3. Maren
— ? —
Maren
I wake up to the smell of bacon and the absolute certainty that I’m dreaming.
Rhodes doesn’t do Sunday mornings. Rhodes does Sunday work calls with Singapore and emergency meetings and apologetic texts sent from the back of a town car - cold coffee reheated three times and promises to be home by dinner that turn into midnight arrivals with takeout containers from whatever restaurant his assistant ordered.
Rhodes doesn’t do bacon.
I lie there for a full minute, listening. Sizzle of fat in a pan. Cabinet door closing. The specific creak of our kitchen floorboard, the one by the sink that he’s been meaning to fix for four years. He’s really down there. He’s really cooking.
My first thought, because I’m a terrible person, is: What did he do?
My second thought, because I’m a realistic person, is: What’s he about to cancel?
I throw back the covers and grab the first thing I find, his Yale sweatshirt, ancient and soft, sleeves frayed at the cuffs.
It hangs past my thighs and smells like his cologne and dryer sheets, and I hate that I notice.
I hate that I want to press my face into the collar and just breathe for a minute.
I don’t. I pad downstairs instead, bare feet on hardwood, and stop in the kitchen doorway.
Rhodes is standing at the stove in gray sweatpants and a white t-shirt, flipping bacon with the focused intensity he usually reserves for work. His hair is still sleep-mussed. He hasn’t shaved. He looks…
He looks like the man I married. The one who couldn’t afford the nice coffee maker so he’d pour shitty drip brew into a travel mug and kiss me goodbye at 5 a.m., tasting like bitter coffee and ambition.
I haven’t seen that man in a while.
“What did you cancel?” I ask.
He doesn’t turn around. “Good morning to you too.”
“Good morning. What did you cancel?”
“Why does something have to be canceled?”
I lean against the doorframe and cross my arms. “Because it’s Sunday and you’re in my kitchen.”
“Our kitchen.”
“Sure. Our kitchen that you haven’t cooked in since-” I try to remember. It takes too long. That’s damning enough. “Since whenever.”
He finally turns, spatula in hand, and I watch his eyes track down the sweatshirt. Recognition flickers across his face. Then want. His jaw tightens like he’s biting something back.
“I canceled a meeting with the Singapore team,” he says. “And a lunch with the Westbrook people. And a site visit at the new property.”
That’s his entire day. That’s everything.
“Why?”
“Because it’s Sunday.” He turns back to the bacon. “And I wanted to be in your kitchen.”
I can’t make sense of it. I don’t trust it, can’t trust it, because one photo of another woman’s hand on his tie shouldn’t buy me a whole Sunday of guilt bacon. If that’s what this is. If this is guilt at all, or if it’s just…
I don’t know what it is.
“No work today,” he adds, like it’s simple. Like it’s something we just do now.
“Whose idea was that?”
“Mine.” He glances over his shoulder, and there’s something almost challenging in his expression. Almost playful. “Try not to ruin it.”
I could. It would be easy. I could bring up Rachel, bring up the photo, bring up every missed dinner and broken promise and empty seat beside me at events where people asked is Rhodes coming? and I had to smile like the question didn’t carve out a little piece of me each time.
I could ruin this in thirty seconds flat.
But he’s making bacon. He’s wearing sweatpants. He canceled Singapore.
“Fine,” I say, and his shoulders drop a fraction, relief he probably doesn’t realize he’s showing. “But I’m not eating turkey bacon. That’s not a food. That’s a punishment for people who’ve made bad choices.”
“It’s regular bacon.”
“Then we’re off to a strong start.”
We eat breakfast at the kitchen island like normal humans. Bacon, eggs, toast with the strawberry jam I like that he always forgets to buy except apparently he didn’t forget this time. I don’t ask when he bought it. I don’t want to know if this was planned or spontaneous, calculated or genuine.
I just eat my toast and let him refill my coffee and pretend this is a regular Sunday in a regular marriage where regular things happen.
“We need groceries,” Rhodes says, scrolling through his phone. “We have nothing.”
“We have seventeen different hot sauces and half a loaf of bread.”
“That’s not food. That’s the refrigerator of a man whose wife is too busy to shop and whose housekeeper is on vacation.”
“Maria’s on vacation?”
“For two weeks. I told you.”
He definitely didn’t tell me. Or he told me during one of those conversations where I was nodding along while mentally calculating how many boutonnieres I could assemble before the Hendricks wedding.
“Grocery store,” I say. “Sure. I could do that.”
“We,” he corrects. “We could do that.”
I stare at him. “You want to go grocery shopping. With me. On a Sunday.”
“Is that a problem?”
“You hate grocery shopping.”
“I hate grocery shopping alone. I love grocery shopping with you.”
“Since when?”
“Since always.” He sets down his phone and meets my eyes, and there’s something careful in his expression. Something almost nervous. “You make it fun. You always have.”
I remember, suddenly, the two of us in a tiny grocery store in San Francisco eleven years ago.
We’d been dating maybe three months. Rhodes had just lost a major backer and was trying not to show how scared he was, and I’d dragged him to the store at 11 p.m. because I needed chocolate chips for a recipe I was never actually going to make.
We spent an hour in the snack aisle arguing about whether Oreos counted as a necessary expense. I’d won. He’d bought three packages.
We got home and sat on his terrible futon and ate an entire sleeve while he told me about the deal falling through, and I told him about my aunt’s shop and how scared I was that I’d never be good enough to take it over, and somewhere in there he kissed me with chocolate on his lips and said you’re going to be so good at everything.
I wonder if he remembers that.
I wonder if he remembers any of it.
“Fine,” I say. “But I’m driving.”
“Like hell you are.”
I drive.
Rhodes sits in the passenger seat of my ancient Subaru, knees practically at his chin because he refuses to adjust the seat even though he’s six-two and this car was designed for people who aren’t.
His hand rests on the center console, not quite touching mine.
I’m aware of the distance between our fingers the entire drive, three inches that might as well be a canyon.
The grocery store is moderately busy for a Sunday, which means only four people recognize Rhodes in the produce section. He handles it the way he always does: polite smile, firm handshake, so good to see you. I hang back by the avocados and try to look like I belong there.
Being married to a man who built an empire means the empire is always in the room with you.
Even at the grocery store, even on a Sunday, even when he’s canceled Singapore to be here, someone wants a piece of him, and I’m left standing next to the guacamole display like an accessory he forgot to introduce.
But then he does something unexpected.
He excuses himself mid-conversation, actually cuts the guy off, apologetic but firm, and walks back to me. Takes the shopping basket from my hand. Puts his other hand on the small of my back, warm through the thin fabric of my shirt.
“Sorry,” he murmurs against my hair. “He’s someone important. I should’ve-”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not.” His thumb traces a small circle on my spine. “I’m here with you. He can wait.”
I don’t know what to make of that either. So I pick up an avocado I don’t need and say, “These are trash. They’re all trash. Who approved these avocados for public consumption?”
“I’m sure someone committed a crime.”
“Several crimes. An avocado cartel.”
“That seems dramatic.”
“You haven’t squeezed them.”
He squeezes one, frowning. “That’s, okay, that’s bad.”
“Told you. Cartel.”
We abandon the avocados and move deeper into the store, bickering about produce quality with the easy rhythm we haven’t had in months. It’s comfortable, it’s familiar, it’s us, the way we used to be, and the relief of it is so sharp it almost hurts.
The snack aisle is where things go sideways.
“Absolutely not,” Rhodes says, watching me load a fourth bag of chips into the cart. “That’s excessive. That’s hoarder behavior.”
“It’s preparedness.”
“For what? A chip apocalypse?”
“You never know.” I grab a fifth bag, just to see his eye twitch. It does. Magnificently. “What if there’s a natural disaster? What if we’re snowed in?”
“We live in the city. We’ve never been snowed in.”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
“Maren.” He plucks the fifth bag from my hands and sets it back on the shelf with the precise, measured movements of a man trying very hard not to laugh. “We don’t need five bags of chips, we don’t need three, we maybe need one, and even that’s generous.”
“One bag of chips is a cry for help. One bag of chips is a person who’s given up on joy.”
“One bag of chips is a reasonable adult making reasonable choices.”
“Boring adult.” I grab the bag back. “Sad adult. Adult who doesn’t understand the simple pleasure of variety.”
He stares at me. I stare at him. The bag of salt and vinegar chips hangs between us like a gauntlet thrown.
“Fine,” he says, and his lips are definitely twitching now. “Three bags. Maximum.”
“Four.”
“Three and a half.” He says it with the straight face he uses to close deals.
“That’s not a thing.”
“It could be a thing. I’ll eat half a bag in the car.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“That’s compromise.”
I put the fifth bag back, keep the other four, and count it as a victory. He catches my hand as I reach for the cart, and for a second we’re just standing there in the chip aisle, fingers interlocked, looking at each other like we’ve forgotten how to do this. How to be this.
“Hi,” he says softly.
“Hey yourself,” I say, and something in my chest cracks open a little.