I will never forgive him for this.
I spend way too muchtime trying to figure out the sleeping situation, since (a) no way in hell am I sharing a bed with that asshole again, and (b), the pull-out he so chivalrously offered feels like it’s made from the demolished parts of a greenhouse. I may as well sleep inside a shark’s mouth, right over its many layers of teeth, for all the comfort it provides.
I also don’t want to go to Nadia’s. It feels too much like admitting defeat, not just to myself and to Carter, but also to my family. We’ve been married for mere days.Days. Granted, I’m not exactly known for my relationship expertise, but even I know sleepingelsewhere after just days of marriage, even a fake one, is classified as pathetic. Knowing my luck, one of his family members will see me hauling ass back home, and it will make its way to Abuela Erika, and all of this will have been for naught.
I refuse for all of this to have been for naught.
So I snoop all around Carter’s house and find a sleeping bag. I spend half an hour making it up in his gym room. I move my bedside table—the one next to my side of the bed in which I spent exactly a single night—next to it, along with the little lamp, and my stack of books I’m in the middle of, as well as a candle. The carpet in this room is thick so it isn’t bad, not really.
I pick up my phone and schedule an appointment for a local PI with good reviews. I register to the local dahlia society’s annual tuber sale, happening in only two days. And then I Insta-stalk Leilani, who apparently is having the time of her life, stealing art from nonwhite people and “riding the tide of love with the universe in motion” all over NoCal.
She’s also managed to acquire awhole new facesince moving. When I click on her latest selfie, I swear my jaw drops and rolls out the door like on some kind of old-school cartoon.
Look, I’m not a plastic surgeon, or even a doctor of any kind. But my favorite sort of reality television features cosmetic surgery—Botched,Nip/Tuck, you name it and I’m a whore for it. Thus, in my trashy-TV-informed opinion, Lani’s had Botox injections on her forehead and eyebrows, filler in her nasolabial folds, and most obvious of all of these, lip injections. The way she’s pursed them after slathering on shiny fuchsia lip gloss, it looks like the top lip is about to bust open.
I’ve got nothing against cosmetic surgery. Amá Sonya has had at least one facelift that I know of, and I’m pretty sure she gets her lips filled routinely. I think she looks elegant. I’ve even investigatedgetting a (small) BBL, but the long list of risks didn’t seem worth it to me.
That said, Lani has spent her entire life professing that she’ll never do anything “fake” with regards to anti-aging, that with her routine of organic essential oil facials and mud and algae baths, she would age gracefully the “natural way.” Seeing her face transform in such a short amount of time just reinforces what an asshole hypocrite she is, and it pisses me off enough that I toss my phone halfway across the room before tucking myself in for the night, having had quite enough of the internet for the day.
I fall asleep, and when I wake up, at seven thirty in the morning, thanks to my alarm?
I’m back in bed.
“What the—” I mutter, glancing up. Then I jump up.
The table’s back, along with my books, my candle, my phone charger. The long line of pillows in the middle of the bed is there, along with the throw pillows I had collected to make up my gym room bed.
“Carter!” I yell, stomping out. “Carter, what the fuck?”
But the coward is gone.
I swear, I’m so mad I feel like a hurricane is instantaneously going to descend upon our house and rip it to pieces. The sky outside is dark, and wind howls against the windows like angry spirits.
Until I see that the pull-out is made up. Well, messed up. I approach it slowly. I definitely folded it up yesterday, which means Carter undid all that work. Which means Carter spent the night here.
I push my breath out, defeated. The sky clears and sunshine pours through the wall of windows, making everything appear edged in yellow gold. My mood shifted that fast.
He put me in bed. But he knew I didn’t want to sleep next to him, so he didn’t do that against my will. And I gotta say, that bed is a hell of a lot nicer than carpet, no matter how thick.
I hate how thoughtful that was.
I spend the day digging up sod from the front yard. I have to grow Sage’s damn dahlias somewhere. Because yes, I, Teal Flores, a woman who doesn’t know the first thing about plants, am going to grow my sister’s wedding flowers. And weirdly enough, I don’t mind the work of it—of shoveling, at least. Digging through the rough, tight knots of grass roots is kind of like running, only it doesn’t make my knee feel like it’s breaking into several thousand pieces.
After showering, I look at jobs some more, and then spend a good twenty minutes stressing out over dinner, even though it’s only three in the afternoon. Carter didn’t ask me to make a meal. But he’s expecting it, right? I’m the one staying at home, not working, with access to the nicest kitchen I’ve ever cooked in. Then again, I really don’t feel like cooking for someone who is now making a legitimate habit of running away from me. He can tell me he’s attracted to me all he likes, but actions speak louder than words. And right now, his actions have bruised my ego and my feelings and, to be honest, have made my chest feel a bit like someone punched a hole through my sternum.
But also—I don’t want to be selfish anymore. Hence New Year’s resolution number one.
I decide to call the least selfish person I know to get some advice.
“What’s up?” Sage asks. I put her on speakerphone as I prepare a cup of café Cubano on Carter’s awesome espresso machine.
“Question. If Tennessee put you on the kitchen counter and fingered you, and then told you it was all a mistake and ran away,and it’s been a whole day and you haven’t seen or heard from him since,but…if he did kind of a nice thing while you were sleeping after all that…would you cook him dinner?”
I guess Sage was drinking water or something, because the only thing I hear in response is sputtering and coughing.
“Hello?” I ask. “You good, Sage?”
Then Sky’s voice is on the phone. “Hey. Did you just say Carter fingered you?”
