Chapter 8
Holland
Saturdays are, in theory, an easy day. I don’t have to teach at the high school or set up practice for the girls. In reality I wake up at six thirty like any other day, except I stay in bed thinking about everything that could go wrong in my life.
Lina’s out cold. I’ve left her game clothes folded on the chair with the shin guards on top. I’m trying to get her to start taking charge of her own bag, but she still needs a lot of help.
At nine in the morning, while I’m scrubbing the breakfast pan, someone knocks at the door. Not the bell, and that throws me off even more, three sharp raps on the wood. Too formal.
A courier hands me a white envelope and sticks one of those devices in front of me where you have to sign with your finger.
“On a Saturday?”
The courier shrugs, and when I read the return address, my heart sinks.
Harding we order a couple of pizzas, crack a few beers, and you relax. I don’t expect anything, really. It’s a friend thing,” she assures me.
***
Tessa opens the door before I can knock. Lina runs in and Wesley already has a pile of toys ready. At seven, my daughter adapts to anything, from being with the girls on my team who are four years older to playing with Wes.
Before I know it, the two of them are on the floor, playing a card game whose rules don’t seem to be fixed, because Wesley makes them up as he goes, though my daughter protests and laughs at the same time.
“She’s staying the night and I’ll bring her home tomorrow,” Zoe says, putting a container of food in my hands before I can argue. “It’s clam chowder. Tessa made it. Heat it up, you need to eat something.”
***
“So, you’re staying?” I ask when we get home.
“I’m staying,” Natalia confirms with a smile.
I heat the soup and we eat in the kitchen, under the slightly yellow ceiling light.
Natalia washes both bowls without my asking and sets them in the rack.
We talk little. I tell her just enough about my problem: the firm, Grant, my ex, what it costs to fight people who have money to pay others to fight for them.
She listens, patient. She doesn’t try to hand me solutions, but when I finish, she gives me a very long hug that calms me down.
I lend her a pair of pajamas and she lies down next to me, on the side of the bed where nobody has slept for four years.
There isn’t a single brush of contact; we roll over and sleep back to back, but having her in my bed, feeling her weight on the mattress, turns me on a lot more than I’d like to admit.
***
Sunday I wake up late. And alone, too.
For a second I think the worst, that she left without even saying goodbye. But then the smell of fresh coffee reaches me, and of something cooking on the griddle in the kitchen. When I get there, Natalia’s already dressed.
“I made you breakfast,” she announces when she sees me. “I felt bad waking you, you need the sleep. Anyway, I think it’s better I take off before Zoe brings Lina. She’s trustworthy, but you know how these things go; if they see me at your place they’ll think we’ve been up all night… you know.”
She hugs me again, kisses me on the cheek, slings her bag over her shoulder, and leaves.
And I stand there in the kitchen, thinking that maybe I’ve been an idiot for shutting the door of my heart to this woman.