Strangulation.
She never wants to let him go.
The cherished nub of warmthin her chest hasn’t faded all morning. Being up to her elbows in soapy dishwater should dim her happy glow, but she feels built up, alive, flourishing as if a hundred glorious flowers have grown all through her curls.
She understands now why poets twirl words into pretty bouquets and sing sonnets under windows to impress their lovers. The high is explicable. She has been fed; she is on top of the world. When they glance at each other—he with jeans slung low on his hips and a toolbox in hand as he heads off to work on the dining room; she with her curlspiled on her head and her cheeks rosy, still wearing his sweater—they both grin at each other like bashful school kids who just shared a note.
E likes B
She doesn’t ever want this feeling to cool down, to become so common that intimacy between them turns into rote action done in the name of husband and wife. She wants always for him to ravish her and she to eat out his heart.
Eleven a.m. is late to be tackling the breakfast dishes, but today is for indulgent, unhurried laziness in her beautiful kitchen that is a stark oasis against the chaos of the rest of downstairs. In here, she can pretend this is a dream house, everything is in its place, the new cabinet doors freshly painted, floor polished and clean. She just has to ignore the reality of turning the corner to a hallway lined with paint tins and sawhorses and curls of wood shavings and grime thick where the carpet has been ripped up.
They just finished with breakfast, and she only has half her mind on what she’ll make for lunch. Maybe egg salad so she won’t mess it up. She loves this, though: washing dishes before a huge window, lacy curtains fluttering, herbs in pretty pots on the sill, the sink full of delicate crockery patterned in hand-painted sunflowers and tulips and marigolds. She’s in a storybook, a fairy tale, and she doesn’t want to wake up.
It also helps that Jude has mellowed.
His nighttime wanderings are officially over since he’s decided the house is hungry for little boys, and he’s being clingy in the way she likes. Guilt tugs at her, but she pushes it away with the firm justification thatshedidn’t tell him these scary stories. She should just enjoy the simplicity of this: him following her around, tucking his hand into hers, twistingabout her legs like a cat and dancing his toy rabbit over her feet as she works. He’s playing on the kitchen floor, one arm wrapped around her calf in a coveted display of affection while he spins his rabbit by one of its threadbare ears. The feel of him leaning against her, with no riotous tantrum hovering in their periphery, only adds to how happy she is today.
She is content.
“I spy,” she says, since it’s her turn again, “something the color of cream.”
“Ice cream,” Jude says.
“Can you see ice cream right now?”
“No.” His bottom lip juts out. “You’re doing it too hard.”
Something crashes on the other side of the pocket doors that lead to the dining room and Bren swears before the circular saw starts up with a loud whine. Elodie waits to see if he’ll burst into the kitchen with an excitable rant about something he has done or is about to do, but only the sound of freshly cut wood hitting the floor greets them.
Elodie soaps up the next sunflower cup. “Keep guessing.”
Jude lowers his voice and says, “Fuck?”
“Jude.That’s not a color.”
“Bren said it first!” He pops off the floor and rubs his cheek against her leg.
“You’ve got one more guess or you lose.” She makes her voice stern, but she isn’t hung up on him swearing when it’s just them; there’s no one to judge her parenting.
His eyes go wide as he glances frantically about the kitchen. “Thefridge!” He runs to it and slaps both palms against the door.
She was thinking of the cream-colored fruit bowl stacked with clementines and apples, but he looks so pleased with himself as he jumps up and down that she smiles so he knows he won. They’ll play follow-the-leader next, and he’ll copy her as she does laundry and peelsboiled eggs, and she will know where he is, know he is safe and managed and controlled and happy.
Everything is made easier by the fact he is scared to be far from her.
This creepy old house is, perhaps, a good thing.
So long as she doesn’t think too hard on the things he’s said. She flicks a glance toward the archway leading out of the kitchen, gelatinous gloom sticking to the hall walls where the sun can’t reach. Unease wraps around her heartbeat. It’s nothing, literally just a darkened hallway, but the old wallpaper looks like flaking skin and her stomach twists.
She shakes off the disturbing, crawling feeling and drains the dirty water before slipping her wedding ring back on. She takes a second to smile at the way it hugs her finger before she notices Jude has gone quiet. Turning, she finds him under the kitchen table, squatting like a grubby little gremlin with his chin on his knees as he rocks and looks at something squirreled away beneath him.
“Let’s play follow-the-leader.” She reaches under the table to tickle his ribs, and that’s when she notices he has her phone. “Hey.” She frowns and holds out her hand. “You’re not allowed that and you know it.”
He starts whining. “I want to watch things.”
Cutting out screens for him has always seemed unnecessary to her, not to mention frustrating when she needs a break, but she doesn’t want to argue with Bren about it.
