His gaze shifts to me in his peripheral with a shake of his head so subtle that I could almost miss it. Blowing out another stream of smoke, he flicks his spent cigarette over the balcony’s railing, bringing his forearms back down to rest against the warm metal.
Uncomfortable silence hangs between us once again, seemingly our new normal, as he pulls another cigarette from the pack and rests the filter between his lips. He doesn’t reach for his lighter right away; instead, his face angles toward the warm sun overhead and back into the glass windows of our hotel room.
“It’s not that you had sex with her,” he finally says. “People fuck the wrong people all the time. Shit happens. It’s that youkeptfucking her, and then you fucking lied to me about it. You let me stress out about it for weeks.”
“I screwed up. I’m not gonna try to make excuses for it.” My hand fidgets with the lid of my drink; screwing and unscrewing the lid, my fingertips tapping against the flimsy metal. “I have feelings for her.”
“I know you do.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Fuck, I know that, too, Schepp,” he barks. “Iknowyou know that you fucked up. I know you know that you should have told me. Doesn’t mean I can just act like it didn’t happen.”
Finally bringing his lighter to the end of his cigarette, he lights it with a shake of his head. He doesn’t pull in a drag. He just holds the lit cigarette between his fingers, occasionally flicking the ash over the railing behind him.
“So what was that, last night, then?” I brave asking.
“We’d just spent three hours talking about you,” he scoffs. “We had too many drinks, got too emotional, shit got weird, and it’s never happening again.”
My brow quirks at that, my weight shifting onto one foot.
“Right,” I nod slowly and disbelievingly, “the way you kissed me definitely screamed ‘this is a one-off.’”
Without giving him time to do much more than shoot an annoyed glare in my direction, I step back into the hotel room and slide the door closed behind me.
Julia’s things are all laid out on her and Tripp’s bed, organized into piles and ready to be packed. She offers a smile as she steps out of the bathroom with an arm full of hair tools and products. Her eyes meet mine before snapping down toward her luggage with a blush crawling across her cheeks.
I reach for my own suitcase to pull out a change of clothes, which I slip into next to my bed.
Julia’s eyes flick to me one more time as she settles a curling iron between two pairs of shoes that she didn’t even wear.
“Are you driving back with us?”
I look through the door behind me to Tripp, still standing at the balcony with the cigarette tucked between his fingers, then back to his smiling wife.
“Yeah,” I nod definitively. “I am.”
Chapter 25
JULIA
“Where’s my bestest babiest boy?” I coo as I push open the door that leads from the garage to the house.
It takes a minute, but excited chirps and meows filter down from the top of the stairs as Drumstick stretches out his body, freshly woken from what appears to have been an excellent nap. While Tripp works to bring in our bags, Drumstick trots down the stairs toward me, and I scoop him up into my arms to press kisses to the soft skin of his cheeks.
I expected our ride out to Jacksonville to be awkward, maybe even painful, and it wasn’t.
I expected the ride back to be quiet, that we’d all feel better now that we’d gotten whatever that was out of our systems, but we didn’t.
What I hoped would be the start of rekindling friendships was reduced to uncomfortable silences and even more uncomfortable looks passed between each other. I’d like to believe that it got better after I stole Tripp’s earbuds to listen to a book, but my gut worries that it might just be wishful thinking on my part.
After he finishes carting in our things, Tripp lays on the floor of our living room to let Drumstick walk, knead, and roll all over his body to say hello. I join the two of them, lowering myself to sit next to my husband. My fingers push through his hair as I smile down at him.
“You…” I hesitate, biting at the inside of my cheek.
Is it outing him if I watched it happen?
Is he going to feel like he’s being cornered or attacked if I ask?
