My trunk is filled with shopping bags from stores all over town and the mall in the city. After the gas station, I’ve spent the better half of my day searching for and buying new, more realistic clothes.
Not the suits I’ve been groomed into wearing everyday.
My mother has groomed meso wellthat I don’t even know if I’ll feel comfortable in jeans. I took advantage of the mall and bought five different Levi’s, some similar and others in alight shade of blue. The t-shirts I didn’t like so I went to a different store.
I somehow found myself buying black and white t-shirts in a Prada to wear with the jeans. And multiple new sneakers from…Balenciaga, Gucci, Saint Laurent, a few Adidas and Nike too. I couldn’t help myself, old habits die hard. But at least now, I’ll look somewhat domesticated.
I drive down Main Street, earning myself the dirtiest looks from town residents when they see me in the car, and for the first time—I hate my car. This car used to be my pride and joy, the firstbig thingI ever bought for myself and now it’s meaningless. The only thing that would make this car better is having her in the front seat. But that isn’t going to happen again for a while.
I pass Books and Beans on my way to her house, again, and don’t see her car. Or her behind the counter. I turn left at the next stop sign, taking the road that leads me toward her.
Her Jeep is in the driveway when I pull in and she’s hopping out, grimacing and wincing as she lands on her feet. Lana gives me a side eye, her lip curling, as she struggles to walk to the house, legs wobbly.
I shut the engine and get out, catching up to her in two steps. “Lana.”
“You’re too persistent for your own good,” she grumbles with an eye roll.
“Let me help you,” I say, not waiting for a response. I bend and scoop her with an arm beneath her knees and the other around her back.
“Christian, what the hell are you doing?”
“Your feet or legs obviously hurt,” I say and take her up the stairs to the front door. Lana doesn’t protest, which only solidifies my assumption of her pain. “Keys?”
She shoots me a glare and shoves the key into the door, pressing the button above the handle and pushing open the door. I take one step before she reminds me, “Take off your shoes.”
Take off your shoes.She always reminded me when we got home to our old apartment. But the way she says it now feels like awelcome homeas I bring her into a house I’ve never been in. A house I’ve never walked around in with things I’ve never touched, with places I’ve never kissed her, a bed I’ve never held her, a kitchen I’ve never cooked for her in, a table I’ve never ate a meal with her at, a living room I’ve never held her and watched a movie she picked, with surfaces I’ve never made love to her on, and walls I’ve never kissed her up against, a shower we’ve never shared.
But she isn’t sayingwelcome toourhome.She’s saying it as,you are a visitor in my house and these are my rules, so take off your shoes.I take what I can get.
I don’t put her down as I try to slip off my Louboutin loafers. In front of me to my right, there’s a staircase. Past those stairs, from what I can see, is her kitchen and a seating room with a long white couch from. Light floods through from her glass back doors. To my right is her living room, where I take her after I kick the door closed gently.
“Here,” she mumbles.
I set her down gently, careful not to put her shoe clad feet on the couch because I know how passionate she feels about not wearing shoes in houses. Lana sighs and her eyes close. Lifting her legs, I sit on her couch and let her calves rest across my thighs.
“Is it your feet?” I untie her sneakers and pull them off carefully, a bloody bandaid coming off with them. She hisseswith quietow’s andshit’s and expletives in Spanish and English.
“It’s the shoes.” She curses again. “I just…haven’t been able to buy new sneakers, that’s all.”
She doesn’t want to buy new sneakers yet—she was always a saver. My thumb presses into the arch of her foot and I don’t miss her quiet moan.
“You can go,” she whispers. “You don’t have to…Just go.”
“I want to,” I say, and press down the arch again, smoothing out the tension. “I used to do it all the time.”
I look up at her and she’s already looking at me, her caramel eyes soft and nostalgic. “I know,” Lana breathes. “Thank you.”
“Anything.”
“I’m stillveryangry with you,” she whispers.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
“This is a temporary cease fire,” she says. “It feels too good.”
“Temporary cease fire,” I agree with a nod, and I move on to her other foot.
Lana sighs into the press of my thumbs and sinks into her couch, curling her body against the cushions like she might take a nap. “You can’t be here.”
