I let out a breath I had apparently been holding without authorization. Something across my shoulders loosens, quiet and involuntary, and I am irritated enough by that reaction that I take a sip of my warm beer just to have somewhere else to put my hands.
Baxter's tail thumps once against the floor, slow and certain, like punctuation.
“I just really think this one’s different, George,” Eleanor says, and her voice changes on the sentence, softening from full wedding logistics mode into something quieter and more dangerous.
It is no longer the planner talking.
It is just my sister, at nine-thirty on a weeknight. “I’m just telling you what I saw.”
Something pulls tight in my throat, and I refuse to give that sensation any narrative importance. I blame the dry air.
"Don't get ahead of yourself," I say.
We wrap up the way we always do, Eleanor already halfway into her next thought before she says goodbye, and then the call ends and the room is very quiet. Just the low murmur of thetelevision. Just Baxter breathing against my feet like a small, warm anchor.
I look down at him and he looks up at me with the calm, unblinking certainty of someone who has already figured this out and is simply waiting for me to catch up.
"She went dress shopping with my family," I say aloud, just to hear how it sounds.
Baxter's ear twitches.
I pull up Tessa's contact in my phone and stare at it for a moment, my thumb hovering over her name. Then I set the phone face-down on the cushion beside me, because calling her at nine-thirty on a Thursday night to saywhat exactly have you donerequires more composure than I currently possess. Tomorrow. I'll get the full story tomorrow.
But the thing is, and this is the portion of the situation I cannot file away or explain into submission, my family loves my temporary girlfriend.
I lean back and close my eyes, and the image that arrives is immediate and entirely unhelpful: a woman standing in soft light somewhere, smiling at my sister in a wedding dress while my mother leans in. The woman’s face stays frustratingly out of focus.
"Well," I tell Baxter, "this is going to be interesting."
He puts his chin back on my foot and sighs.
