Chapter One
Ican’t stop staring at the picture of me and Cade at Pride. It’s a selfie that he insisted we take. He’s making a dumbass face and squishing me into his cheek, and while I don’t look comfortable, I do look… happy. Relaxed. In love.
Earlier, I noticed how much dust had gathered on the frame, even though we only put it there a couple of months ago. It’s harder to see now, which makes me think it might be nighttime. I could look at the window or the time or something, but it seems pointless to waste the energy. I can’t change what time of day it is.
I can clean this fucking picture frame, though. And all the shit around it. There’s half a dozen little items strewn across the sideboard, all stuff that Cade collected that day and felt like memorializing in our house. Wristbands and novelty condoms and the penis lollipop I refused to eat.
Because of the sugar, not because I didn’t want to be seen with a confectionary dick in my mouth. I’m not that fucked up.
I have a love-hate relationship with all the crap. Cade is absolutely the only reason this place feels like a home. Every piece of junk he gets excited over and puts on a shelf or dumb picture he gets a dollar-store frame for makes this place feel more like a home and less like the tomb it always was before. Even just the little stuff, like the way he leaves t-shirts and shoes lying around in every single room, or the girls’ school shit and art up on the fridge.
It’s beautiful, in a way. It feels like how real families are supposed to be. I could have lived a thousand lifetimes and never would have expected to have this. Even the thought of it right now makes my heart pinch in my chest, half with indescribable love and warmth, half with the terror that one day it will inevitably come to an end. Probably just when I’ve really come to take it for granted.
The downside to it all is that it makes it absolutely impossible to keep it clean. Along with the pictures and dirty laundry are fast food wrappers and papers that the girls forgot to take with them, plus a million other pieces of garbage. Sky’s sticky fingers manage to touch every single surface, and no matter what, disorder reigns in this space.
It bothers me. I try to force myself not to care, but it doesn’t work. I have a home that actually feels like home for the first time in my life. Why should I complain about the mess?
The part of me that gets what he wants but still never seems satisfied might be the part of myself I hate the most.
I don’t know how long I turn inwards to dwell on that thought. I know I’m standing next to the picture with one hand resting on it, still not really cleaning, and I think it gets darker because the lights turning on feels so abrupt I nearly jump out of my skin.
“Never fear! Your man has arrived, and like a good provider, I come with sustenance.”
Cade’s voice booms out from the entryway, knocking me back into reality. I blink a few times while my brain pulls itself out of the sludge of whatever I had been thinking about, which is already becoming a fuzzy memory, and my eyes adjust to how fucking bright it is in here.
“Hey baby,” he says, his voice closer now, before I feel his warm hand on the back of my neck as he pulls me in for a kiss.
I blink again, and everything continues to come back into focus. Cade’s cheeks are pink-tinged from the cold outside, which combines with the brightness in his eyes to make him look so young. So vivacious. I want to siphon it off into myself.
He’s smiling at me like I’m the most amazing thing he’s ever seen, which is how he always looks at me and I’ll never get used to it.
Too many pieces of myself are marked by his fingerprints. Like a subtle, repeating pattern that saysCade was herein some infinite, unreadable language. Like I belong to him, and don’t exist without him.
“I don’t think you count as the ‘provider’ if we both work but it just happens to be my day off. How was your shift?” I ask.
My voice sounds normal, so I think whatever moment I was in before is being chased away by Cade’s buoyant presence.
“It was good. A lady who shall remain nameless because of HIPAA, but I really wish I could name, had a very interesting run in with a hair curler that should not have been plugged in at the time. And now I’m beating Tristan at Self-Induced Sexual Injury Bingo. If I keep this up, he’s buying us dinner.”
The image makes me cringe, although Cade’s unreasonably gleeful delivery makes me want to laugh. He’s in the process of breezing past me toward the kitchen, bag of food in hand, when he catches the grimace and stops, his hand resting gently on my forearm.
“Don’t worry, she’s okay. She laughed about it as well, I promise I wouldn’t be making fun if it was super serious.”
He leans in to kiss me one more time before moving deeper into the house, but seems to catch sight of something in my face. It makes him cock his head to the side just a little, gray eyes searching mine.
“You okay?”
I nod. “I’m fine. I was just cleaning.”
Cade looks around with a half-smile.
“Cleaning what? You keep this place spotless. I feel like I’m living in a museum half the time.”
He laughs again, warm and real, coating my skin like raindrops. He doesn’t really mean it, but we do have very fucking different views on the definition of ‘clean’.
“Come on,” he adds. “Let’s eat.”
“What did you get?”
