Chapter 8 Salvador Dalí Made It a Point to Steal Pens #3
Their conversation had fallen into an easy rhythm. It helped that he was busying himself in the kitchen and they weren’t staring each other down across the table. Maybe they’d never be friends, but she could handle this. She didn’t need to be friends with her husband.
Husband. The word sounded like a gong inside her skull every time she thought it.
“I don’t have an accent,” he argued, almost reflexively.
“Not all the time, but occasionally you do.”
“Well, you’re from here, and yesterday, I heard two people calling a drinking fountain a ‘bubbler’ so…”
“Lucky for you, I don’t talk about drinking fountains enough to get cute with them.” She inhaled the cinnamon oatmeal coming to a boil. “So that’s where you were living before this?”
He stirred. “Uh, no. I moved to New York City for undergrad. Squatters’ rights are a big thing in New York. You could take your grift on the road!”
“Hilarious,” she replied flatly.
“Then Boston for grad school.”
“The source of your Massachusetts villain origin story, I’m sure.”
“How do you take it?” He had grabbed the full carafe out of the coffee maker and poured it into the ceramic mugs taken from the hooks under the cabinet.
“About as much milk as coffee,” she instructed.
He nodded, tapping his temple like he was locking her coffee preference into his brain, then carried on with his train of thought. “Then I spent a little time in Japan studying abroad. Japanese architecture was a major influence on Groff—”
“Who you’re in love with.” She accepted the mug of milky coffee, exactly as she liked it.
“—who was the focus of my dissertation,” he grumbled. “Then I did a fellowship in Munich and most recently lived in DC.”
“Where you work for the feds,” she finished.
He poured the oatmeal into two bowls and set one in front of her. “Are you trying to get to know me or something?” he asked, his voice smug.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” She rolled her eyes. “You’ve just been places.” Something curled in her chest at the mere notion of going anywhere, when she’d been nowhere. His world suddenly seemed bigger than hers.
“Where have you been?” he asked, clearly not realizing just how loaded a question like that was for her.
“Once you buy my house, I’m going to France,” she declared. She hadn’t even realized she’d decided it, but it felt good to state her intentions definitively. To give a dream oxygen and sunlight like it was a living, breathing thing she could nurture and grow.
“Why France?” he asked, but before she was forced to answer, a shriek cracked between them.
“ELAINE COLETTE DAVIS!” Bree’s voice carried in on a gust through the open window, pulling them both out of their shockingly cozy rhythm.
“You have not responded to my texts for the last ten hours. Consider this a wellness check.” Her fists knocked demurely against the doorframe. “Open that door.”
Lainey turned over her lifeless phone on the kitchen table.
Last night, in her effort to avoid Elliot, she’d forgotten to plug her phone into the charging cable that lived in the kitchen.
Between the pregnancy and some highly specific nightmares, Bree had become a bit of a nocturnal animal, so it was certainly possible Lainey had missed a few texts.
To her credit, she guessed she’d been asleep for a considerable number of messages anyhow.
Elliot walked over to the entry, then hesitated, whispering, “Should I let her in?”
Bree’s huff traveled through the solid wood door. “Is a stranger weighing in on whether I’m allowed inside my best friend’s house? I’m pregnant! What if I needed medical attention?”
“Do you need medical attention?” Elliot asked.
“Just open the door,” Lainey instructed. Elliot obeyed.
A red-faced Bree stood on her front porch, her chest rising and falling with angry, heaving breaths. Her eyes scanned the room before slamming into Lainey’s. “Are you married?”
She made the word married sound preposterous, like Lainey’d ventured into circus performing all of a sudden.
“Answer the question.”
“Who told you that?” Lainey asked. A deflection.
“Isaac Segarra added your marriage to the ‘Joys and Sorrows’ section of the Wednesday church bulletin. And that’s not an answer.”
Fucking Isaac.
Lainey looked to Elliot, who was waiting for her to take the lead. Unfortunately for them, Lainey’s tongue had stopped working.
“It’s more of an economic arrangement,” Elliot responded.
Bree wasn’t mollified. Lainey’s best friend might’ve looked sweet, but the bitch was formidable. Her words were practically dripping with venom when she asked, “Did you really think you could marry her to steal her house?”
“No! I mean, I’m not—” Elliot’s shoulders shifted uneasily while Bree stared him down like a predatory bird. “God, your eye contact is unrelenting.”
“She’s aware,” Lainey cut in. If she let things go too far down this path, someone was liable to lose a limb.
Smart money was on Elliot. “I’m marrying him for health insurance.
His plan covers my medication. In exchange, he can rent out my house.
Emphasis on my house. No ownership is changing hands. ”
Bree’s eyes cut momentarily to Lainey, offering Elliot a brief reprieve from the full force of her gaze. He was sweating—the correct reaction, by all accounts. “Mr. Hodges, can I have a moment alone with my friend?”
Elliot looked to Lainey. It seemed they were allied against a common foe: Bree’s protective rage. Lainey nodded and tilted her head toward his bedroom, signaling him to give them space. He walked away, coffee mug in hand, glancing back at Lainey before he shut the door.
“What were you thinking?” Bree asked her once Elliot was finally out of earshot.
Lainey let out a long-held breath. “I was thinking that I’m broke, and I need migraine medication, and he has really great insurance.”
Her friend folded her arms over her baby bump. “I can lend you money.”
“I’m not taking your money,” Lainey argued. “It’s only on paper. It’s not like it’s real.”