I’m laughing while he carries me through the apartment. “If I’d been all horned up, you would have totally done it, wouldn’t you have?” I’m delighted with this aching, exhausted, nearly middle-aged husband at two in the morning.
“Happily,” he says, and then he sits my ass onto the bathroom counter. “But instead, just imaginebrushing your teeth.”
“Oooh, yes. More.”
He’s running the faucet and handing over my toothbrush.
“Picture hot water in your hands. You’re washing your face.”
“More, big boy.”
“Now you’re applying eye cream and lip balm.”
I’m laughing with the pure joy of being known by him, and thus, getting this joke.
“Don’t stop,” I say, and then hock toothpaste into the sink beside me.
“You’re stripping in the bedroom. You’re digging through the bottom drawer, your favorite drawer. You’re…sliding into those wrinkly yellow shorts with Snoopy on them.”
“Mmmm.”
“Add a sweatshirt, but, baby…” His voice has gone all low and rumbly.
“Yes?”
“Don’t forget the socks.”
I’m laughing as I slide off the counter and proceed to go about my bedtime routine in pretty much the exact way that was just described to me.
We’re slipping past one another in the bathroom, he’s handing me my headband I use for washing my face, I’m peeing with the door open while he chucks clothes into the hamper. We are so fucking good at this.
Finally, we’re washed up and grinning, standing on our respective sides of the bed. He turns his back, I hold my breath.
And down he goes.
Squeak!
I feel that exclamation point in my soul.
We meet under the covers. “Welcome home,” I whisper.
“I never left,” he whispers back.
Nineteen
Well, sunshine, bluebirds,I’m sure you can imagine.
Actually, it’s kind of cloudy from what I can tell and we don’t wake up to the sound of bluebirds chirping, we wake up to Vin’s phone ringing.
“Hi, Ma,” he says, gravel in his voice as he rolls over and half sandwiches me between him and the mattress. I’m on my belly and his cheek is on my back. I can feel his voice reverberate through my own rib cage. “Oh, yeah? Right…right…Well, let me ask her…He’s not picking up? I’m sure he’s fine. I was with him last night…Okay. I’ll call you back.”
He tosses the phone to elsewhere on the bed and I roll to my back. He tucks one arm over my hips. “What was that about?”
“Everil canceled their Fourth of July plans. I guess he’s going on some retreat out west.”
Everil is Vin’s mom’s “man friend.” He knits his own sweaters and wears secondhand Crocs. I’d call him a real find except for that about six times a year he goes on spiritual retreats where self-proclaimed gurus feed him lentils and tap water and take big wet bites out of his retirement fund in exchange for enlightenment. If you want my opinion, if you have to purchase it with all the money you saved from your lifetime position as a bank teller, it probably isn’t all that enlightened, whatever it is.
“So she wants us to come keep her company?” I guess.
