Chapter 10 #2
He smiles faintly at me, and he’s so goddamn beautiful when he does. There’s not a person on the planet as stunning as he is. No one even comes close. “You know, you left your dumb Bruins hat at my place,” he says. “Maybe you should come get it this week.”
I smile back. “I think I will.”
The minute Demi walks in the door, she says, “You’ve had someone here.”
I don’t know how in the world she can tell that.
I’ve changed the sheets on my bed and thrown the old ones in the wash.
The bathroom is clean and I’ve sprayed down the shower and sink both, and even scrubbed the toilet.
I have wiped any and every feasible trace of Noel out of this house, much to my chagrin.
I love his smell and I want to wear it on me like a cologne, all the time.
Pregnancy has given my wife an especially shitty superpower in the form of a nose like a bloodhound on crack—and I should know this, because that nose seems to be half the reason she gets sick so often now.
Everything smells too awful and strong for her and makes her utterly nauseous.
A consideration amongst many I should’ve made when I brought Noel back here. I’m not nearly sorry enough for it.
So I just go, “Huh?” and take her bag from her.
Demi nudges Amelia aside, who is happily beleaguering her every step with a doggy grin on her narrow face and tail a-wagging. “I know you had someone here, Luca. It smells weird in here. Don’t bullshit me.”
I don’t. I sort of try to use it as a segue instead as I set her things atop her bedspread. “There’s something I need to talk to you about,” I call over my shoulder.
She ignores this. “You do know I’m nesting right now?” she growls from the hallway. “I don’t need a stranger’s funk in my space.”
“You’re right,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
She proceeds into the living room, where she eases herself into the recliner with an aggrieved sigh.
Amelia continues to hover around her, waiting for some acknowledgement, and Demi at last gives her a pat on the head.
“Go lay down,” she says, and the dog obediently goes to her bed by the fireplace.
“I’m so pissed at you, Luca,” she mutters.
My phone buzzes and I check the screen. Not Noel—it’s from my Uncle Drew. Curious, I open the message, and I’m immediately met with a wall of texts, formatted like a goddamn email:
Hello nephew, I hope this message finds you well!
Your father told me about your “problem”
As you know, he hasn’t been doing very well since Easter.
I think it would be best if you could set aside that issue for now for the sake of his health.
Our time on this planet is blessedly short and we can’t afford to spend it selfishly.
Think about it :-)
God Bless!
Love, Your Uncle
The sheer audacity would floor me alone if it wasn’t so painfully in character for my uncle to behave this way.
I’m more shocked that my father actually told him.
It’s not like him to share anything that makes our family look less than perfect.
I’m such a constant disappointment he hardly talks about me at all.
“Luca?”
“Sorry.” I shove my phone in my pocket. Later problem. “You’re right. I wasn’t thinking.”
“No shit. I can tell.”
I study her face for a moment, which is so scrunched up in irritation that I can’t tell if she’s feeling ill on top of it or not. “Do you need—”
“No. I don’t need anything except for you to not be a dickhead.”
“Okay.” I take a breath. “Look Demi, I really need to talk to you. It’s important. Is now a good time?”
“My God.” She presses her fingertips into her temples. “Just talk.”
“It has to do with the person I brought here.” She glares at me to continue, so I do. “So, um, you know how I’ve been going out a lot the last couple of months? And you’ve sort of just assumed I was seeing people.”
“You were going to those kinky sex clubs,” she says flatly. “Where they tie people up and spank them, or whatever. Is that the wrong assumption to make? You never said otherwise.”
She’s really not taking my shit right now. Can’t blame her, I guess. “Well, I wasn’t. Sleeping with a bunch of people, I mean.”
Demi connects the dots fairly quickly. “That kid you were seeing before,” she realizes. “The one who dumped you. You’re seeing him again. Noel, wasn’t it?”
“He’s not a kid, but yeah. Noel.”
“What are you trying to say?” She sits back in the chair, hands settling over her bump. “That you brought him here? Why is that so important for me to know?”
“Because we want to give it another shot. Getting back together, I mean.”
She just looks at me for an excruciatingly long moment, and beyond her residual anger at me I can’t actually tell how she feels about this information.
We’d acknowledged the possibility that one of us could meet and get serious with someone during this arrangement of ours, but we’d left it as a bridge to cross if we ever happened upon it.
I don’t think she has ever put serious thought to it.
Frankly, neither have I. Getting Noel back at all had seemed impossible enough.
“You want to get back together with him,” she reiterates slowly. “Now. In the middle of everything.”
“Yes.”
Demi leans forward and rubs her face. She doesn’t seem mad anymore, just tired. “Okay. Does that mean you’re going to be moving out again?”
“No. I thought you wanted me here until after the baby was born. I mean—unless you want me to go.”
“I don’t, actually. Having you here has been an immense help.”
I let out a breath. “Yeah.”
She peers at me from beneath the long, waist-length fall of her hair. “I guess I’m more surprised that you told me instead of continuing to be sneaky about it for no reason.”
I try to smile. “Going for more honesty this time around.”
“Other than the part where you didn’t tell me you weren’t being a man whore.
” She observes me almost speculatively. “You could’ve just told me, you know.
It was obvious you were still upset over him.
Besides, it’s not like I care if you’re with someone else.
That was always the agreement. We can see other people. ”
“It’s sort of weird, though. Isn’t it? Even though we’re not together, you’re still my wife. You’re having my kid.”
“I know. It is weird.” She’s chewing on her lip in an absent sort of way, and her gaze roams the room before it lands once more on me. There’s a moment where I think she’s going to say something, but then she just continues to look at me.
“So,” I go on, slowly, “it’s not like I’m not planning on moving him in here or anything. But, um—I think he wants to be involved.”
“Involved?”
“With the family. With the baby.”
Demi blinks at me exactly once. “Why on earth does a twenty-year-old want to be involved with his boyfriend’s baby in any capacity whatsoever?”
“Because he loves me, presumably,” I say dryly. “And because it’s important to him. And realistically, it’s unavoidable.”
“How involved does he want to be, though?”
“When he asked about it, it sounded like in a stepparent capacity.”
She seems quite aggravated by this. Probably because the one time she met Noel, she was already in a terrible mood and he was a complete brat to her.
She doesn’t know anything about him beyond the fact that I’m in love with him and I don’t think she has a terribly high opinion of that situation, either.
Though she’s kept it mostly to herself, it’s not a secret that she’s scornful of the fact that I’m into someone who is nearly a decade my junior.
I used to feel shitty about it, too, and then when I lost him I realized how stupid and petty it was to give something like that the time of day. When you meet someone you experience a genuine and intimate connection with, hold them close. What other people might think really doesn’t matter.
After some huffing and puffing she finally says, “I want to meet him.”
“Meet him? Like, what, for dinner?”
She waves a hand. “For dinner or just in general, whatever. If he’s going to be around my baby—”
“Our baby,” I interject.
“—then I have the right to get to get to know him. Do you disagree? That’s not going to be a problem, is it?”
I sure as shit hoped it wouldn’t be. I didn’t know what Noel would say, but I also didn’t think he would do anything to jeopardize our future custody arrangements. “I’ll ask him,” I say. “I’m sure it’s fine.” And it is a reasonable ask, after all.
Demi summons Amelia back to her with a low whistle and she jumps back up immediately, padding over with her tail swiping the air.
As she rubs the dog’s ears I wonder at Demi’s own love life, if one exists.
Surely someone’s caught her eye, or she’s caught theirs.
She is beautiful, even more so now that she’s pregnant; when people say they glow, they weren’t kidding.
“Demi,” I say after a moment, and she looks up at me. “Have you been seeing anyone?”
“What?” She’s astonished at the thought, taken aback almost. “Why are you asking?”
“Just curious.”
“Of course I’m not seeing anyone. Who wants to date a woman who’s pregnant with another man’s baby?” She turns her attention back to Amelia. “Besides, it would be reckless.”
“Why reckless?”
“Bringing in more strange people when I’m pregnant?”
“I don’t think it’s reckless.” When she shakes her head, I say, “I hope you’re not letting that stop you. If there’s anyone.”
She falls briefly silent, then says, “I’ve been thinking lately that we need to set a few ground rules, in case this happened. I have some ideas.”
“Agreed,” I say. “What have you got?”
“For starters, home should be a sanctuary.” She encompasses the house with a sweeping gesture. “It’s for you, me, and the baby only, and visitors that we have agreed upon beforehand. That means neither of us are bringing any lovers around for dates or steamy rendezvous.”
“That’s fair,” I say.
“I mean it, Luca. If you pull something again like you did this weekend, this cohabitating-co-parenting thing is not gonna work. I don’t want to come home and smell sex all over the house.”
“I get it.” I am not a teenager.
She holds up a second finger. “Secondly, if there’s an emergency with either of us, the other needs to drop whatever and come deal with it. If you’re out with your boyfriend or whatever and something happens to me—”
“That doesn’t even need to be a rule,” I object. “Of course I’d come home if there was an emergency.”
“Third, we need to tell each other where we’re going to be. If you’re going out with Noel, give me a heads up. And shower when you get home.”
I sort of resent the implication that I wouldn’t clean myself up after having anal sex, but I let it go. “Fine. Anything else?”
“That’s all I’ve really thought of so far.” She’s leaning down awkwardly, attempting to rub Amelia’s speckled belly. “I guess we just really need to be on the same page about these things. We have to be able to talk about it, even if it’s weird.”
I nod. On that much, we can agree.