Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
NOT A DOCTOR, A BOY SCOUT
LOUISA
Hudson sets me down on the edge of the large soaking tub in my room, the guest bathroom.
The porcelain is cold as it hits the back of my thighs, I lean back against the tiled bathroom wall as he takes a seat and stretches my legs out and drops them into the tub.
Guiding my feet into the warm, shallow water of the filling tub that he has just turned on.
He leaves me in the bathroom alone, and while I have complete control over myself, I don't move. Instead, I let the water rise to the middle of my calves. Hiking up my dress higher on my thigh so it does not fall in.
When he re-enters the room, he joins me on the edge of the tub, turning off the warm water, as we both just sit here in silence.
His moods land between silent and surly; sometimes within that pendulum swing, he takes a detour into a moment of humor, or compassion.
I’ve seen it more than once. Each time while I am surprised by it, it also feels like the truest version of himself.
Hudson rolls up the sleeves of his shirt, folding them up to his elbows, exposing the veins on his forearms. Sometimes I look at him and I think he could have been a lumberjack as much as he could have been a lawyer.
Just in need of a flannel shirt and some wood.
(Don’t think about his wood, Louisaaa.) But in all seriousness, there’s a way about him, that even now, like this, he feels more rugged than who I see head off to work every morning.
He drops his arm into the water and I watch the ripples off his forearm spread as he moves his arm, reaching for my ankle.
His fingers wrap around it as he pulls it from the bath and places it on the folded towel atop his hard thigh.
He’s unfazed by the water, still not having said anything, just moving through the motions of this totally not-normal task as if it was something he had scheduled.
My leg stretched between us, a line of vulnerability, which I’ve reached out with too many times.
He can’t keep being the one to fix my problems. It's far more than he signed up for. (Than either of us signed up for.)
Spending time with him upstairs felt like getting a peek into his brain. The parts of it that hold a dream motivating enough for him to enter this crazy arrangement with me.
His hand is holding my foot as he retrieves the tweezers he went to grab.
I can feel the pressure of his thumb into the ball of my foot.
Pushing the skin harder and harder, rhythmic, I don’t know if there’s any progress.
And while it doesn’t feel great, the piece of wood he’s trying to force through a minuscule hole in my skin, the way his hand wraps wholly around the arch of my foot as he works methodically, feels too intimate for what we are.
I snapped upstairs, and while it’s all rooted in the reality of who we were prior to all this, karma clearly repaid me the second I stepped on the splintered wood and it went right into my left foot.
And whatever I was annoyed about upstairs, I’m already busy lying to everyone else about how I feel about him, might as well lie to myself about it also.
I watch as he dips a washcloth into the warm water and holds it against my foot.
My foot twitches in response but settles comfortably back into his grip.
His gaze is focused on the splinter he’s working on, but his eyes flicker up to mine in the smallest breath between seconds.
Locking on me from under his rich, dark lashes, makes the view almost perverse.
(For me at least.) Before using the tweezers, trying to needle out the tip of the splinter from my foot.
“You’re good at this,” I say, trying to claw back some of the tension that tightens the air between us. “Like, really good.”
“I’ve been told.” His lips taunt me as they pull into the smallest smirk, his eyes narrowing to match. (Arrogant ass.)
“I’m sure,” I reply, knowing that I doubt he’s ever not been good at something. “I’m not like that you know,” I say as I can feel the warmth of breath land on my skin he's holding close to him.
“Like what,” he asks under his breath, clearly focused not on the conversation but engaging just because he’s got my foot hostage, and he knows I’ll be a lot more agreeable if he goes along with it.
“You obviously have been successful at everything,” I begin as I lean back into the wall, trailing my fingers across the surface of the water.
“I’m good at some things. Lattes, amazing.
Voice acting, great. Making conversation with people's dogs, or remembering someone’s birthday, there’s no one better.
But the important things? The kind that makes you valuable to society, I’ve never been any of those.
” For some reason saying it sounds much sadder than I expected it to.
“I’m not exemplary.” (Not to people, and not to the government.)
“You’re kind,” he says plainly.
“Lots of people are kind,” I reply.
“No, they’re not,” he says with such certainty, as he looks at me to convey the truth in it. I wonder if he’s including himself in that. Something tells me he is, even though his actions remain some of the most generous I’ve experienced. His eyes drop back to the task at hand.
“Is there a secret medical degree I missed while doing my husband homework?” He laughs at that, but I can see the smile exposing his teeth from here, even with his face tilted down.
“No, just a Boy Scout.”
“A Boy Scout?!” I don’t know why I sound shocked. “In the little neckerchief and everything?”
“Yep,” he confirms.
“I’d pay good money to see those photos.”
“Never gonna happen,” he says under his breath.
“Grams will show me,” I retort. (I know she will.) He scoffs at that in reply, probably because he also knows she will.
“Even got a few badges.” His tone is darker, thoughtful, deep in the own recesses of his past. “After the divorce, I thought if I prepared for everything, it might make a difference.” His voice is soft and low.
Rolling across the bathroom tile as he continues.
“I learned how to treat a snake bite, to tie knots, to build a fire in the rain. I had this idea that maybe, just maybe, if I was useful, maybe they’d want me.
” It’s a glimpse into a part of a complex relationship he shares in slices.
And I’m frozen from it. Any witty remark, anything I thought I might have for him, dies on the tip of my tongue.
“It didn’t work,” he concludes. The honesty is a physical weight, it’s as if because we are physically close, in this intimate moment, that he has safety in sharing more.
“My dad would have been happier with just Theo,” I say, offering him a little bit of myself in reply. Somewhere in the middle we’re able to meet, find this terrible common ground we share.
“I doubt that.”
“I just am not someone he understands, and he never wanted to. He wanted another son, but didn't get one. I got a middle name and became the constant disappointment he ignored. So I guess together we can unpack the age-old question which is worse, never being around physically or emotionally.”
“I’ve been told I’m emotionally unavailable.” He says this like a warning, the one he repeats back to his usual (or former) guests. But we’re already married, and I don’t expect him to be emotionally anything. Despite the fact sometimes it sneaks out.
“That sounds like a choice.” His hand stops moving, maybe because I said something he’s heard too many times. (Or not enough.)
“I hate this, you know,” I say, quieter than anything yet. His hand is back to applying pressure to my foot, not stopping, just listening.
“What,” he says. Perhaps because there are so many things he imagines I might hate about this.
“That you always have to come fix things, that I come to you to fix things.” I pick at the edge of my glitter nail polish.
“My dad did that. Made himself the only solution to every problem I had. Every mess I made. Even if I didn’t think it was a mess, just...
my life.” I pause. “At first it felt like love, ya know, like someone was paying attention.” The water has gone lukewarm as I drop my fingers to play in it.
“But eventually I figured out it wasn't really about me at all. It was about control, about being the one who got to decide when I was okay.”
Hudson doesn't say anything for a moment. His thumb presses into the arch of my foot, steady and slow.
“I’m not your father,” he says finally. Not defensive.
“I know, Dr. Freud.” I say it with a touch of humor, hoping to bring us back from the depths we just dove.
“Told you,” he says. “Not a doctor. Just a Boy Scout. Do you want to know my favorite badge?” he asks, and it’s such a bizarre question, I straighten, eager to answer.
“Was it—OUCH WHAT THE FUCK!?” In the split second from when he asked it, he pressed the splinter through the soft skin of my foot and pulled it out with the tweezers.
“Don’t be such a baby.” He holds it up between us, the wooden spike pinched between the prongs of the tweezers. His voice returns to the place that keeps him even-keeled. And as for me, I’m unsure of what to do with any of it.