I shrug. “Lauro ordered one and it sounded good.”
“…Is it?” he asks.
“Is it what?” I’m confused.
“…Is it good?”
My brow comes down. I can tell what he’s really asking me, but if he wants to ask, he’s gonna have to ask. “I mean. It’s new. Different.”
“Right.” His eyes are on his beer again.
“So…” I can’t help but fish. “Sorry Raffi just bailed on your plans.”
“Oh.” He’s frowning down, avoiding my gaze. “It wasn’t reallyplanswith Raff. I…knew you were going to be here.”
My stomach swoops on an updraft. He can be frustratingly evasive, yes. He can also be very, very blunt.
My mouth has gone dry.
“You were gone last night,” he says.
Ask me where I went.My heart is pitter-pattering.
“I figured…our conversation…”
Now my stomach plummets. Oh, right. He hasn’t trackedme down because he wanted to see me. He’s tracked me down because he wants to finish what we started last night.
I’m sure my face betrays the dismay I wish weren’t threading through me but he’s not looking at me anyways. He’s looking for answers in his beer glass. He’s lifting it to his lips, and then a Great Dane of a man bumps Vin’s shoulder on the way past.
“Sorry, dude!” he says with a friendly wave, his eyes popping out of his head when he sees that Vin’s beer has just upended itself onto my shirt. Which is now basically translucent. My blue lace bra waves hello to Vin and anyone else who cares to look.
He immediately bands an arm around my shoulders and pulls me into his chest, covering me. I’m stiff with the shock of his arms suddenly around me.
“Bathrooms are back there,” the bartender says with a point.
Vin quickly swims me along through the crowd and then we’re in a beautiful single-stall bathroom with a silvered-blue mirror and a wingback chair in the corner. It’s spooky-sexy in here. Like a Victorian powder room where the duke ravishes the maid he’s not supposed to have fallen for. Or the other way around.
Vin is cranking paper towels like he’s trying to qualify for the Olympics. And then he’s there. Blocking out the world and pressing the paper towels to my stomach and chest. I can see his broad back reflected in the mirror.
His hands are huge and firm and gentle and the wet fabric lightly abrades my skin. This bra doesn’t hide a damn thing and his movements get a little less businesslike when he sees the points forming under his hands. His breath washes over my face, his eyes are doing that thousand-suns thing again, and I look anywhere but at him.
We’ve been here so many times. I’m dizzy with the déjà vu of it. Vin’s shoulder close enough to bite. The only difference? All those times were borne on the back of our wedding vows. Our forever. Our till death.
But this, wet clothes, his hands firm on my hips—he’s leaning back on the sink, trying to read me—this is borne on the back of that lease. His emergency exit. I get the reverse of déjà vu. I’veneverhad this feeling with Vin before. Like I’m standing in wet clothes with a stranger in a cold room.
His hands are still on my hips. There’s an infinitesimal press, him moving me slightly closer. Muscle memory, probably, from a time when he’d have already been unbuttoning my jeans.
Time passes between us like a veil. For a moment I glimpse a different Vin. Like there are two of him.
The one I married and the one I’ve been living with for the last year.
He must read something in my expression because his hands fall back to his sides.
A thought occurs:I wonder if there are two of me, too.
“Roz—”
“It’s fine. Really. I just wanna go home.” I push past him and back out into the bar. I’ve got cash in my hand, but I’m not fast enough because Vin’s already leaving some next to our half-full drinks. And then he’s falling into step beside me. I can feel his eyes on the side of my face. It isn’t until the noise of the bar cuts out with the closed door that I realize exactly how close this bar is to my art class, to the dreaded Nine Five Four. Just around the corner from Vin’s residence in less than eight weeks. I wonder if he’s thinking about it. Imagining his new spot. I wonder if it’s furnished. Oh, God. I wonder if he’s going to ask to take half of our furniture with him when he goes.
