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TANNER
It’s hard to fall asleep when I know someone in my house is tossing and turning. I have a preternatural ability to hear the faint sounds of a mattress shift or a general rustling in what should be a quiet bedroom. I am the princess, and each sound is another pea in between my mattress.
Tonight though, it isn’t one of my kids refusing to join the land of nod.
It’s the adult man on my couch. The sound of a creaking mattress (not the fun kind of creaking) cuts through the silence like a leaf blower in a library.
Again. And again. After trying to ignore it, I finally crack one eye open and glance at the glowing red numbers of my alarm clock.
Every few minutes, Des rustles downstairs like he’s in the final round of a wrestling match with the pull-out.
A sharp huff, followed by a muffled curse.
A squeak from the old metal frame of the pullout couch echoes up the stairs.
One of the springs pings with the enthusiasm of a snapped violin string.
If this keeps going on, then the kids will wake up and nobody will get any sleep.
I push my blanket off and creep down the stairs in my sweatpants and Hershey Park T-shirt from an old family vacation.
I find Des lying flat on his back, staring at the ceiling with all the despair of a man who’s just learned that this is his life now—trapped in a zoo with four small, loud animals and generic coffee in the mornings.
“Hey. You good?” I whisper.
Des flinches, like I’ve caught him mid-internal monologue. He sits up, causing the pull-out mattress to release another yelp.
“Oh, just great,” he says, rubbing his lower back. “This couch is a war crime.”
“I warned you it sucked.”
“Where did you get it from? The pits of hell?”
“Close. Marty’s Discount Furniture.” Despite being a store in New York, Marty dresses like a cowboy and will have customers celebrate their purchase by lassoing the floor model.
At least he has a cooler of ice cream sandwiches for kids while the parents shop.
Definitely not the type of store Des would ever step foot in.
“I think one of the springs dug so deep into my back it branded me.” Des turns and lifts his shirt. He has a great back. Corded muscle and smooth skin. There’s something about the prowess of a strong back for me.
I should be looking for mattress scars, not ogling my friend’s back, though.
“No scars. It’s all in your head,” I tell him.
He lowers his shirt. My shirt. And jogger pants. My clothes look great on him.
“Jesus.” His hair is sticking up in about twelve directions, a change from his usually well-coiffed style. Even chic bachelors get bedhead. It makes him look more human and less mannequin. “My mattress in my apartment is like sleeping on a cloud. It has individually wrapped coils.”
“Do you even know what that means?”
“No. But the salesguy said it was important.”
I snort a laugh. A beat of silence passes between us.
“You want to come share my bed?”
Des lifts an eyebrow.
“It’s a queen. We won’t touch,” I add, perhaps a bit too quickly.
He looks at me. “You’re serious?”
“It’s either that or death by cheap mattress. You need your beauty sleep. You have a busy day of writing mustard jingles.”
“I am executing brand strategies to maximize awareness and increase revenue.” Somehow, Des makes corporate speak sound charming. “Will it be…weird?”
“We used to have sleepovers all the time in high school.”
“I slept on the floor during those.”
“I mean, you’re welcome to sleep on the floor now.” Just the thought of sleeping on the floor makes my back ache, and Des seems to have the same reaction.
He exhales. “Fine. But if you spoon me in your sleep, I’m filing for divorce.”
I snort and turn, leading him upstairs. We shuffle quietly past the kids’ rooms.
We don’t say anything as we get into bed.
I slide into my usual spot—left side, closest to the door—and Des takes the other side cautiously, still unsure on whether he should.
I feel his weight sink into the mattress.
It’s an odd sensation seeing as nobody’s been on that side of the bed for two years.
He pulls the blanket up to his chest and stares at the ceiling again.
“This is weird,” he mutters. “But also much more comfortable.”
“I’m a pretty still sleeper, so I’ll stay on my side of the bed.”
“You still sleep on your side? You don’t sleep in the middle?” He turns to me, his eyes big and curious.
“Nah. This way, if I hear something from the kids’ rooms, I can easily roll out of bed. Being in the middle, you have to shuffle in and out. Do you?”
“Oh yeah. I like my space. If I smack you in the face in my sleep, I apologize in advance.” Des stretches out his arms and legs and does a snow angel in the sheets, making sure to whack me in the face at least once.
The man may be suave and chic and wear designer clothes on the regular, but he can also be a total goofball.
I stifle a laugh, needing to stay quiet, just like in high school. Except now, it’s not my parents we don’t want to wake up.
“Just like old times,” he says. “Although, you’re missing all the stars.”
Des nods up at my bare ceiling. My childhood bedroom had a glow-in-the-dark galaxy affixed on the ceiling, something I did when I was seven and left to be rediscovered by my fifteen-year-old self.
“I tried getting Lena and Davy to put stars on their ceiling, but they both refused. Lena didn’t care about space, and Davy prefers to sleep in pitch black. I didn’t bother trying with Dean and Lulu.”
“They’re missing out,” Des says.
Silence descends for us again, and the quiet reminds me that I am in bed with another person. I should go to sleep, but I also want to keep talking. My body tingles with nerves.
“I loved those sleepovers,” he says a moment later.
“Me, too.”
“They were the best. I’d raid your fridge for leftovers. Your mom’s spaghetti was out of this world, the garlic bread so soaked with butter it could kill a man.” Des would crash at my place after games, or on Friday nights after we hit up someone’s house party. “How do leftovers taste so good?”
“That’s the magic of the fridge.”
I turn toward him, but he’s still staring up at the ceiling. His profile is outlined by the soft light leaking in from the hall—sharp jaw, messed-up hair, shadows under his eyes.
“Those nights fucking saved me,” he says. “Anything to avoid being home.”
I nod, knowing he can’t see it, but hoping he can sense it.
“My home life was pretty shitty.”
“You never talked much about it.” Des would make jokes about his home life in high school. I’m escaping World War III. I’m staying out of the line of fire. When I’d try to ask him what was happening, he’d wave it off and list off how long until he turned eighteen.
“I wanted to forget them.”
I’d wondered if I should’ve pushed back, asked for details. Even with close friends, there are lines you’re afraid to cross. I took his jokes at face value, believing that if it was truly dangerous, he would let me know.
“My parents would fight about everything,” he continues. “Money. Work. Whose turn it was to do the dishes. I think they were always kind of waiting for an excuse to explode. I’d lie in bed and hear it through the walls.”
To the outside world, Des’s parents put on a good front.
They showed up at his games and participated in a few booster events, just enough so people wouldn’t speculate on the state of their marriage.
The few times I went over to Des’s house though, I’d feel a chill.
That sense of warmth you’d feel in a home was missing.
No wonder Des wanted out as much as possible.
“Did it ever get…” A lump hits my throat.
“Physical? No. They were mostly passive aggressive and sniping toward each other. Very Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”
I swallow. “I remember that one time, you showed up at my door at midnight.”
“Fuck. I remember that. They were having one of their arguments about money that would go on and on. That night, my dad comes into my bedroom, which he would never usually do. He’s pacing and still red-faced.
I see him having a breakdown in real time.
He says they only got married because he knocked her up with me.
He told me how he’d regularly fantasized about a different life where he could go anywhere in the world, where he wasn’t tied down. ”
“Des.” My hand instinctively goes to his arm. “I’m so sorry.” I can’t imagine ever telling my kids that. That’s something a child never forgets.
“When I came home the next morning, he apologized and said he didn’t mean it.
But, like, you said it, fucker.” Des’s parents got divorced less than a year after he graduated from high school and went off to college.
“Your parents were saints. Your mom made me pancakes the next morning like I belonged there.”
“You did.”
He’s quiet a long moment.
“I always thought if I had kids,” he says slowly, “that I’d mess them up.
That I’d turn into them somehow. I’d marry the wrong person, and the kid would be stuck in the middle.
So I made a decision a long time ago that I wouldn’t do it.
That I wouldn’t have a kid until I could guarantee I wouldn’t be like my parents.
And then the years passed, and I never got there. ”
I feel something in my chest shift—this tender ache that moves like a tide. Des never talks about his family. Not like this. Not with this much weight behind it. There’s something about the darkness that’s like a truth serum.
“Ever since I moved in here, I’ve been thinking about things.
People loved to tell me that I’d regret not getting married and having kids.
But I haven’t felt that regret. I have an awesome life.
” His mouth twists as he searches for more words to complete this thought he’s struggling with.
“I never wanted to be in a situation where I told my kids they ruined my life. I never wanted to be like my folks.”