“Right,” she said.
It would be good practice. Great practice. They could get back in his truck like nothing had happened.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, pulling her shirt over her head, now completely pieced back together. “You’re a good boss.”
“Shit,” he said.
“No. I mean it. My last boss didn’t give me a single orgasm.”
“I think that actually makes me a bad boss.”
And they should be joking about it. This was one of his sacred cows, and he had only tipped it over, he had slaughtered it.
Sacrificed it on the altar of his libido, and that wasn’t really something he was proud of.
But she seemed okay. More than okay.
“No. Because I am trying to put my life back together. And you are right. You were a great choice. For a lot of reasons.”
“Glad that I could be of service.”
She walked out of the cabin, and left him standing there, looking at the wreckage.
“Motherfucker,” he said, rubbing his forehead before stepping out of the cabin and closing the door behind him, locking it.
He was going to have to remember to do the cleanup as soon as possible. No, there would be no remembering. He was going to take her back home, and then he was going straight back to the cabin.
He gave Walker a quick text, letting his brother know that he was going to have to be in charge of dinner tonight.
They did all share responsibility, but unless he made a plan, nothing got done, and usually that ended with hissiblings browsing through his fridge at odd hours of the night.
Not his favorite.
She got into the truck before him, and he fought the urge to cross himself like the lapsed Catholic his mother was, needing something to fortify him for the journey.
He got into the truck and started the engine. “I called Aiden last night,” she said.
“Great,” he said, putting the truck in reverse and flooring it out of the gravel drive, a little bit too enthusiastically. Pieces of gravel bounced up and hit the underside of his truck, and he grimaced.
“I yelled at him. I… I’ve just never been so angry at somebody. Because he knew. He knew everything that I had been through. He saw me going through it. When I was in high school.”
“Fuck him. Honestly. He sounds like an average, normal dude.”
He wondered if he was being too hard, too dismissive, even, but she turned to look at him, a perplexed expression on her face. “He is. You… you’re right. I… this betrayal felt like something so weird and out of left field that I think I’ve been trying to figure out the key to it. But there is no key. He wanted to have sex with a new person. So he did. And at a certain point, obviously, the double life thing wasn’t going to work. And… whether he pretended he was going to come out here to get rid of me, or he just didn’t even think because he got so caught up in it, and then when he had to make the decision, he chose himself. I’ve been thinking of it in terms of him choosing this other woman. But that’s not it, is it? He chose himself instead of us. He didn’t think about another person, and that’s actually not unusual at all. It’s my whole life.”
“Yeah. Selfish assholes doing selfish asshole things. Believe me, I get it. That was my dad. A selfish asshole who didwhatever the hell he wanted all the time. Who didn’t care who else he hurt. A lot of people don’t behave that way because they’re afraid. They’re afraid of the backlash. I guess maybe your husband figured… If he had you and his sister move across the country…”
“Both his parents are dead.”
“Yet. So, why keep… being selfless? I think some people really think of it that way. They’re only good because not being good has a social consequence.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t know if I’m good. I think we just proved that I’m pretty damned flawed, but I don’t do the right thing because other people are looking. I do the right thing because I know how badly you can hurt other people when you don’t. I’ve lived in that consequence, and I refuse to be that consequence. Sounds to me like your husband grew up with a decent family. Just based on the things that you’ve said.”
“Yeah. They were wonderful. His mom was such a lovely woman, his dad was sweet, even though I didn’t get to know him very long. Cara, obviously, is the best, and she’s like the sister I never had.”
“He doesn’t know what it’s like. He doesn’t know how painful it is when somebody just decides to not do the thing that is expected of them. The thing that they’re supposed to do.”
