The Wife Who Labored Alone

1. Allison

ALLISON

I’m scraping my husband’s dinner into takeout containers, and the rain on the glass roof is so loud I can hear it in my back teeth.

It’s been pounding my office since late afternoon, the hard spring kind that turns the loading yard into soup.

If I controlled the weather, it would rain politely in the middle of the night and every Saturday would be sunny for the retail customers.

Also, Gavin would have been here when he said he would.

The salmon goes in one container and the potatoes in another. The asparagus is past saving, limp and gray in its own juice, so I throw it out with a clear conscience. I’m angry, but I’m not wasteful.

My phone’s facedown next to a bottle of wine I opened for two and drank for one. There’s a single text from him, sent before dinner was even on the table. Rebecca called an emergency London meeting. Don’t wait for me. I’m sorry. Nothing since.

I didn’t wait. I checked in a late truck, approved payroll, and helped Luis cover the outdoor seed trays before the wind picked up. I can be busy and still know exactly how long my husband’s chair has been empty.

My father built this office the year he and my mother bought Barrett Greenhouses from my grandfather, and it’s still too small.

It’s got one metal desk, a tiny sink, and shelves full of invoices and ugly terracotta pots I refuse to throw away.

Tonight I added a folding table, a tablecloth, two plates and some candles.

The candles are puddles now. Romance is thriving.

Headlights sweep across the wet yard. My heart jumps and my hand goes to my hair before I can stop it, and that makes me madder.

Gavin gets out of the car without waiting for the driver and the umbrella, because of course he does. By the time he yanks the office door open, his dark hair is plastered to his forehead and water’s running off his charcoal coat onto my floor.

“Allison.”

He looks right at me, only me, and for a weak moment that almost works. Gavin Callahan is unfairly handsome when he looks terrible, all tired eyes and wet hair, his ring catching the light when he pushes the door shut.

“You’re late,” I say.

“I know.”

He glances down at his watch. I stare at him until he drops his hand.

“That was a bad instinct,” he says.

“One of your worst.”

My mouth tries to smile and I don’t let it, and he sees me not letting it.

Then he looks past me at the pot of Easter lilies on my shelf, left over from a hotel order.

Their smell has been drilling into my skull all evening, worse than usual lately, sitting in the back of my throat and rolling my stomach over.

Without a word he carries them out into the rain and comes back with his hands empty and even wetter.

He remembers that lilies give me headaches. He remembers I like the corner piece of lasagna. He just can’t seem to remember what time dinner is.

He hangs his coat on the hook on the door. “Sorry.”

“You keep saying that.”

He goes still. I get a mean little thrill out of it, and then it sours in my stomach. I don’t want to fight. I wanted dinner. I wanted a couple of hours with my husband sitting inside my life for once, instead of me squeezing into whatever gap he can find between calls.

He looks at the containers. “You cooked.”

“I heated things with ambition.”

“Can I have some?”

“The asparagus died.”

“I’ll eat around the body.”

He reaches for the salmon and I slap his hand away. “At least warm it up.”

His phone buzzes in his pocket. He doesn’t reach for it, and it ought to feel like I’ve won. It feels like he’s making a point of ignoring it, and we both know he can’t keep that up.

“Rebecca?” I ask.

“Probably.”

“What was the emergency?”

He puts the salmon in the little microwave and punches the buttons like they owe him money. “Two of the big clients we’re counting on in London got cold feet. They want to know who’s actually going to be over there running things.”

“And Rebecca was the only one who could reach you.”

“She called the whole executive team.”

“She called you first.”

He doesn’t answer fast enough. The microwave hums between us.

“She’s my COO,” he says.

“I’m your wife.”

“Those aren’t competing jobs.”

“Then why do I keep losing?”

The microwave beeps and neither of us moves. Out in propagation three, an alarm gives one short chirp.

“Roof vent,” I say, and I’m already out the door.

The vent over bench six is stuck halfway open, and rain’s blowing straight in on trays of basil I promised to a restaurant. I grab the crank pole. Gavin grabs a tarp before I can tell him to.

“South end,” I say, and he goes.

He doesn’t ask a single question. He drags the tarp over the trays and weighs the corner down with a bag of perlite while I crank the vent shut, and his beautiful Italian shoes sink into wet potting mix up to the laces. He looks down at them with real grief.

“Those shoes just dropped a tax bracket,” I tell him.

He laughs, and I’m so glad to hear it that my face goes warm. I remember when it was easy to make him laugh, back before Rebecca could pull him away with a two-word text. For a few minutes we work the way we used to, without talking, each of us knowing where the other one’s going to be.

That hurts too.

Back in the office he peels off his soaked suit jacket and rolls up his sleeves. There’s soil on one forearm and rain on his throat.

“I’m not sleeping with Rebecca,” he says.

I blink at him. “I didn’t say you were.”

“You were thinking it.”

“No, I wasn’t.” I cross my arms. “Honestly, that’d almost be easier.

At least I’d know what to do with it. I know you’re not sleeping with her, Gavin.

I think she gets the best of you. She gets the first call, and the plan before it’s a plan, and the problem while you’re still excited about solving it.

I get you after. Tired and sorry and checking your watch. ”

“That isn’t fair.”

“Neither was dinner at six-thirty.”

He looks at the candle puddles for a long moment. “No,” he says. “It wasn’t.”

I hate how fast the fight drains out of me when he doesn’t argue, how my shoulders drop before I’ve decided to let them. It’s a dirty trick, and he doesn’t even know he’s doing it.

He takes a step and stops. “Can I touch you?”

We’ve been married almost five years. He’s touched me in kitchens and hotel elevators and the bathroom on one of his own planes, and once in the supply shed behind my parents’ house during a family barbecue.

He’s never needed to ask. Tonight he asks, maybe because my arms are crossed, or maybe because even he can tell how lonely I’ve been.

I should say no. I uncross my arms instead.

His hand settles on my waist, warm through my sweater, and my body goes soft, even though my pride would rather it didn’t.

“I’m still mad,” I say.

“I know.”

“This doesn’t fix dinner.”

“I know.”

“You should probably say something less annoying.”

“I want to kiss you.”

“That’s better,” I say. “Do it.”

His mouth comes down on mine and he isn’t careful about it. I grab two fistfuls of his wet shirt, and he backs me into the metal desk hard enough to rattle the seed catalogs.

His phone buzzes again. He pulls it out, turns it facedown, and slides it all the way to the far end of the desk without looking at the screen. Then he looks at me, and I haul him back down by his shirt.

His hand slides under my sweater, and his fingers are freezing. I gasp into his mouth.

“Sorry,” he says.

“Stop apologizing and warm them up.”

He laughs against my lips and spreads his palm flat on my stomach until the cold’s gone. My sweater comes off over my head. His shirt’s all wet buttons, so I pop one, and he doesn’t even notice. I shove the tablecloth aside and sit on the desk.

“This desk was bought for invoicing,” I tell him.

“It has range.”

He kisses my neck while he unhooks my bra, and I stop being funny. His mouth closes over my nipple and I grab the back of his head. He knows exactly how hard to suck and exactly when to ease off, because he’s spent years learning. It doesn’t fix a single thing, and right now I don’t care.

He drags my pants down with my underwear, and I kick one leg free and nearly knock a terracotta pot off the shelf. He catches it one-handed without looking.

“Show-off,” I say.

He drops to his knees on my office floor, pushes my thighs apart, and puts his mouth on me. I bite down on the side of my hand.

“Don’t,” he says against me. “Nobody’s here.”

“The ficus has seen enough.”

He laughs, one rough breath right on my clit, and it shoots straight up my spine.

Then his tongue moves and I forget the ficus.

He licks me slowly, like he’s got nowhere else to be tonight, and I let myself believe it.

He circles my clit and does the little pause that always makes my legs shake, because he learned me years ago and hasn’t forgotten a thing.

“Gavin.”

He looks up, mouth wet, hair wrecked from my hands. “More?”

“Yes.”

He slides two fingers inside me and sucks my clit into his mouth, and I come hard, my heel dug into his back, my thighs shaking against his ears. He keeps going until I’m pushing weakly at his shoulder.

“Get up here,” I tell him.

I get his belt open with shaking hands. His cock is hard and hot when I pull him out, and he groans at the first stroke like I’ve made him wait for weeks. To be fair, I have.

We don’t use condoms. We haven’t in years. There were calendars once, and hopeful months, and then a long stretch where neither of us said much about it. Tonight none of that feels important. I just want him.

He pushes into me slowly, and his forehead drops against mine.

“Okay?”

“Yes.” I lock my legs around him. “Move.”

He moves. The desk knocks the wall with every thrust, and his eyes stay on my face. For once he isn’t halfway somewhere else. He’s here, inside me, with the rain roaring over both of us, and it starts to build again, sharper this time.

“Right there,” I tell him.

“I know.”

Normally that would annoy me. Tonight he’s just right.

He works his thumb down between us and circles my clit while he fucks me. “Come on, sweetheart,” he says, his voice gone rough. “I want to feel you come on my cock.”

“Bossy.”

“Please.”

That’s what does it. I come around him with my face pressed into his shoulder, and he follows right behind me, holding me so tight my ribs ache. I feel him come deep inside me with my name breaking against my neck.

Afterward he stays between my legs with his hand moving slowly up and down my back. For a while he’s just mine, and there’s nothing else but the rain on the roof.

I put on his shirt, because mine’s soaked from the greenhouse floor. Gavin eats cold salmon with a plastic fork in my visitor chair in his suit pants and nothing else. He looks ridiculous, and I want him again anyway. My whole body is warm and loose and stupid with it.

“You missed dinner,” I tell him.

“I’m eating dinner.”

“It’s tomorrow already.”

“Very exclusive reservation.”

His phone buzzes across the desk, and his hand goes for it before he seems to know it’s moved. It stops right over the screen. Rebecca Kendall.

The warm, loose feeling leaves me all at once, and my bare feet are suddenly cold on the floor.

“You always answer her,” I say.

“It’s London.”

“It’s always something with a city in the name.”

The call stops. A text lights up the desk between us, bright enough that I can read it upside down.

London is not six weeks anymore. Call me now.

He reads it, and then he reads it again.

“How much longer?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer.