She beamed and kissed him again, and if a tourist family hadn’t come up the trail at that moment, they might have done more.
Coming down from the summit, the town spread out below them as neat and pretty as the ceramic village his mom set up at Christmastime, they’d held hands, some kind of unspoken dialogue filling the space between them. It was nice. Better than nice. Kind of perfect, actually.
He got used to seeing her pop up on his phone, messages about Hailey or chatty text strings about the people who came into the shop or silly memes about carpenters. (Nailed it!she’d typed, making him laugh out loud, earning a grinning look from Miguel.) He caught himself reaching for his phone at random moments, like a smoker for a cigarette, eager for a fix. It was a lousy substitute for actually seeing her. Touching her. But he did his best to respond. Sent her pictures of the dog or the mantel he was installing to go with that new front door.
There was stuff he couldn’t fit in a text, of course. Things he couldn’t say when he was ordering coffee at the counter with her mother looking on. Things he didn’t tell her even when he was buried as deep inside her as he could get, sharing her breath, feeling her heartbeat.
And maybe that was for the best. He had his life and Anne had hers. She wasn’t talking about staying. And he couldn’t leave. Their lives didn’t match up.
That didn’t stop him from wanting to see her every chance he got.
“Why do I have to go to work? I mean, I’m basically a prisoner,” Hailey grumbled on Tuesday as he walked with her into Maddie’s.
Joe’s jaw set. They’d had pretty much this same conversation every morning for the past week.
“At least you get to leave the house,” Anne said. “Like a work-release program.” She smiled at Joe. “Coffee?”
He looked at her in gratitude. “Thanks.”
“Liv got thoseAnneDVDs you were talking about,” Hailey said. “The old ones, with Megan Follows? We were going to watch them together. But I can’t because I’m grounded.”
“Poor baby,” Anne said cheerfully. “Maybe I could come over after work? I know it’s not the same, but—”
“Please. It’s so boring being home by myself.”
Joe cleared his throat. “You’ve served your time,” he told his sister. “You’re free to go.”
Hailey turned her shining face to his. “Really?”
“I’ll talk to Mom. Unless you’d rather stay home.”
“No! Yay! Thank you!”
“You could still come over,” he said to Anne. “If you want.”
Because whatever came after, he wanted whatever he could get now. Before she went to Chicago or Colorado or fucking Thailand. And maybe she did, too, because she beamed at him.
—
Joe was feelinggood when he and Miguel knocked off work and he went home to clean up.
He set his own hours. But he was always mindful of the weather, of the light, of the client, of Rob’s sometimes too flexible approach to the job. His days started at eight and ended at five or whenever the job was done. When he and Britt were married, their schedules had always been off, like amisaligned wood joint. She liked working evenings and weekends, when the bar was crowded and the tips were good. Maybe if they’d spent more time together, he would have noticed they were just two people sharing a house.
He checked the time. Changed his sheets. And if a part of him was thinking this was the way it was supposed to be, seeing Anne first thing every morning, welcoming her home at the end of the day, being the one who got to sleep with her at night…Well, a man couldn’t help his thoughts.
He heard the back door open. She was here. Throwing the pillows on his bed, he jogged down the stairs, anticipation rising in his blood, fierce and hot.
“Mom! What are you doing home?”
Nicole stood in front of the open refrigerator. “Hailey texted me. She invited Liv over for dinner tonight.” She turned, holding a package of ground beef. “Don’t you look nice. Hot date?”
He felt the blush at the back of his neck, like he was fifteen years old again and she’d caught him looking at porn on the computer. “I took a shower.”
“And trimmed your beard and put on a shirt with no holes in it.”
His mom could turn a blind eye when she wanted to. Apparently she didn’t want to.
He shrugged. “It was clean.”
