“I feel like death,” she groans. “Why did you let me get so drunk?”
“I don’t make those decisions for you,” I remind her.
“I barely remember most of the day.”
“You were hitting it pretty hard, especially after what happened with Harry.”
“I’m not apologizing to him,” she says quickly.
“I wouldn’t ask you to. I didn’t hear the whole conversation, but I heard some.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay,” I concede, not wanting to get into an argument about her mom or the role I played in the destruction of their relationship. “I had Armand make you a smoothie. You should sip at it, you’ll only feel worse if you get more dehydrated.”
We spend the rest of the day on the couch, watching crappy TV and just existing, happy and together. When the sun has set, I carry Starling to bed, strip her naked, and fuck her slow and deep, kissing her the entire time.
“How are you feeling?” I ask the next morning.
“Much better,” she says, shuffling up the bed until she’s sitting up, her weight rested on her elbows. “Are you going to work?”
“Yeah, I have a meeting this morning, but I should be home for lunch. Any requests?”
“Does Armand take requests? Doesn’t he have to plan a menu or something?”
“He’s our personal chef, he takes requests. What do you want?”
“Fries,” she says decisively.
“Fries,” I repeat back to her. “Just fries.”
“I mean, if he could make them like those ones we had that I loved.”
Smiling, I nod. “Truffle and parmesan fries.”
“God, yes, that sounds amazing.”
“Anything else?”
“I don’t care as long as I get fries.”
“Are you going to school this morning?” I ask.
“No,” she says on a yawn. “I’m going to run, then watch my lectures on the patio.”
“Okay, Little Bird, have a good morning. Your breakfast is in the oven.”
“Thank you,” she says sweetly, curling her arm around my neck and pulling me down for a kiss.
I smile my entire drive to the office. Starling is happy. She might not have even admitted it to herself yet, but she likes being an online student. The only friends she has are Sammy, Bunny, and January, and with Sammy too pregnant to go to campus and Bunny and January having completely different majors, even if she’d have gone to class, she’d have spent all her time alone.
A part of me feels guilty that I’m the reason she struggles to form friendships, but I’m happy with our social circle and don’t really want to have to welcome anyone else into our group.
It isn’t until I park my car in the parking structure that I realize my cell is in my pocket and not open with the house security cameras and the tracking app on the screen. It’s been well over a year since I spent a moment apart from my wife that I wasn’t constantly tracking her behavior and location, but today I forgot.
I search for the panic that has had me in a stranglehold since I saw the tracking chip roll across the table and can’t find it. But I don’t know if its absence is because I’ve accepted that if she decides to leave me, she’s capable of doing so in a way that would mean I’d probably never find her. Or if, for the first time in what feels like forever, I don’t think she’s going to run.
Riding the elevator to my office, I greet everyone I recognize as I walk through the floor of people, closing my office door behind me and sinking down into the chair behind my desk.
