The last twenty-four hours of their marriage. She hadn't thought about it like that.
He spread his arms wide. “This is what it's like after the honeymoon is over.” Sarcasm dripped off his words. “Being married to a mechanic. A stupid fight about a thoughtless word before I go back to finish the brake replacement on a minivan downstairs.”
She let out a watery laugh. “I’ll be sure to make something good for dinner, then.”The last twenty-four hours of their marriage.She lifted her chin, not willing to let him have any moral high ground here. “What else should we do in our only day as a regular married couple? Before we figure out what our divorce is going to look like?”
Something complicated flashed behind his gaze. “Let’s not do that today. No divorce talk. Not if we’re snowed in.”
She nodded. She could give him that. A small peace offering. “Okay.”
That earned her a small half-smile. Just one corner of his mouth tipping up. “It's a little too late to carry you across the threshold. Should have done that last night.”
“You did that in Vegas. Into the suite.”
He rocked back on his heels. “Oh. Right.”
His eyes hooded, but he didn’t look away.
A highlight reel of what happened next shot through Monica’s mind. Them,consummating the fuck out of their marriage, as he made a point of snapping at her yesterday.
Josh’s gaze flashed dark and hot. As if she wasn’t the only one whose thoughts went there.
“Then we’ll settle for talking about our day over dinner,” he said slowly. “Unless you had anything else in mind.”
“No.” She stumbled over the single-syllable word. “I don't mean—”
“No,” he echoed. “Of course not.”
But now she could see it. How a mechanic might scrub down with grease cleaner first, and then carefully shower with white bar soap. So he was all clean when he pressed his wife gently into a cheap mattress at the end of their day.
Her cheeks flamed.
“Work,” she whispered.
He cleared his throat. “Yep.”
“I have work…you have work.”
He glanced around his apartment. Then to her phone in her hand. “If you want to work downstairs, you can.”
He disappeared down the stairs and she flopped onto the couch, not sure how to take that invitation.
The last twenty-four hours of their marriage.She wasn't going to spend a second of it flailing for deeper meaning. If he welcomed her downstairs, she’d go and…watch. Or something.
It was entirely possible she was going to spend more than a few seconds of it fighting the desire to reminisce about all the consummating they did back in the day.
* * *
As far asJosh could tell, Monica’s new job was mostly phone calls where she told people, “you’ve got this!” and asked questions like, “is that really your core promise, though?”
Which, to his ear, sounded a lot likeoh dear, you do not have this at all.
And in between those calls, she dashed off texts, touch typing with her thumbs while she watched him.
Maybe he put a little extra oomph into reinstalling the brake calipers, leaning into the torque wrench.
Maybe.
The best and worst part of having Monica in his space was being reminded of how much he just liked her. He didn't want to like her.
