“She didn’t look anything like his usual syphilitic crew,” Patrick said to Matt and Riley.
Shannon looked up from her screen, the first hint she was listening. “And how long has this been taking place?”
I shrugged. “A little more than two months.”
“Is that why you’ve been so pleasant recently? I assumed it was some new meds or a colonic or a fucking juice cleanse or something, but this is great news,” Matt said. “Good for you.”
“Oh no, no, no. We don’t do secret affairs in this office. Not after the shit these two”—Shannon pointed to Patrick and Andy—“pulled last spring.”
“I wouldn’t say there’s been any secret.” I swirled my coffee cup and glanced to Shannon. I didn’t want to argue with her today. Not after my girl woke me up with some tremendous morning sex, and holy shit, where hadthatbeen all my life? So rather than reminding Shannon that she hadn’t talked to me about anything outside the realms of my projects and my eating habits in months, and we hadn’t been out together since the summer, I folded my hands in my lap and smiled.
Last winter I’d told this group we were too fucked-up for anything normal, but I was starting to believe that was a choice I could make. Happiness, too. I didn’t have to dig myself out of a hole; I just had to decide I could and should have whatever the fuck I wanted.
Right now, I wanted Tiel.
So she liked being spanked and gagged and God only knew what else, and most importantly, she liked whenIdid those things to her. We were both within throwing range of thirty and yet we’d discovered all manner of new bridges to cross together, and that swelled in my chest like a rebel yell. I was fucking delirious for her.
“You’re saying this is a legitimate thing,” Shannon said. “Dating and the whole normal relationship? Seriously?”
Was that what we’d been doing? All those nights out, the kissing, the touching, the texting each other ‘good night’ and ‘good morning’ as if the continued rotation of the earth depended on it—was thatdating?
Shit. Thatwasdating. We’d been dating, sort of, all this time and it took me until this weekend to get my hands on her tits.
“Yeah, Shan. Pretty much.”
“The universe must really fucking hate me ifyou’rein a healthy relationship,” she murmured. “Just wait, RISD will be next, and I’ll start hoarding cats and learning how to knit because what else is there to do with my time? Soon enough, you’ll all have kids but you won’t let me near them because all I’ll want to do is smell their little heads and make them promise not to let you assholes put Auntie Shannon in a home.”
“We already discussed this,” Andy said. “No one is letting you start a cat colony. Cool it with the end of days talk, or I’m cutting off your caffeine supply.”
“Bring her to Thanksgiving,” Matt said.
“Yeah,” Andy said. “Maybe she’ll like Lauren more than she liked me.”
“You can’t hold that against her,” I said. “She’s the friendliest person I know. We did not expect to run into you two. We were on our way out and Patrick was his usual jovial self, and she wasn’t wearing any—” I stopped myself before that thought went any further.
I’d never spared them an intimate detail in the past. If anything, I enjoyed the shock value of announcing I’d fucked another nameless, faceless woman in some questionably private location. But not now.
If Tiel was walking around bare-assed because I shredded her panties, we were the only two who needed to know about it.
“Oh shit, son,” Riley yelled. He clapped me on the back before rolling away from the table, laughing. “I need to meet this girl. Anyone who goes commando at an Arch Society gathering is a keeper.”
“She didn’t—no, I mean, I ripped her—fuck,” I groaned. “Never mind.”
“I’ve never had that much fun at any event put on by the Arch Society,” Matt said. “I might start attending more frequently.”
“Definitely a keeper. At the very least, she should come drinking on Black Friday,” Andy said. “We’ll see if she still hates me then.”
“As entertaining as this has been, we have a business to run and far more important things to discuss this morning,” Patrick said. “And it’s already eight thirty. All of you—shut the fuck up unless I tell you otherwise.”
Standing in the center of the Turlan’s kitchen, I glanced from one wall to another. The flow was all wrong and it wasn’t built to accommodate modern appliances—hence the refrigerator in the mudroom. The original design relegated cooking to the shadows, closing it off from the other living spaces with several small, choppy sections: the butler’s pantry, the dry goods pantry, the laundry, the galley. Bringing order to this room was my current puzzle, the one I’d been poring over all damn week, and I was getting it right this morning. I was convinced I’d make sense of it all if I stared long enough.
“What is this?” Riley asked, gesturing to a small pass-through between the interior and exterior. That, along with a grimy white tile backsplash, was revealed with the top layer of drywall removed. “Other than a respite from the cold for squirrels?”
“Milk door,” I murmured. “It’s where the milk bottles were delivered, and the empties returned.”
Riley shifted his weight and flipped through his notebook. That was one of his new things: keeping track of shit. I was actually impressed with how well he was doing. He snapped a picture and scribbled some notes, and though it was troubling he’d never encountered a milk door, I was more concerned with the kitchen. I was determined to preserve as much of the 1890s materials as possible, and there was no reason to demolish anything when it only required restoration. The cabinetry was in remarkable shape considering its age, and once we repaired the hardware and removed the flaking paint, it would be as good as anything new.
“All right,” I said, my arms outstretched as I held the plan in my mind. “We’re opening up that wall. The lower cabinets stay, and the uppers form this side of the island. Move that block”—I gestured behind me—“to the opposite end, and that’s the space for the refrigerator. Then blow out the dry goods pantry, and we have some clean, parallel flow lines.” I glanced to Riley, and the pencil frozen over his notebook. “Did you get all that?”
