Chapter 20
Finn
Ikiss Cassidy like my life depends on it when I drop her off at work. If you asked me a month ago, I would have told you that kind of kissing isn’t appropriate for a public street in the middle of the morning. If you ask me now, I’d say I can’t go more than a few hours without my wife’s lips.
I have a lot of work to do, but I refuse to be a freeloader around the house, so I go home, check Cassidy’s cute little chore chart on the side of the fridge, and vacuum the house.
I leave her craft room closed, since she still hasn’t invited me in there, but I do the entire rest of the house, getting in every nook and cranny.
I even vacuum the couch cushions, since we’ve been eating popcorn with our movie nights.
When I’m satisfied that the house looks to be in good shape and I haven’t left a mess for Cassidy to clean up when she gets home, I make my way over to the workshop. I need to make progress on this sculpture. The buyer has been incredibly patient, but she won’t wait forever.
I’m deep in thought about the fox’s mouth, and how to get the sly, knowing smirk to feel real instead of cartoonish, when my father clears his throat, derailing my train of thought.
“Morning,” I say to him, looking up at where he’s working. Today he’s carving a bench. Fortunately, not enough people die to keep him busy with gravestones all the time, although it’s still his main source of business.
“Something’s different,” he says without any greeting, squinting at me across our space.
How in the hell is he doing that? The only thing different about me is that Cassidy and I are on the same page now. Can he read it in my face that I fucked my wife this morning, and that it’s the most perfect thing I’ve ever felt? I shift, no doubt looking like a guilty child.
“Yeah,” I agree, because there’s no sense in lying to him. He won’t bother me about it, but he will find out.
He looks at me for another long moment, then nods. “Good.”
When he doesn’t say any more and turns back to his work, I sputter. “Good? That’s all you have to say?”
He pauses, bending back down toward his project. “We already had the safe sex talk, Finn. You were sixteen. Do you need a refresher?”
“Oh, fuck you,” I complain, flushing. No matter how old I get, I still don’t want to talk to my parents about sex.
He doesn’t resume his work, holding still for a moment, an obvious signal that he’s thinking. Sometimes, if I can be patient and wait him out, my dad actually has a lot to say, and usually at least some of it’s valuable.
“Treat her right,” he tells me after a moment. “And tell your mother she was right.”
I sigh, because that’s going to lead to her immediately asking when she’ll get grandkids. She’ll remind me she isn’t getting younger, then tell me how much it would mean to have a little baby in the family again, and she’d lay it on thick.
It’s not so much that I’d be annoyed as I’m half-worried I’d be tempted. There will be no babies until Cassidy says the word, but I can’t deny I enjoyed the hell out of practicing making them. I’d like to do it again, and soon.
“I’ll talk to her,” I promise. After the town meeting, maybe, when Cassidy and I don’t have quite so much on our minds. When we can take a moment to relax and plan what the next step of our marriage will look like.
He nods. “Finish your sculpture,” he instructs me.
Then, with a shit-eating sparkle in his eye that I don’t think anyone outside of Mom and I know exists, he adds, “Women like men who can work with their hands. It’s very impressive.
I’ll knock off extra early tonight; you can have the place to yourselves. ”
Did my father offer to be done work early so we can fuck in the workshop? The workshop that has no curtains on the windows, is ten yards from my parents’ house, and where both of my parents have a key? No, thank you.
“You’re awful, you know that?” I ask.
It’s rhetorical, and he doesn’t answer, but I swear I hear a chuckle as he gets back to work.