Chapter 9 Fin
Chapter 9
Fin
“So, Mrs. DeWitt.”
Ahead of me, Mila makes a sound to convey her continued displeasure. Sadly for her, the sound just makes me think about sex.
No repeats, I silently scoff. Maybe not until she remembers how much she was into it. Last night was the night of my life. Mila writhed like a flame in my arms. Hot, dangerous, and all consuming.
“Wait, thinking about it, you actually are Mrs. DeWitt. Trippy.”
“ What other mistakes did I make? ” she’d asked. I could tell her, sure. But then I’d have to admit my crazy part in this. What I did was so out of character for me—just fucking madness. But after examining my feelings this morning, I find I have zero regrets. Which leads me to believe I’ve either lost my fucking mind or that I’ve got it bad.
“Can you please stop talking?” She whips around to face me, her dark hair fanning across her face. She angrily bats it away.
“You are as cute as a fistful of buttons when you’re angry, Mrs. DeWitt.” All kinds of fun and so easy to annoy. Rocking back on my heels, I slide my hands into my pockets and allow my eyes to rake over her.
“In percentage terms, how often does that work for you?”
I’m taken aback by her question. I expected a reaction but not a genuine-sounding inquiry. “What do you mean?”
“And is it because I’m short,” she adds, tightly folding her arms, “or because I’m female that you think you can denigrate my ire.”
“Your ire?” Oh, oh. I tamp back my smile. Talk about a one-eighty.
“Rage. Fury. General”—she makes an airy motion in the air as though the right word might float by for her to grab—“pissed-off-ness. I’m not cute; I’m fucking angry,” she annunciates, like the wickedest school prefect I ever did hear.
And there she is again. My girl.
My wife.
“Got it,” I say, aiming for and achieving obliviousness. “Glad you’re back on the cursing thing. It’s good for clearing the old throat chakras, right?” Then I wink.
“This is so wrong,” she mutters, her attention turning to a nearby pandanus tree as though she’s talking to herself. Or maybe the spiky tree. “This situation is untenable. It’s fundamentally fucked up. I’m going to kill him. Or end up in a psych ward.” Her attention swings back, her gaze narrowed so sharply, it’s almost piercing. “It’s annoying, you’re annoying, and you’re not taking my feelings into account.”
“Right. Got it.” I bring my hand to my chin. “Honesty it is, then. I guess I just don’t feel as horrified about the situation as you do.” Not that she felt that way last night.
Her gaze flickers as though she doesn’t trust what I’m saying.
“And I’m not gonna apologize for calling you cute. You are small, and you are female, but that’s got nothing to do with it. I guess I’m just perverse, because the kind of cute you are right now feels more like Medusa.”
She throws up her hands. “That’s hardly an improvement. Excuse me for remaining unmoved.”
The hell she is, because I remember the things she said last night, the way her fingers pierced as she clung to me and how she writhed in my arms. The memories rise with a resonance that I feel deep in my gut. It was more than sex. More than pretend. It just felt right. Beyond that, I can’t tell her what happened between us. She wouldn’t believe me, and I’d look like a manipulating asshole.
“For what it’s worth, your hair is less snakelike,” I say, watching a breeze catch the strands, making them dance. “But it does have a life of its own. And the angry looks you throw my way aren’t turning me to stone, but they do give me wood.”
“Unbelievable!” Yet her eyes still dip as though to check.
“I never claimed to be a poet, but I am honest. I can’t help that I find you hot when you’re angry, and you’re not allowed to yuck my yum, honeybuns.”
“I’m not allowed to what?”
“That’s a thing. Bottom line, I’m not trying to diminish the way you feel about this situation, but I am goading you. Because your opposition to this inevitability?” I add, moving a finger between us. “It’s awesome, like a flavor all of its own. It’s goddamn umami.”
She stares at me in disbelief, then shakes her head. “You’re wrong in the head.”
I laugh. Loudly. She might be right on that front, but while I enjoy these interactions and our at-odds positionings, I’ve also seen the other side of her. The side that wants me. For me. But how she gets to the point of realization that she can be raw and honest without consequences, I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.
Medusa. What the fuck was I thinking? Couldn’t I have just told her she’d floored me? That in her borrowed wedding dress, she’d looked too beautiful for words? That last night— Fuck, last night —it was as though she’d been saving her desire for her whole damn life? Saving her feelings, even. She’d had so many feelings, and I’d appreciated each and every one of them.
I’ve thought of her often since the night we met four months ago. Thought of us fucking, sure, though my imagination didn’t come close to the reality. But last night wasn’t just sex, and this isn’t the start of an infatuation. It feels way beyond that.
To put it another way, I’m an instinctual creature. And this feels right to me.
“You’re too fucking cute.” I suck in a breath and give my head a slow, appreciative shake.
“Stop calling me that,” she demands, through gritted teeth, all piss and vinegar.
God, I’m a fucking simp for this side of her.
“How about gremlin ,” I suggest. “You know, those furry things from that ’80s movie? The things you don’t feed after dark?”
“I know what a gremlin is,” she retorts, folding her arms tight across her chest. And it is some chest. Eleven out of ten. “I just have no idea what it has to do with anything.”
“Maybe you should come with a similar warning; don’t feed Mila dick after dark, because she turns into—”
“Your speaking privileges have been revoked!” she says, springing forward like a cricket to a bush as she squeezes her hands over my mouth.
“—an insatiable entity!” I wrap my arms around her as I tip my head back, laughter leaving my mouth in a joyful spurt.
“Shut up! Shut up!” she demands, not seeming to realize how tight I’m holding her as she continues to try to make me stop. “Why are you so annoying?”
“It’s a talent.”
“It’s bloody annoying,” she repeats, seemingly unaffected by the press of my body against hers—hips, thighs, fingers. Chest to chest. My nerve endings sparking like fucking fireworks.
“It’s annoying that I’m annoying?”
“Put me down!”
“I didn’t even put you here.” For shits and giggles, I hike her a little higher up my body.
“The only reason I’m not punching you right now is because we’re outdoors. Because someone might see.”
“You can punch me if you want.”
“Because nothing says love like a bride thumping her groom in the head.”
“Some people are into that kind of thing,” I say as I set her down.
“Strange, but I can see how,” she mutters, pushing her hair from her face again.
“If you don’t like cute and you don’t like gremlin and you don’t want to be Mrs. DeWitt, just give me an alternative.”
“What are you talking about?”
A quicksilver thrill rolls down my spine as her eyes meet mine.
“I can’t call you Mila out in public, and calling you Evie just feels weird. Evie’s my friend. You’re my—”
“Only, calling me Mrs. DeWitt doesn’t work,” she interrupts with a touch of menace, “because that’s not her husband’s name.”
“I never said it made sense.” I never said I liked calling her Mrs. DeWitt, either, but I do. I really fucking do. “But this is exactly why we had that pet name conversation last night, sugar nips.”
“No.” She points a finger my way. “No fucking way!”
“Throat chakra clearing again?”
“You’d make a saint swear.”
“And you’ve got a mouth that would make a sailor blush.”
That body part in question falls open as she sucks in an offended breath. “That’s a horrible thing to say!”
“Actually, it was a compliment.” I try not to smile, because the woman can curse. Oh, yes, she can.
“What is that?” She waves a finger in the general vicinity of my face. “What’s going on here?”
“This is a smile. You should try it.”
“You’re laughing at me.”
“Nope. I just don’t mind if you only curse around me. Literally around me.”
“What?”
“ ‘Oh, God. Fin, oh my fucking God. It hurts so good. I’ve touched myself so many times thinking about this cock.’ ”
“You—”
“Hottest thing ever. Things almost ended there and then. First time, at least.”
“—are unbelievable.”
“So were you.”
“Urgh!” She pulls away, almost spinning on her heel.
“Come on, honeybuns,” I call after her. “We need to decide on a couple of names!”
“You can call me whatever you like.” She throws the retort over her shoulder. “Meanwhile, I’m going to find Sarai and get to the bottom of this.”
I follow as she makes her way along the path, my eyes glued to the sway of her hips. And that ass. “Whatever you say, slut muffin.”
She stops so abruptly, I practically walk into the back of her. The only thing that stops her forward motion is the arm I slide around her waist. Her hands fall to my forearm, and I take the opportunity to drop my lips to her ear. “You said whatever I liked. And that’s what I like, my little slut muffin.”
“That is not an appropriate term of endearment.”
“I’m allergic to generic,” I purr, wondering if she realizes she’s forgotten to step away.
“More like you’re allergic to behaving yourself. Fine, I’ll choose something just as inappropriate for you.”
“Mila,” I whisper, making a meal of her name. “Don’t you remember what you called me?”
She inhales but doesn’t immediately speak. But, as I expected, curiosity gets the better of her. She offers me her profile, her mouth such a tempting pout, her lashes a dark sweep as they lower.
“Fine,” she says, as though she’s doing me a favor. “What did I call you?”
“ Daddy. ”
I feel rather than hear her sharp intake of breath, my arms moving closer with her inhale.
“You can call me daddy anytime, sweet girl.”
She shakes her head.
“That’s a shame.” But interesting that she hasn’t fought me on it, which seems to imply she’s feeling it. Yeah, I think so, given the way her breath caught.
“I’m sure we’ll both learn to live with it.”
I press my lips to her temples, not quite a kiss, as I loosen my hold. “I guess we’ll just go with your second choice. Thundercock it is.”
Laughter bursts from her mouth in an echo of the woman from last night, blissfully unrestrained. There were quiet moments too—things she said that I know she’d hate to hear me repeat.
She loosens a long sigh and gives her head a long-suffering kind of shake. “You’re like the dildo of my life’s consequences.”
“At least you don’t need lube.”
“Oh, Sarai!” She lifts her arm and begins pulling from mine. I ignore the instinct to tighten my hold—to haul her in the opposite direction. “Sarai! Over here?”
I can’t say I’ve ever been less pleased to see the kid as, on the path up ahead, Sarai’s expression lightens. She breaks from her companion with a murmured word.
“What up, lovebirds?” She swaggers toward us, her gait at odds with her traditional-looking uniform. She pinches in a mischievous grin, and as her gaze slides my way, she winks.
I give a tiny shake of my head. None of that, now.
“ What’s up? ” Mila briefly folds her arms around herself. “What’s up is that I can barely remember a thing about yesterday.”
Sarai’s brows lift. “I’m jealous.”
“What?”
“I mean ...” Thoughts practically flit across her face, and I feel a slight twinge of panic at where she might take this. “I’ve heard of passing out from experiencing an intense O , but not forgetting the whole night.”
For a minute, I think she might be about to reach out for a fist bump. Un-fucking-subtle, Sarai.
“What? No!” Mila protests. “We haven’t—that is to say, we didn’t ...”
“Really?” Sarai somehow manages to make her tone sound like a singular raised eyebrow.
“I said you were convincing.” I clasp my fingers over Mila’s tense shoulder, and her eyes dart my way.
“Oh, that. Yes, I suppose I did try my best to look like I was into it. I-into you.”
Sarai snorts.
Look like she was into it? I have four condom wrappers, several sucking hickeys, a set of teeth marks, and abs that ache like a motherfucker that say otherwise. That’s without the memories seared into the lining of my brain and the fact that I seriously considered icing my dick this morning.
“I was just playing up to my role, right?”
Poor Mila. She’d never be a contender for an Oscar. I give the tight muscles in her shoulder another squeeze. This time, she relaxes into it.
“Huh.” Sarai makes a quizzical noise as she tilts her head, adopting a pondering pose. “So were you just tired on your way back to the suite? You know, when you stopped at the janitor’s closet. Did you need to catch a few z’s?”
“I was just ... Sorry, I did what?”
“I mean, there must be a reason you asked me to get the keys.” Sarai turns to me, her tone just leaking with satisfaction.
“I asked for the keys?” Mila’s gaze darts my way for confirmation.
I give an apologetic shrug. There was no stopping her—she practically dragged me in behind her. Practically. “You said you wanted to re-create our first meeting.”
“I thought it was cute.”
“Yes,” Mila sort of squeaks. “I suppose it might’ve been, but you didn’t need to—”
“‘Please, please, please, Sarai!’” Sarai intones, impersonating Mary Poppins. “‘I just want to make out with my gorgeous hubs in the cupboard again.’”
“Quit being a smart-ass.” I tighten my fingers in reassurance again. “She’s just messing with you.”
Poor Mila glances between us as though she doesn’t know which of us to believe. The answer is me, obviously, even if Sarai is essentially telling the truth.
“I knew you’d met before,” Sarai crows. “Straight facts—I could see it in the way you were eye screwin’ each other from the get-go.”
“Look.” Mila holds up her hands like she’s trying to keep everything away. Sarai’s words, the realities of last night, our marital situation. “I don’t know what I did last night. I mean, I know some things,” she adds as her shoulders begin to creep up to her ears, “but not everything—and Fin says the same! Sort of.”
“Really?” Sarai slides me a skeptical look.
I give my head a tiny shake. I guess this is more a case of what Mila would like to believe.
“And that’s what we wanted to talk to you about,” my wife adds. Wife. I do like that.
“You had the time of your life. Lives,” Sarai corrects with another hesitant glance my way.
“It’s just that—”
“Especially when you did the Dirty Dancing lift and Fin held you over his head.”
“He did what?”
“Knock that off,” I say, though it’s more a low chuckle than a warning.
“Did we really?” Mila asks in a faint voice.
“What’s a wedding without a little foolishness,” I answer, actively rubbing her back now.
And she lets me. In for a dime, in for a dollar, I pull her to my side. And she just fits, like my body was made to accommodate her right there.
“This is all news to me, and all I can think is there must’ve been something in the coconut,” Mila says, clutching at that straw again.
“Coconut?” Sarai repeats in a carefully bland tone.
Or maybe Mila really is onto something.
“Yeah. You know, the things that grow on trees,” I put in flatly.
“We drank the coconut water the priest gave us as part of the ceremony. After that, things are vague. I suspect Fin suffered too—maybe not to the same degree. I mean, just look at his hair!” She throws up her hand before it drops in a gesture of futility. “We both did things that just make no sense.”
I have to let her think that, for now, at least. But the truth is, everything I did last night, every choice I made, I did stone-cold sober. What’s more, I’d do it all again.
I was so happy to find her here on the island, and I put her initial snarky denials down to embarrassment and the setting, then the weird shit Evie and Oliver threw her way.
And I guess, this morning, I put her dismay down to cold feet. The decisions we make in the heat of the night often feel very different in the cold light of day. I was prepared for her feistiness and denials, ready for the challenge that is Mila, and more than ready to remind her exactly what it is she likes about me. But then I realized she was serious—that she didn’t remember a fucking thing. It took the wind right out of my sails, so to speak.
But I’m undeterred because I refuse to believe the woman from last night bears no relation to the woman at my side right now. So I’ll bide my time, roll with it, and take my opportunities as they arise. She’s so determined to discount her attraction, but what she doesn’t realize is she already confessed to so much. Last night, she said the hottest things. And I was so fucking happy to hear I wasn’t alone in dreaming of those stolen closet moments.
Over the months, I’d told myself that my memories were somehow false. That Mila couldn’t be as luminous as the image I held in my mind’s eye.
I was wrong. And she was perfect. Flattered by Fin the man, not Fin the mogul, she had no idea who I was. Yet she put her trust in me. Allowed me to kiss away her tears. She left such an impression. Maybe even on my soul.
And then last night, I found she felt the same.
“Things happened that make no sense at all.” Mila’s shrill tone pulls me back from my reveries. “I don’t even know where to begin.”
Maybe with transcendental sex, janitor-closet fumbles, naked haircuts, and—
“We signed a wedding certificate,” she says. “An actual wedding certificate with our own names.”
—there was that, obviously.
“How did we do that? How did we make such a huge mistake?”
My heart does a painful little jitterbug, though I force my expression to remain impassive. It didn’t feel like a mistake to me, more like the beginning of something new, something wildly exhilarating but real. Fuck, it’s hard to know how to explain it. My actions were pure intuition, like I was working with a knowledge that was ancient, primal. From deep within. I knew what I was doing, what I was signing up for, and it felt right.
Sarai’s gaze cuts my way. “But when you signed your own name, you said—”
“The coconut,” I say, cutting her off.
Her gaze turns wary, but she’s picking up what I’m putting down. This is neither the time nor the place to try to explain the unexplainable.
“Look, this had nothing to do with my dad,” Sarai says suddenly.
So she does have a part in this. Fuck.
“Sarai, the general manager of a prestigious resort knows better than to dose his customers.” His daughter, though ...
“And you can’t tell him.” This is more of a demand than a request, though she rolls her lips together nervously. “Or my mom.”
“Your mom scares the shit out of me,” I admit.
“Not even!” She gives a machine-gun laugh. “My mom loves you. Every time she sees you, she turns the color of a tomato and goes all giggly and shit. You ask her to make betutu and she runs straight to the kitchen. ‘Oh, poor Mr. Fin. He is hungrrry !’” she says, imitating her mom, hand gestures and all. “‘That man needs a wife to fatten him up. He looks so thin!’” She folds her arms. “But if I ask her to cook betutu , she tells me I have to wait until my birthday. And I’m never here for my birthday! Meanwhile, you have her eating out of your hand.”
“Like a tiger, maybe,” I say with a wry grin. As in, very warily.
“He’s really good with people.” Sarai directs this Mila’s way. “For a one-percenter, he’s pretty real, you know?”
“You were going to say something about the coconut?” Mila answers, brushing the weird compliment aside.
“It was shrooms.” Sarai says with a defensive flick of her shoulder.
“Shrooms?” Mila repeats. “Who is Shrooms?”
“Not who,” I say, tightening my hold on her. I sense this is going to be a little out of her sphere of reference. “What. What is shrooms. You sent us on a fucking trip?” I say, turning to Sarai. I’m stunned. And stretching the truth, given Mila was tripping on her own.
“Drugs!” Mila squeaks.
Sarai slides her an unimpressed look. “It was just the local stuff—a microdose at best.”
“I can’t believe you’d do this,” Mila says, sounding genuinely hurt.
“It’s not like I didn’t tell you.”
“Tell me? You didn’t tell me!” If Mila’s voice gets any higher, we’ll be surrounded by yapping dogs.
“Yeah, I did. When the photographer turned up and you wouldn’t come out of the bathroom—”
“Because all I was wearing was my underwear and a veil!”
“That was the whole point—it was a lingerie shoot,” the younger woman snipes.
“Wait. There was a lingerie shoot?” Neither woman looks to me. That lucky dog, I think. Then I remember Oliver isn’t the groom in this situation. I guess I could be that lucky dog. I slot the thought away for examination later.
“I told you, if you came out, I would get you something to help your nerves.”
“You didn’t say you were giving me drugs!”
“I specifically said psilocybin .”
“I don’t even know what that is,” Mila protests.
“Shrooms,” Sarai and I reply in unison.
“I would never have agreed to taking drugs—you said it was a local remedy!”
“It is! I gave you the magic mushroom equivalent of baby Tylenol. I was trying to help,” Sarai mutters, unrepentant. “You two were not vibing. And the priest might not have understood English, but he picked up the tone. You were totally spoiling his priestly Zen. I was just trying to mellow the situation before the shit hit the fan!”
“Wait.” I hold up my hand. “You said you microdosed Mila before the ceremony.”
“I did. But then I topped her up. During the ceremony. And ... I might’ve microdosed you. Inadvertently.”
“What?”
“It was the coconut,” Sarai adds with a touch of chagrin. “Like, a pinhead of the stuff.”
“ Sarai. ” I draw out her name through gritted teeth. “What the fuck were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that Mila had already agreed to it and that you weren’t supposed to take the coconut out of her hand!”
“Do you know how dangerous that could’ve been?” Dosed. She fucking microdosed me! Is this why I ... No. Mila’s been in my head for months—the choices I made yesterday were my own.
But Mila’s weren’t.
Fuck. My stomach plummets.
“ Please ,” Sarai retorts dismissively. “I’ve heard all the tales of your ‘dabbling.’” She physically puts quotation marks around the word. “And you do know I’m a chemistry major, don’t you?”
“That’s beside the point. And that other shit? That was a lot of years ago.” When I was young and reckless.
“You weren’t microdosing neither,” she mutters.
“What you did was way out of order,” I retort severely as I try to reconcile what this means and how I feel.
“Everyone on the resort knows—you used to get high with the head chef, and he’d make grilled cheese when you got the munchies!”
“That doesn’t give you the right to decide what’s good for me or for Mila. It’s fucking irresponsible, Sarai!”
“You were an accident,” she persists as tears begin to glisten in her eyes. “I was trying not to blow your covers. You were supposed to be happy and in love, not uptight and scowling at each other.” She throws up her hands in frustration.
“You told me it was a local medicinal,” Mila begins.
“It is! You just don’t get how serious the situation was. The priest sees himself as a channel between heaven and earth. He thought he was there to ask the gods for their wedding blessings for two people planning the rest of their lives together. You were supposed to be madly in love! What would’ve happened if he’d bailed—walked off? I’ll tell you what: buh-bye, wedding; hello, tabloid gossip columns!”
“You could’ve just ...” Mila flounders.
“What? What could I have done?” Sarai demands, warming to her dramatic theme. “You tell me. I knew how important this was to you—how important it was to the Deubels. I was protecting all of you.”
“Nothing to do with your own fee, huh?” I put in.
Sarai’s mouth pinches. “You know that in the States you can get way stronger stuff online. Freeze-dried shrooms, mushroom teas, truffles, capsules, and even candies!”
“That’s hardly the point.”
The shrooms might be how last night happened but not why. Not for either of us. Not that it makes me feel any better about the situation.
“And I hung around afterward like a good little trip nanny,” Sarai puts in petulantly.
“What on earth is a trip nanny?”
Poor Mila. She must feel like she’s in an alternate universe.
“The person who monitors your welfare,” I explain pensively. As though I’ve never indulged. Like I said, it was a long time ago.
“When you’re trippin’ balls. Which you weren’t.” Sarai scowls “Or you wouldn’t have been if you hadn’t been throwing back vodka.”
“Hey—you gave me drugs!” Mila points an angry finger. “You don’t get to make me feel bad.”
“I asked first,” Sarai says again. “And I didn’t lie. They do take them in the villages for all kinds of stuff. You must’ve had way more vodka than the bottle stashed in your cleavage.”
“You had a bottle of vodka in your cleavage?” It probably wasn’t the best idea to give in to a smile. Or for my gaze to drop to the area in question. But it doesn’t linger, thanks to the backhanded slap Mila lands on my chest.
“I was just trying to work out how!” I say with a chuckle.
“Do you seriously think I had space in that dress for a bottle of vodka?”
“Well, there wasn’t one in there last night.” The dress that clung to her curves like a second skin, the dress I got to peel her out of. “But maybe I should take another look, just to be certain.” I playfully reach for the neck of her sundress.
“Hey!” Poking me in the chest, she makes a V of her fingers in the direction of her face. “My eyes are up here, thank you very much!”
“Your gorgeous eyes are the second most beautiful thing about you.”
“Rude!”
“Your personality being the first,” I answer with mock offense.
She narrows her eyes. God, she’s beautiful when she’s riled. But it’s not her eyes, her personality, or her body that makes me feel the way I do. It’s just ... her.
“Maybe I should give up chemistry and take up matchmaking,” Sarai says, with a considering tilt to her head.
“With or without the illegal substances?” Mila snaps again.
“Shrooms are medicinal. They’re basically relaxants. I only intended for you to have a good time. The issue had to be your fun-size vodkas.”
“I was nervous!” Mila protests. “I always keep a miniature or two on hand.”
“One or two?” Sarai pulls a doubtful face.
“At least I only self-administered. It’s a perfectly acceptable way to calm an anxious bride. And I was an anxious bride. One who didn’t want to prance about in her underwear.”
“Okay, so I should’ve checked you knew what I was talking about,” Sarai says, her tone almost contrite. But not quite. “And I should’ve asked if you’d drank others when you pulled the bottle from ...”
“My cleavage,” Mila finishes.
“I’m sorry,” Sarai mutters.
“You weren’t to know,” Mila answers with a sigh. Her cheeks flushed, she’s no doubt embarrassed now.
“You were okay, though, weren’t you, Fin?”
“Don’t try recruiting me for your team,” I say, sidestepping Sarai’s question.
My memory of last night is thoroughly intact, the images filed away under the title “The Night of My Life.” That’s not to say I was completely unaffected, I now realize. After drinking the coconut water, maybe a tranquilness did seep through my limbs, and maybe, in hindsight, I was a little buzzed. Things were pleasant. Slower and a little dreamlike. But the effects were mild and short lived. I remember everything and I have zero regrets.
“You didn’t need any happy juice.” Sarai’s lips twist into a reluctant half smile. “Bruh, you were stanning so hard last night.”
I’m not going to deny it.
“When you said—” Her eyes dart Mila’s way before she seems to think better of what she was about to reveal. “Anyway, what you did was dope.”
And nothing to do with the shrooms.
I’m disappointed Mila doesn’t remember, though it now makes sense. I also know that the things she said last night were the truth, that her behavior, her feelings, were amplified, not manufactured.
The truth and her truth. I heard it in the ache in her words, just as I’d glimpsed it in the closet all those months ago.
“I feel like a dope,” Mila says suddenly. “Would you two stop grinning at each other and talking about things I don’t understand?”
“Sorry?”
“It’s very childish,” she continues. “It’s like some horrible teenage flashback where I’ve missed the punch line again and I’m being made fun of for my weird-smelling sandwiches.”
Sarai gives a roll of her eyes. “I couldn’t possibly relate to being different,” she announces. Cocking her hip, she taps a finger to her face to indicate her own sense of otherness. “You’ve never suffered until you’ve stunk the canteen out with the smell of fermented fish.”
“Ever had knitted lamb intestines?” A smile lurks in the shape of Mila’s mouth.
“To wear or to eat?” Sarai asks, mildly horrified.
“ Kukurec is food.” Mila gives in to a reluctant chuckle. “It’s a dish with intestines and—”
Sarai holds up both hands and pulls a face. “I get the picture.”
“Now you’re making me feel left out,” I complain with an expansive shrug. “You don’t know how lucky you two are. Do you know how monotonous PB&J is every day?”
“I bet you went to some posh prep school.” Mila’s eyes tighten in the corners. “It probably had a team of chefs, white linens, and silver-service waiters.”
“Yeah. No chicken feet in your lunch box,” Sarai adds.
The pair exchanges a look of solidarity.
“I was just trying to help,” Sarai eventually says.
“I know. I accept my part in this too. I should’ve asked what I was taking—what it was you gave me. And maybe the reason I didn’t was because I’d already had a couple of mini vodkas.” Mila gives her head a shake and squares her posture. “I suppose we know now how this happened.” She folds our wedding certificate again, which means she doesn’t see the look that passes between Sarai and me. “We both signed it under the influence.”
I nod, because that is true.
But the only influence I was under was you.