No Matter What

Chapter Seventeen #4

He’s shaking his head. “After the accident…You were just so…hurt. In like every sense of the word. You were suddenly sleeping like all the way on the edge of the bed, and you were barely talking to me and we weren’t even eating together anymore.

So I thought I’d try to give you some time, sure.

I’d sleep in the guest room, fine. It was never what I wanted, I just…

was trying to read you…and I thought that’s what you needed.

Space. But you were miserable still, just like me.

So, turns out I didn’t know what you needed and I didn’t know how to give it to you…

And then, a few weeks ago, something changed.

Suddenly you were lit up again. You were the old Roz.

I wasn’t sure what it was. I heard about the art class, and I thought Okay, that must be it.

The thing that’s making her happy again…

I thought maybe I’ll try again with the framed portrait.

Maybe I’ll figure out a way to explain this whole mess with the lease… But then I meet this Lauro guy…”

“Vin, no.”

“I know. But still, I thought to myself…if she wants him…what’s the move?

Well…I talked Raff into staying the night.

So you and I could share a bed. I hoped maybe you’d remember how it used to be with us…

but then that didn’t happen the way I wanted…

And I thought that was really the end. Right?

Can’t sleep with your husband and you have feelings for someone new… ”

“Vin, no.”

“I know. Just let me…And then you’re mouthing words at me across the bar, telling me that you were going to live your best life, whether I’m there or not—”

“I didn’t say whether you were there or not. I said no matter what.”

He’s confused. “Is there a difference?”

“It’s…” How to explain this? “It’s basically the one phrase I wanted you to say to me. You were already on about I’m still here, Roz. And…I didn’t get it. I was hurt and confused—”

“Confused? How could that be confusing?”

“I was trying like hell to figure out if you meant for now or…”

“No matter what.” Either he’s quoting me or he’s asserting it, with his very molecules. And based on the fact that I’m pretty sure I can see his soul burning through his eyes, I think it might be the latter. “I meant no matter what.”

“Well, how was I supposed to know what you meant?”

“How was I supposed to know what you meant?” he tosses right back at me, with fierce eyes and a smile.

“From my perspective, you already were moving on. Your life was so…separate from me. You were going to art classes and looking beautiful and dancing at Raff’s party like you didn’t have a care in the world. ”

“Pretending I wasn’t mortally wounded,” I inform him, tugging on his shirt so he’ll hear me, really hear me.

His hands cover mine. “Well, I got that. Eventually. But not at the time. At the time, I was pretty sure you were falling for someone else.”

“Vin.”

“Which…if it made you happy…made you okay again…I mean, it might have killed me, but if you were happy…” He’s scraping a hand over his hair.

“I didn’t know what to do other than dance with you and tell you I wanted you to be happy.

But on the inside, I was sick. I didn’t sleep that night…

But the next night? Well, that was the best night of my year, Roz.

I have not stopped thinking about that night. ”

“Which night?”

“Your date with Lauro. You coming home drunk and squeezing the hell out of me. Crying on my shirt.”

“Oh, God.”

“No, don’t be embarrassed. It’s my favorite. The best thing that’s happened to me in so long.”

“Why?”

“Because you were so grossed out about having gone on an accidental date…with someone else. Because…he probably thought he was making progress but you ended up in my arms, asking for comfort from me…You told me what you wanted…And it wasn’t him. And it was something I could give you.”

“I told you what I wanted?” I’m racking my brain, trying to remember when in my drunken state I told him to tear up the lease.

“I like getting called ‘baby.’ I like being told I’m delicious,” he quotes.

“Look, we’ve been so beat-up this year…and after Raff moved out, you were fried.

I thought that if I could just keep myself as…

compressed as possible…If I could let you live your life however you were wanting to be living it…

Then you would have some room to…get back to your old self…

But it turns out you took that to mean I don’t want you.

You’ll never know what I felt that night, watching you say that to me.

That another man calls you ‘baby’ and tells you you’re delicious and it quenched something for you.

Something I’ve been withholding. Roz…never again. I give that to you.”

I sway toward him, handfuls of his shirt and his exhales on my face.

The boxes…are for Raffi. The lease…was a gesture of goodwill. The space…was a gift to me, not because he wanted it. The wrapped portrait…

“I wanna see this damn portrait!” I say, scrambling off his lap and across the bed to retrieve it.

“I’m not sure I’d call it a portrait. It’s a pretty crappy photo.” He looks very nervous.

So I pull the paper off all at once. Because we’ve all waited long enough, and because, frankly, I’m dying to see it.

The photo he’s chosen is revealed and I burst immediately into tender, stinging laughter.

It is, objectively, terrible.

The original photo—which I recall immediately—was too dark, a little blurry, a thoughtless composition taken by a careless hand. But this one has been further cropped in, so it’s extra blurry.

It’s immediately my favorite photo ever taken.

“St. Michel must have been appalled,” I say in a watery voice.

Vin laughs. “He really was.” He clears his throat. I can feel his eyes on the side of my face. “Are you appalled?”

“I love it, Vin.”

How could I not. It was the night we first met, Raff’s graduation party thrown at a fancy restaurant.

I barely said anything to Vin that night, but then, right before we left, Raff made all of us squish in at one end of the table to document the occasion.

I’m doing a passive protest at this mistreatment, crossing my eyes and pulling the sides of my face down in a deeply unflattering grimace.

Vin, serendipitously seated next to me, is leaning back in his chair.

In the original photo, it looks like he’s deadpanning the camera.

But zoomed in, you can see that his eyes are actually on me.

Zoomed in, you can see a softness in his expression. Zoomed in, you can see…

“Dang, you already had it bad for me,” I tease him.

He chuckles and tucks my hair behind my ear. “I did. Still do.”

And then he leans in and takes one long sip from the newly exposed skin of my neck.

“Raff took this picture, you know.”

“I know,” he says quietly. “That’s part of what makes it perfect.”

And he’s right. Raff is an enormous part of our life. And always will be. Fixing us will never, ever be about extracting Raff from our lives, only about keeping him on his side of the table, where he probably wants to be anyways.

Either way, it’s just me and Vin here now. He carefully removes the picture frame from my hands and sets it on the floor. And then he does the most Vin thing ever. Namely he cups my cheek, tips my head to one side, and starts kissing me from my collarbone up to my ear and back.

You wouldn’t know that this is the most Vin thing ever because you’ve never had sex with Vin.

But he’s got this way about him that just ends me.

He’s gentle and bossy at the same time. He gets you all worked up and dying for him and bent into a pretzel and somehow it all ends up seeming like it was your idea in the first place.

For instance, right now, all he’s done is lace his fingers into my hair and lean me to one side so that he can walk his teeth over my throat and somehow I’m the one who ends up in his lap with my hands under his shirt. See? He’s the master of escalation.

His shirt is old and soft as a kitten. It used to be midnight blue but he went and used it so hard that now it’s dusky gray. I’ve had a crush on this shirt for as long as I’ve known Vin.

Right now I do myself a favor and lift it up over my head and lock myself inside with his chest hair. He’s laughing and holding me tight.

“I love…” he starts, and I still so I don’t miss a word. “I love…” He clears his throat. “I love how when you get horny, you just do whatever the hell you want.”

I resurface with an outraged laugh. “Me? Come on. You’re the one who invented T-shirts. I mean, Jesus. What am I supposed to do with all this?” I’m feeling up his shoulders, grinding on his blue jeans. There is so much Vin and I’m going to need an IV before the night is over, I can feel it.

His response to all this? He falls backwards on the bed and kicks his hips up into me.

Punishment and reward for being such an incorrigible flirt.

Next he plants his pointer finger underneath my chin and draws me toward him with nothing but the power of his green eyes, which telegraph his very inappropriate catalog of thoughts about me.

He’s going in for a landing, our lips are centimeters apart, and then, at the last second, he turns my head and sucks on the pulse point under my jaw.

The sound I make is obscene. It earns me another kick of his hips and two firm hands on my ass, grinding me down on him.

Well. Two married people get all horned up in a bed. I bet you can guess what happens next.

Wrong!

What happens next is my traitorous phone ringing loudly from the kitchen. “Forget it, fuck it, I don’t care.” I’m gasping and rolling my neck to the other side, dying for him to kiss me more, everywhere.

But then it starts ringing again.

“Raff?” Vin asks, lifting his head.

“Not his ringtone and don’t say your brother’s name when you’re making out with my neck.”

And then it rings again. “Lemme just check,” he says.

I grab him with every bit of my strength and try to hold him in place, but he dumps me to the side, stands up, and walks away as if he didn’t even notice. I should probably hit the gym every once in a blue moon.

“It’s Esther!” he calls from the kitchen. “I’m gonna answer it.”

“Esther!” I sit up all at once and find the digital clock on the nightstand. “Oh, shit!”

“She wants to know where the hell you are. You’re late for the potluck.”

“I’m late for the potluck!” I appear in the doorway so tousled and off-kilter that Vin laughs. All he did was kiss my neck but I must look like he crawled underneath my petticoats and shredded my pantaloons with his incisors.

My first instinct is to drop my panties and crawl back in bed with Vin. “Tell her I’m not going.”

“She’ll call you back,” he says into the phone, and puts it on the counter. And then he’s got his arms around me, one hand on the back of my neck, tilting my head up to the sky. “You should go.”

“I’m not going,” I say mulishly. “You love me again. I’m staying right here where I can squeeze you.” And I do just that.

I’ve got my ear to his chest so I can hear the stuttered inhale.

My head rises and falls like it’s riding on a wave.

When I look up, his eyes are red and slitted again.

“Go to the potluck. It’s temporary. But this—” He taps his breastbone where my ear was just resting.

“Is not. It’ll be here when you get home. ”

“Now I’m definitely not going.”

He’s frustrated and so pleased. “Roz!”

“Come with me, then.”

“Wait. Yes. Really?”

“Really. Come on. I want to show you off to all my new friends. Shan is going to shit a brick when she sees what a hunk you are.”

“Jesus.” He’s standing behind me, untuggable, with one hand over his eyes.

At first I think it’s because I’ve embarrassed him by calling him a hunk, but when he lowers his hand there’s a glowing emotion there, like nighttime sunshine, the kind that bounces off the moon from the other side of the world.

“If…if six months ago…or two months ago…or two days ago…you’d told me that you’d be running out that door to go meet with new friends…

and that you’d…you’d want me there with you…

there’s nothing I wouldn’t have…” He steps up to me and cups my face in two gentle hands.

“I could have endured anything, baby, if I knew it was going to get me here.”