27
Si was early for the housewarming party, of course. By about three hours. Which was classic Si.
It was two weeks later, and the snow was gone, and the January day looked like an old dime. When the knock came at the door, I was shirtless, hopping downstairs as I pulled on what Noah liked to call my slutty sweatpants, thinking Noah had put in a last-minute DoorDash for the party.
Instead, Si was standing on the porch, leaning heavily on a cane, a bowl tucked under her arm.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked when I opened the door.
“Coming to your party.” She handed me the bowl—under the plastic wrap, it looked like potato salad—and then she took an unsteady step forward. She was leaning on her cane, so I took her other arm and helped her inside.
I didn’t bother saying the party didn’t start for a few more hours; that kind of stuff didn’t register for Si. So I said, “I was going to pick you up.”
“I was already out running errands.”
“You’re not supposed to be running errands. You’re supposed to be resting.”
Si eyed me as I helped her out of her coat—a bulky wool thing that looked like Paul fucking Bunyan might have owned it first. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you eat?”
“You’re not supposed to be driving.”
“Noah doesn’t feed you?”
“Noah feeds me fine.” Then I growled, “I feed myself, thanks very much.”
“You’re skin and bones. This is why you couldn’t get laid for two years.”
“Come here,” I said, taking her arm like I was going to be rough with her. “So I can push you down the fucking stairs.”
Si laughed about that while I got her settled in the living room.
We’d taken the tree and the Christmas decorations down, but Noah had swooped in with a whole new set of trinkets and pictures and throw pillows.
It still looked nice—anywhere Noah settled for more than five minutes would look nice—but I missed our tree.
I grabbed a sweatshirt from the bedroom and called through the bathroom door, “Si’s here.”
Noah was in the shower, which might have been why it took him a couple of seconds before he said in a neutral tone, “Okay.”
“Told you she’d be early.”
“I’ll be right down.”
“Nah,” I said, “you’re fine. Just didn’t want you to be surprised.”
By the time I got back downstairs, Si was in the kitchen, and she’d found a can of mixed nuts.
“You’re not supposed to be eating those,” I said.
“They’re healthy. They come from a tree.”
“The sodium.”
Si made a sound that meant sodium was for the birds. “You got a Coke or something?”
“Where the fuck do you think you are? The Piggly-Wiggly?”
But I got her a Coke.
“Place looks nice,” Si said through a mouthful of nuts. She settled on a stool and glanced at the cabinets. “Good call on those undercabinet lights. You got ’em just right.”
“That was Noah, actually.”
She made another noise that maybe meant Noah was for the birds too.
Footsteps came on the stairs, and a moment later, Noah reached the kitchen.
His hair was dark with water, and the hollow of his throat was pink, and the bathrobe—which he called a kimono—barely reached the middle of his thighs.
I thought maybe the best thing to do would be give Si a pair of noise-cancelling headphones and take Noah back upstairs and fuck his brains out.
He looked at me, snorted, and then turned a big smile toward Si.
“Oh my God, hi! We’re so glad you’re here. ”
Si grunted, and she accepted a kiss on both cheeks from Noah.
“How are you feeling? Howie said the doctors are really happy with your recovery.”
“I told the doctors it hurts when I walk, and it hurts when I talk, and it hurts when I breathe,” Si said. “And do you know what they told me?”
“Don’t answer,” I said. “This is the wind-up.”
“Oh God,” Noah said, “let me guess: do more PT.” He took a breath.
“They said if it hurts when you do that stuff, don’t do it anymore.”
Noah’s eyebrows went up. And then he laughed.
“Don’t laugh,” I said. “It just encourages her.”
“It was funny,” Noah said.
“No, it wasn’t.”
“At least one of you has good taste,” Si said.
“Good taste? You spend half your day googling ‘dad jokes for lesbians.’”
“Somebody’s feeling salty,” Si said with a look at me. Then her gaze slid to Noah. “I wonder what changed.”
For some reason, Noah was the one who blushed. “I’m so sorry you weren’t able to be here for the holiday tour. I took a lot of pictures that I could show you.”
“I saw Howie’s video,” Si said. She was still just looking at Noah. It was the way she looked at a two-by-four before she turned on the table saw.
“And Howie told me about the house,” Noah said.
He was talking fast, the color high in his cheeks, and he kept looking over at me.
“How you invested so much of your money in it, and you were going to sell the house, and Howie was going to pay you back. I know the fact that we decided to, um, stay here makes that complicated, but we’ve got a plan for that.
We’re going to use the house as collateral for a small business loan, and that’s how Howie will be able to pay you back.
” Si still hadn’t said anything. Noah swallowed.
Looked at me. Sounded like he was almost begging when he asked, “Right, Howie?”
“I already told her,” I said. I gave Si another look. She had more silver in her hair than I remembered. She still looked tired, which was what I’d thought when I’d seen her on the porch. But there was something else there. Something harder. “Hey, what’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Noah said with a weird laugh.
“What’s going on,” Si said as she scooped out another handful of nuts, “is I’m going to spend a few minutes catching up with your husband, while you go get ready for your party, you pretty little thing.”
One glance at Noah’s wide eyes made me say, “No way.”
But he said, “Howie, it’s fine.”
“I don’t think so. Si, look—”
“Howie,” Noah said, his voice tight. “It’s fine. Go get ready for the party.”
“Go on, sweet cheeks,” Si said without taking her gaze from Noah.
I took a few steps up the stairs.
Noah made an impatient wave, but he was still locked in on Si.
I made my way to the top of the stairs. I stood out of sight. I listened.
“Oh my God, Howie,” Noah snapped.
“I can hear you breathing up there,” Si said.
“Well,” I said. And for lack of anything better: “Fuck you both.”
I wasn’t sure why, but I slammed the door on my way into the bedroom. It did make me feel a little better.
I showered. I changed into the clothes Noah had left out for me: jeans, a nice thermal, a heavier wool shirt he’d told me twice not to button. I pulled on my socks and then sat there, trying to listen.
Were they still talking?
No fucking clue.
I opened the door and said, “I’m coming down.”
When I got to the kitchen, Noah’s eyes were red, but he wasn’t dead, and he didn’t try to run.
Si looked, if anything, more tired. She’d eaten all my mixed nuts. “Didn’t anybody tell you about indoor voices?”
“Want to tell me what that was all about?” I asked.
To my surprise, it was Noah who answered. “Girl talk.”
Si huffed a breath that might have been a laugh. “Show me the house, Howie. Noah’s got to finish getting ready.”
I tried to clock Noah’s expression. He smiled and shook his head, which I guess meant he was okay. So, while he went upstairs to dress, I took Si on a tour of the house. I didn’t want her doing the stairs, so we stuck to the main floor, but there was still plenty to see.
The good thing about Si—one of the good things, I guess—was that she wasn’t one of those jackasses who had to tell you how they would have done something, or how you’d done everything wrong.
She said stuff like “That’s a different sink,” and I explained how we’d had to return the other one because the bowl was cracked, and she said, “It looks good.” Or when we were looking at the cabinets, which she would have installed if she’d been up to it, she touched the joining and said, “Somebody did good work on this.”
She didn’t care about the light switch, even though I told her it took me almost two days to get it working. “It’s a light switch, Howie. Why’d it take you two days?”
Once the tour was over, I settled her in the living room again.
One addition to the room—now that Noah had decided that yes, we were going to live here, and yes, he was going to have to give the whole house a complete makeover—was a television, so I found a game for Si to watch, left her with the remote and the Coke, and threw away the empty tin of mixed nuts.
“What’d she say to you?” I whispered to Noah in the kitchen.
He was setting out turkey-and-cheddar pinwheels, and he paused to frown at me. “Nothing.”
“Bullshit it was nothing.”
“She’s very protective of you.”
“Oh my God,” I groaned. “She’s insane. What the fuck did she say?”
“Howie,” Noah said, and he waited a beat, like he wanted to make sure I heard him. “Leave it.”
Which was about as clear as you could get. So, I left it.
Instead, I helped Noah finish setting up.
And while we’d done our best to keep things simple, the reality was that this was still a Noah party, and so it was going to be, well, a lot.
There was the food—the pinwheels, the meatballs, the bruschetta.
If you’ve never tried to put tiny tomatoes on tiny pieces of bread while there’s a fucking clock running, you don’t know what pressure is.
I hauled in the galvanized tubs from the garage, wiped them out, and iced down the soda and the water.
Noah started the music—he’d worked on the playlist every night for the last week.