Eighty-One
Shiloh found herself acting like her teenage self with Cary. Sounding like that old self. Shifting easily into old jokes and
teasing.
There was a kind of mirth that Shiloh only ever achieved with Cary and Mikey, and now she was living inside that dynamic again.
She realized there was a tone of voice—deeper, rounder—that she never used with Ryan, that she used all the time with Cary.
And she made jokes she never would have made with Ryan, even though Ryan liked jokes. He was genuinely funny.
But Cary and Mikey were sort of terribly funny—there was nothing they wouldn’t laugh about—and they made Shiloh terrible, too. There was a laugh she only laughed with
them, throaty and fucked up. That laugh was back in her life, and it kept surprising her.
Cary made Shiloh feel like she was the same person she’d always been... But he also made her feel like she could be someone new. For all the ways they knew each other, so much between them was barely precedented—everything
romantic or sexual.
Shiloh could start over.
She could be a different sort of lover with Cary, and someday soon a different sort of wife.
She’d thought, with Ryan, that she was lucky to have someone who didn’t need to look in her eyes. She’d realized too late
that he couldn’t .
With Cary, Shiloh wanted to push through her own discomfort. To get over herself. To look directly at the sun.