Chapter 3
Rebecca is where she wanted to be, burrowed into the sheets, lying on Mark’s chest, but now she realizes that she doesn’t want to be here at all. She doesn’t want to be anywhere.
Maddy’s nigh-night routine was elaborate as always, an hour-long ritual—bath, soap, shampoo, dry, lotion, brush hair, brush teeth, pee, princess nightgown, goodnight kisses to Bao-Bao in his crate in the kitchen, sleep tight hugs to all the stuffties on the shelf—Mr. Elephant, Mr. Pig, Mr. Caterpillar, et cetera—fluff pillows, tuck blankets to the chin; Horton Hears a Who!
; Good Night, Gorilla; Goodnight Moon; sleep-inducing nose pets, Sleeptime Pillow Pet that casts stars on the ceiling, count the stars, make the wishes, nighttime affirmations—My voice matters.
I tried my best today. I am still growing and learning.
I have what it takes—forehead kiss, sneak out of the room, two minutes of peace, glass-of-water request, repeat process from affirmations onward.
Her iPhone is turned off, but the silence is not blissful. It shouts that she is missing things, falling desperately behind. Snippets of the evening’s conversation with Alexa and Derek rush to fill the quiet of her mind.
The surprise is part of it. The sense of adventure.
You’ll see.
Pricey but well worth it. Two hundred twenty-five K all in.
An investment!
Think of it this way: What’s money for, if not this?
It is insane. Insane and out of the question for her and Mark and their normal life.
She is too tired to sleep. Her stomach roils, a match for her mind. She can feel Mark humming beside her as well, electricity moving through the warm skin of his chest into her cheek.
“What’s with his jawline?” she says.
Mark will know she means Derek. They have it like that, shorthand and shared jokes, swimming inside a shared stream of consciousness.
“I believe he had it surgically enhanced,” Mark says.
“Augmented with panda bone.”
“At a very exclusive medical facility in Dubai.”
“The Buzz Lightyear Special.”
It feels good to smile. He runs his fingertips across her shoulders. Even through her stretched-out Tufts T-shirt, it feels good.
A thought niggles at the base of her brain. “Do you find her attractive?”
Her face rises and falls with Mark’s breaths. He is taking longer to answer than she would like.
“In an ice-queen way, I suppose,” he says.
The answer is a needle jab to her heart. She knows that her reaction is petty. But she also feels . . . How does she feel? Washed out? Less than?
She is silent. Mark breathes some more.
She lifts her head and looks up at his shadowed face. The titanium business card winks at her from the nightstand. A dozen insecure responses rise in her throat, and she sets them down one after another.
“Good night,” she says.
“’Night, Beccs.”
She slides off him, rolls over, nerves jangling inside her.
And hormones. The doctor told her that her progesterone and estrogen would take weeks to stabilize, and here she is two months later, filled with typhoons and tornadoes, bobbing like a cork on a tidal wave.
How easy it is to forget that we are all just mammals.
She wants to weep. She wants to scream. She wants to be herself again, her stable, adult self.
She does not want to cry. Mark will feel awful, and he doesn’t need to carry any more than he is already gracefully carrying. A feeling beckons, dark and yet delicious, that he deserves more than this. That they deserve more than this.
Which is precisely what N0RM LLC claims to offer.
Mark’s breathing is steady. He is asleep already, and she is alone.
But then he says, “I can’t imagine sleeping next to her. So, no, I can’t imagine sleeping with her. She doesn’t have your heart, Beccs. No one does.”
Warmth moves through her entire body, a surge of oxytocin. She wriggles backward toward him, shoves her hind quarters into his side. He loops his arm beneath her neck, and they fall asleep together in the shared heat of their bodies.