to let him see as I mumble, “I’m sorry. I… I don’t remember.”
But, God, do I wish I did.
Dallas’s gentle fingers go to my chin, lifting my up enough that I have no choice but to look into his eyes.
With his other hand, he uses his thumb to wipe the tears welling up in the corner of mine. “It’s okay, baby. You’ll remember in time. Until you do…” He moves his hand, tapping the wrap. “I’ll remember for us.”
My lips split in a wobbly grin. “So you got that tattoo for me? Because I’m your… Dandelion?”
“You got it.”
“And anyone can see it. It might not be a wedding ring, but if you make sure to tell any of the customers who hit on you that you… you know… have a tattoo you got for your wife, I wouldn't mind it.”
For a heartbeat, Dallas looks at me like he can’t believe that the thought would cross my mind. That I would be jealous.
And then he smiles, such an honest, open smile that I instantly start to go wet. Then again, that’s part of getting used to the reality that this man is mine…
“I’ll do that, Luce, just to set your mind at ease? But you should know… I’m not worried about anyone else.” He tucks a lock of my hair behind my ears. “You shouldn’t be, either. It’s only you, Dandelion. It’ll always be only you.”
I should’ve known better. I did know better. And, yet, I’m still surprised when a week later there comes an unexpected knock at the penthouse door.
Dallas left hours ago. We shared breakfast, he kissed me goodbye, and reminded me to order lunch instead of picking at last night’s leftovers. He teased that he would know, so I waited until around two, placed an order up, and ate by myself in the living room.
Now it’s three hours later, and Dallas won’t be back for at least one more. That’s why, when I hear the elevator chime, followed by a soft knock and a gentle, “Hello?”, I freeze where I am.
I had gone into the kitchen to grab a bottle of water.
I was thirsty, but now I’m wary. Wary and, okay, curious.
No one knocks at the door. The porters who bring up our meals knock, then leave the covered trays on a rolling cart behind before returning for it later.
Same with the mail. In all the time that I’ve been living here, Dallas hasn’t had a single visitor that wasn’t his cousin, and the voice I heard was too delicately feminine to belong to Adrian.
It’s a woman. It has to be a woman.