5. Jacob
— ? —
Jacob
Dinner on the patio, my hand on Ellie’s thigh under the table, her laughing at what I said, and I think: this. This is what I built all of it for.
She’s wearing a white sundress tonight, thin straps, low back, and I want to know if there’s anything under it.
Her hair is down and her skin is golden from the sun and when she laughs she tips her head back and I can see the line of her throat and I want to put my mouth there.
I want to push her back against this table and spread her legs and make her come right here where anyone could see.
I want to hear her say my name the way she says it when she’s close, breathless and desperate and mine.
The evening is warm and I can smell the honeysuckle that grows along the patio wall, the honeysuckle Ellie planted the week she moved in because she said the house needed more flowers.
She was right. She’s right about most things in this house, and I let her be, because I don’t know the first thing about flowers and she does.
She’s telling me about her day, about a file on her boss’s desk that’s been sitting there for a week, about a pie somebody brought by and how she saved me a slice.
I’m listening with half my brain while the other half is thinking about what I’m going to do to her after dinner.
I’m thinking about carrying her upstairs and laying her out on our bed and eating her pussy until she screams my name.
I’m thinking about fucking her slow and deep and making her beg for it.
I’m thinking about the sounds she makes when she comes, the way her back arches, the way her nails dig into my shoulders.
Jenna brings the wine and pours it and reaches for our plates and Ellie waves her off, and I watch her glance toward the west wing before she goes back inside. She’s been doing that a lot lately, that nervous glance, and I don’t think about why because I don’t want to know.
Then Daphne comes out in a white bikini.
“Oops!” She puts a hand to her chest, her eyes wide and innocent in a way I’ve seen a hundred times before. “Sorry! I was going to swim, I didn’t know you two ate out here now.”
She doesn’t leave. She walks to the chair beside mine and lays her towel on it, bending over more than she needs to, her tits almost falling out of that bikini top. I don’t look. I keep my eyes on Ellie, on my wife, on the woman I married, on the curve of her shoulder in that white sundress.
Daphne gets in the pool and does a lap, slow and showy, her arms cutting through the water in long strokes.
When she reaches the far end she flips and comes back, and when she reaches the edge closest to our table she stops and rests her arms on the stone and looks up at us with water dripping down her face.
“God, it smells out here,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “How do you stand it? Horses and cows and dirt. I don’t know how anyone lives like this.”
Ellie’s hand tightens on her fork.
Daphne pushes off and does another lap, and when she comes back she stops again in the same spot.
“In the city,” she says, “you could walk outside and smell coffee and perfume and food from a dozen different restaurants. Real food, not whatever that is.” She gestures at the steaks on our plates.
“Here it just smells like animals. All the time. Animals and manure and sweat. I don’t know how you do it, Ellie. I really don’t.”
“Some of us like it,” Ellie says, her voice flat.
Another lap. Another stop. Another line delivered with that practiced smile, her chin resting on her crossed arms, her eyes bright and cruel.
“Some of us grew up without options, I guess.” Daphne tilts her head, water streaming down her neck. “But you could leave, you know. You don’t have to stay here. You don’t have to spend your whole life in a place like this, married to a man who’s never going to give you what you need.”
I feel Ellie go still beside me. I feel her whole body tense, feel the heat of her anger even though she hasn’t moved.
“I have everything I want right here,” Ellie says, and she looks at me when she says it, her eyes fierce and bright.
I squeeze her hand under the table and I know I should open my mouth, should tell Daphne to shut hers and go back to her wing.
But I can hear Jackson’s voice in my head, slurred and slow, asking me to take care of his girl, and I tell myself it’s just a swim.
It’s just talk. It doesn’t mean anything.
Daphne does two more laps, slower this time, and when she finally climbs out of the pool at the far end she takes her time walking around to our side.
Water streams down her body, her nipples hard through the thin fabric of her bikini top, her hips swaying with every step.
She picks up her towel from the chair beside mine and pats her face dry, in no hurry at all, standing close enough that I can smell chlorine and the jasmine perfume she always wears.
“Jake,” she says, “could you look at the water heater in my wing? The shower’s gone cold again. I don’t trust the staff with it.”
I look at Ellie. Ellie’s face says go if you’re going.
I could say no. I could tell Daphne to call somebody in town on Monday and sit right here with my hand on my wife’s leg. I think about it for about a second. Then I think about the way Jackson said please on the phone, and I get up.
I go. It’s a heater. I fix things.
The walk to the west wing takes longer than it should.
The hallway is quiet, the doors all closed, and I can hear the pool pump humming somewhere behind the walls.
It’s a long hallway. The house was built for a family a lot bigger than the two of us, and this end of it was shut up most of the time I’ve owned it, and it still smells a little like dust and old paint no matter how many times the girls air it out.
Daphne’s got the lights on in every room down here now.
I can see them under the doors. I’m thinking about Ellie, about the look on her face, about the way she said “I have everything I want right here” with her eyes on mine, daring Daphne to argue with her.
I’m thinking about her legs in that white sundress and what I’m going to do when I get back to her.
I’m thinking about pushing her up against the patio wall and kissing her until she forgets Daphne exists.
I’m thinking about the night I’m going to give her when I get back to that table.
The heater is fine. It’s running exactly the way it should, humming along in the pump closet, no problems, no issues. I’m standing there looking at a machine with nothing wrong with it when I hear her behind me, and I turn, and she’s in the doorway in a silk robe that’s not tied.
Her tits are out. Her pussy is bare. She’s standing three feet from me in nothing but an open robe, waiting for me to move.
My stomach turns.
“It must’ve fixed itself,” she says, her voice low and husky, stepping closer. “Thanks for checking.”
“Put some fucking clothes on,” I say, and I’m out of that wing before she can say another word.
The walk back feels longer than the walk there.
My skin is crawling and my hands are shaking and I keep seeing it, the robe, the bare skin, the look on her face.
I should tell Ellie. I know I should tell her what just happened, what Daphne did, what I saw.
But I know how it sounds. Me alone in her wing, her in a robe.
Nothing happened, and it sounds like it did, and Ellie is already on edge, and Jackson is in a chair with nurses around him, and I can’t be the man who throws a sick man’s daughter out for standing in a doorway.
So I don’t tell her.
Ellie is still at the patio table when I get back.
Her plate is in front of her, untouched since I left.
She’s not eating. She’s just sitting there with her hands in her lap, looking out at the pool where the water is still rippling from Daphne’s swim.
The candles we lit for dinner have burned down to stubs. The wine in her glass is untouched.
“That was fast,” she says, and her eyes search my face, and I know what she’s looking for and I’m not giving it to her.
“It was fine,” I say. “Nothing wrong with it.”
She looks at me for a long moment, her eyes on mine, and I can see her deciding whether to push. I can see her weighing it, measuring it, and I hold my breath and wait for her to ask the question I don’t want to answer.
She doesn’t ask. She looks at the pool instead, and then at the west wing, and then back at me.
“I’m going up,” she says instead.
She stands and covers my plate with foil and sets it in front of my chair and walks past me without touching me. I hear the screen door open and close. I hear her footsteps on the stairs. And then nothing.
I sit down at the table and look at the foil-covered plate and the burned-down candles and the untouched wine, and I don’t move for a long time.
The pool lights come on automatically, casting rippling shadows across the patio, and the west wing is lit up beyond them, every window glowing.
I can see movement behind one of the curtains and I look away.
I think about going up. I think about what I’d say when I got there, and I don’t have it, so I stay in the chair. Ellie’s napkin is folded on the table next to her plate, folded the way she folds them, and I pick it up and put it back down.
I eat the cold steak alone. The potatoes are cold too, and the corn, and I eat them anyway, chewing without tasting, swallowing without hunger. The pool pump hums. A coyote howls somewhere in the dark. The west wing stays lit.
I could go over there and tell Daphne to keep her doors shut and her robe tied. I don’t. I sit here and finish my wife’s cold steak and tell myself that’s the same as handling it.
I tell myself it doesn’t matter. I tell myself I did nothing wrong. I tell myself that not telling her is the same as protecting her. I tell myself she’s got enough on her plate without carrying this too. That’s the one I like best, because it sounds like I’m doing it for her.
When I finally go upstairs, the bedroom’s dark. Her sundress is on the chair where she dropped it, and I stand there and look at it longer than I should. Ellie is on her side with her back to the door, her breathing slow and even.
I undress in the dark and get into bed beside her and put my hand on her hip.
She doesn’t move it off. But she doesn’t turn around either.
I lie there in the dark and I think about the robe and the heater and the thing I didn’t tell her, and I don’t sleep for a long time.