“I’ve been on your table, Tripp,” I tell him, using a hand to gesture in his direction. “With the way you look and that soothing voice you do…I don’t like the idea of your hands being on other women while you do that.”
“Julia.” His head cocks to the side, the corner of his mouth pulling up into a smile that suggests he finds my discomfort endearing. “I talk to you that way because you’re my wife. It’s the same way that you tell me how handsome I am and kiss me on the cheek while you clean me up, but I know you’re not doing that with other men who sit in your chair.”
Pushing his chair away from the table, he stands, rounding the small space to reach me with a hand gently dropping to wrap around the base of my neck.
“You don’t have to worry about anyone on my table,” he tells me with a kiss to the top of my head. “I listen to my music, I make small talk, and then I come home to you.” Moving back to his seat, he adds, “You don’t have to worry about anyone who’snoton my table, either.”
A calm quiet falls over us as I try to digest what he’s saying to me; the comfort that he’s trying to offer to me, and I throw a smile onto my face as I extend a hand to him.
“Okay,” I say, “let me look at it again.”
Punching in the passcode for his phone, the same exact combination he’s used since we first started dating, he swivels the screen and slides it back across the table.
Offering myself a quick skim through his photo album, which is filled with image of after image of any one of three things: his artwork, our cat, or me. A warmth settles on my skin at the sight of a photo dated last week, with Drumstick and I curled up together for a short nap on the couch. My eyes flick in my husband’s direction only for a brief moment before moving back to the screen in front of me as I pull up the images from his work today.
Studying the artwork and not the woman on whose body it’s adorned, I shift my gaze to him again. “It really is beautiful, Tripp,” I tell him with a smile tugging at the corner of my lip. “I bet she was really happy with it.”
Pride meets his features as he takes the device once again, the tension between us slowly dissolving enough for us to finish our meal together in peace.
That peace remains as we clean our dishes together, both of us quietly deciding to ignore the overfilled dishwasher, and when I offer for him to join me in the shower, he declines. As used to it as I’ve gotten, it still stings to hear his excuses.
Especially when I know that’s all they are.
I stop when I reach the upper landing of the stairs, pressing the tips of my fingers to my lips and blowing out a kiss aimed toward the door just down the hall from our bedroom like I do almost every night.
While I shower, I leave the door open. A silent invitation, maybe even a plea; but the company that I’m wishing for never does come through the door. Instead, he’s standing at our dresser as I leave the bathroom, slipping into a clean pair of joggers that will act as his pajamas.
It’s a futile effort, the way that I pull back the covers not just on my side of the bed, but his, too. Not just futile. It’s bordering on pathetic.
I open my mouth to speak, but it closes again before I can even try to form a single word. As if he can sense my frustration with myself, Tripp crosses the room. Where I hope that he’ll kiss me or push me onto the bed and fall on top of me, he reaches past me to lower the light on my bedside lamp and unplug the charger from my e-reader, wearing a soft smile on his face as he does.
His fingers tenderly brush my hair off of my shoulder, the pads of them lingering at the side of my neck with a featherlighttouch. Letting myself melt into him for just a moment, I trace a line up the side of his body until I reach his waist.
My eyes drift closed as he cups the base of my skull before dropping a kiss against the side of my head, and as he turns away from me to step toward our bedroom door, the blanket of his warmth leaves my skin.
A hand raises to brace against the door’s frame, and over his shoulder, he forces a smile toward me which doesn’t seem to reach his eyes.
“Goodnight, baby,” he tells me. “Love you.”
My chest aches as I quietly return his sentiment. “Me too.”
A creak of one of the stairs announces his descent as he leaves me, and my teeth pull at the inside of my cheek.
It doesn’t seem like that long ago that he would have joined me in my shower and then in our bed. It isn’t that long ago that I wouldn’t have worried about him working with other women, either. I wouldn’t have worried that I wasn’t enough for him anymore or that our distance was making space for another person to step in between us.
As I lay alone in our bed, my hand wanders toward my cell phone. My fingers mindlessly guide themselves through my social media feed until I land on a photo album I’d put together in my junior year of high school.
I swipe through memory after memory of friends I’d sworn at the time that I’d never forget, who I didn’t hesitate to leave behind. Through parties my parents still don’t know that I ever threw, and trips they didn’t know I’d taken.
And there he is, with his arms sandwiching himself between myself and another of our friends, wearing a wide smile on his face.
He had no visible tattoos here, other than one etched into his palm, and he had a head of thick, loose curls so dark they looked nearly black if he wasn’t in the sunlight. It’s nearlyunrecognizable to the straightened and nearly-white locks that he wears now.
We bleached his hair for the first time only a few months after this photo was taken. Even with the brassy, uneven tones it rinsed out with, he told me that night that I’d unlocked the door to his cage.
I hadn’t known at the time what he meant by that. I wouldn’t get to know for a while.
Chapter 4
