My shit was everywhere, boxes half unpacked, garment bags lying over the couches, but Shep’s stuff was almost worse. He’d been taking everything out of drawers and closets to make room for me, so now his deluxe penthouse was in a state of disarray I knew had to be making him crazy. He was order and control, and this was the visual representation of our lives colliding at high speed.
I stood in the center of the living room surveying the damage. This wasn’t a small place by any means, certainly not by Manhattan standards, but suddenly it felt too small to bear our big lives.
“Shep?” I called out, not sure where he’d disappeared to until he responded. I found him in the main bedroom sitting cross-legged on the floor and looking like he was negotiating with God on how to fit both of our shoe collections in the closet.
“Maybe we just turn the guest room into a closet,” he murmured half to himself as he placed another of my shoeboxes on top of the pile.
“Eh, we don’t want anyone staying with us anyway.”
Shep smirked and pushed the boxes up against the wall, and I noticed a small carton off to the side with photos spilling out of them.
I was allowed to be nosy; that was what he got when he married me. No more secrets or surprises. Besides, I wanted to see all the hot younger photos of Shep, especially if they showcased any deviant behavior from college.
I grabbed a handful and flipped through them. They didn’t seem to be in chronological order, with some of him from his father’s presidency, and then others of his first days developing his magazine,Lincoln.
Aaand then came the more personal photos: Shep on the beach with a group of friends tossing a football; Shep in a nice suit, maybe early twenties, and posing with an actor I recognized. One of him with his arms wrapped around another guy in a teasing, but obviously close pose, and…
Him and King on the balcony of King’s place in the Caribbean, both shirtless and smiling at the camera in the selfie.
“Uh, Shep?” I said, and waited until he looked up to wave the photo. “You’ve still got a box of pictures of your exes.”
He barely gave them a passing glance as he pulled out more boxes from the closet. “Yeah, well, I didn’t run off with any of them to get married.”
Well, he had me there. “Touché,” I said, dropping the pictures back on top of the crate and flopping back on the bed, only to hear the crunch of something beneath my ass. I rolled to the side and pulled out a now-mangled basket and hoped that it wasn’t a family heirloom of some kind.“Those shoes are not going to fit,” I said. “My clothes? Definitely not going to fit.”
As if to make my point, his foot knocked into the pile of stacked shoes and they went tumbling, falling open and landing on Shep.
“Fuck me,” he said with a sigh, picking up a boot and throwing it across the room. He leaned back against the wall, his brow creased with annoyance.
He was still the most beautiful man I’d ever seen, even frustrated.Especiallywhen frustrated. It made me want to do things to his body that would have him moaning in seconds.
Impossible at the moment when there wasn’t an inch of free space to get him flat on his back.
“Babe,” I said, kicking a pile at my feet out of the way, “don’t take this the wrong way, but we can’t live here.”
“The mess is temporary. Maybe we can hire someone to organize?—”
“It’s not just that.”
“I thought you didn’t want to stay at your place?”
“I don’t.” The royal residence we had here in the city was nice, but too stuffy and not right at all for the two of us. And even though I’d always enjoyed being at Shep’s place... “Maybe we could make a place that’s both of ours. Somewhere you don’t have to move your shit to make room for all of mine and we can just…start all over.”
Shep studied me, a pensive look on his face, and then one side of his mouth quirked up. “Did you just call me ‘babe’?”
“I don’t think I’ve called anyone that in my life.”
“You did. I heard you.”
“I called you babe?”
“Mhmm.” Shep moved onto his knees, resting his arms on my thighs as he sat between them. “Feel free to call me that anytime.”
“Oh, you like a nickname,” I said, running my fingers through his hair. “I think I can come up with something better than that. Maybe something in?—”
“NotFrench.”
“—French.”
