“Roz, you’re so quick in arguments. Making sure you understand what I’m saying ishardfor me.”
“I get it, Vin. I mean, I’m starting to get what you mean by that. But this is just a few simple words! Extremely important words that could have changed everything for me if you’d just said them!” I’m equal parts irate and elated. I want to scream.
He’s nodding, his hands on the counter on either side of my hips. Resolve is forming in his expression. “You want to talk about words? Let’s talk about words.Finewas your word,” he says in a low voice. I’m eye level with those baby greens and, baby, they are killing me right now.
“What?”
“Just now. When I said the thing about how I know how to cook and you know how to change a lightbulb. I wasn’t sayingSo therefore I’ll be fine if I move out.Those were your words. I was saying the opposite.”
“What? Explain! I don’t get it.” I’m shivering. He’s rubbing big hands slowly up and down my arms, trying to warm me.
“I was trying to say that the reason you cook for me isn’t because I literally can’t. Just like the reason I carry groceries and retile the kitchen floor isn’t because you can’t. I do it because that’s what I do for you…And…And if I really did leave, because you wanted me to…I wouldn’t be fine. But I would feed myself, if you didn’t want to anymore. And I would still do things for you. Everything that you’d let me.”
Tears and more tears, but these ones are the kind that everyone wishes they could cry. Big, fat, and demure, rolling down my cheeks and over my trembling lips.
“How can you say the most romantic thing ever aboutmoving out? Jesus, Vin! What’s wrong with us?”
“I told myself when I married you, Roz, I’d give you anything you needed. I’m like…hardwired to do that.”
The boxes are for Raff. He didn’t sign the lease. He’d do everything I’d let him do.
I can’t help it. My body takes the wheel and thanks, girl, because what a great idea. My legs go around his waist, my arms around his neck.
I’m mad. I’m confused. I’m holding him so tight I’m not even on the counter anymore. It’s got to be painful for him, this hold, but he just nuzzles into my hair, one arm under my butt and the other cinched against my back.
I feel a quake against my chest. One big compression and a throat clear. I release him, to see for myself, and sure enough, Vin’s eyes are squeezed closed. When he opens them, they overflow. I treat my thumbs to beinghiswindshield wipers for once.
“I missed you so much,” he whispers, pressing his forehead into mine.
He sets me back on the counter and we’re hugging in all the positions a person could possibly hug. If it were sex, it would be unrealistically pornographic, but as it’s just hugging, it’s incredibly soul-healing. His hands slide up my arms, to my shoulders, to my neck, to my chin. He’s holding me, his green eyes as clear as tide pools. His gaze drops to my lips, he’s leaning in—
“Hold the phone.”
He freezes, his gaze lifting from my lips to my eyes. Holding.
“We have not gotten to the bottom of this motherfucking lease.”
He laughs, probably because I look ornery and grouchy and dizzily in love all at once. “Let’s clear it up,” he says.
I tug at his shirt for emphasis. “Well, I get that you didn’t sign it. And that’s nice. Wonderful. A really, you know,crucialpiece of information. That I would have liked to have had when I first found it. But why did you have itat all? If youweren’t going to sign it, then why was it in our house in the first place?”
“Right.” Vin’s eyes are downcast. He’s daunted by all he’s about to have to explain to me. I wish I could set him up like a movie projector and let his brain just shine the story on a blank wall. Alas, we’re humans. Alas, words.
“Okay. So…” He picks me up and walks me across the apartment, dumping me with a bounce on the guest bed. He steps back and looks at me, hands on his hips. Then he turns on his heel and walks to his closet, pulls out a big blue sweatshirt, and stuffs me into it. “I can’t watch you shiver anymore.”
“Vin!” I clap my hands. “Focus!”
“Okay.” He nods again. I’m starting to thinkokayis his power word. “So…”
He drops to his knees in front of me. At first I think,Bold! I didn’t let him go in for a kiss and he’s going straight for gold.But no, he’s just digging under the bed for…the wrapped frame I picked up from St. Michel right before Vin’s mother’s birthday.
“Vin!”
“You never opened this.” He hands it to me.
“Why would I open it? It was for your mother.”
He shakes his head. “No, it wasn’t.”
