“You have a nice home,” she said. “Cozy.”
“It’s nothing like yours.” She looked at me sideways. “Your place was glamorous.”
“You didn’t mind the pink? Guys always comment on the pink.”
I stepped back, my smile retreating from my eyes but still stuck on my face. I did not like thinking about other men in her place and I had no business even thinking that, but there it was. Part of Matt’s Neanderthal was alive in me.
She was practically a stranger but she was also my wife and I was getting a little up in my head about it.
“Let me take your coat.” She shrugged out of my brother’s old barn coat and then untied the belt on the trench and slipped the buttons free. It was just a coat and she had other clothes on under it, but there was something about her body—which I know wasn’t fair but it just was—that made her taking off the coat feel like a strip tease.
I turned and put the barn coat in my closet and left the door open for her to hang up her trench coat. “Are you hungry?” I asked.
“Starving.”
“I made pasta.”
“Pasta?”
“Yeah, is…that okay?”
She smiled. “I just don’t know anyone who eats pasta anymore. Unless it’s made out of chickpeas or something. Is it made out of chickpeas?”
“No. It’s just regular pasta. But I have a salad, too. Would you like some wine?”
I walked back through the kitchen to the island where I opened a bottle of red and poured two glasses. She sat down on the stool and took a glass.
“Thank you,” she said, looking at the bowl of pasta with the garlic and chili flakes. And the green salad. “This looks amazing.”
“Well, it’s basically the only thing I can cook outside of hamburgers. And I didn’t think burgers would be as impressive.”
“You’re trying to impress me?”
She smiled at me and my brain went blank. She wore a gauzy green button-up shirt that made her eyes look amazing, and the first two buttons were undone, revealing what I remembered as being the most magnificent cleavage ever created by god or man.
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I am.”
“Consider me impressed.”
“How did it go this evening?” I asked, spooning pasta into bowls and then salad into other bowls. I was all out of bowls.
“Well, I’ve started a kid’s sewing club.”
“Really?”
“I know, surprised the hell out of me, too. Things sometimes work out like that though, you know? Say one word and things just line up like they were waiting to happen.”
Things from our night together were coming back to me now that we were alone in this room. “I remember this about you.”
“What?”
“The way you think.” I lifted my finger like I was connecting dots all over the place. “It’s not like other people.”
“Are you calling me stupid?”
“No. My god no, Lexie. The opposite.”
“Well, then. Thanks. I guess.” She still sounded skeptical and I wondered if it was me she didn’t believe or the compliment. Both, probably.
“And that’s awesome about the sewing club. My mom used to have a kid’s club thing. She decorated cookies with them. The kitchen used to get trashed, but all the parents were happy to have their kids looked after for a few hours. ”
“Well, I’m no baker, so we’re going sewing.”
“How did you learn how to sew?”
“I was a costume assistant for Celine Dion one summer,” she said. “But my mom taught me when I was a kid. She used to make my clothes, but then once I started working on stage you kind of learn how to fix your costumes and alter them so they fit. It’s a handy skill to have.”
“You are full of surprises, Lexie.”
She lifted her shoulder and batted her eyes at me. “Trying to keep our marriage fresh, Ethan.”
I laughed and put the pasta and salad in front of her and walked around the island to sit beside her and dig into my own bowl. Lexie had a sip of wine and speared a cucumber into her mouth.
“Your dad doesn’t like me,” she said.
“Impossible. My dad likes everyone.”
“Well, he told me marriage was a sacred vow and that he was disappointed and then he left.”
I set down my fork. “I’m sorry. That’s not fair he did that. If he’s disappointed in anyone, it’s me. I’ll talk to him.”
She shrugged and then pulled the pasta closer to her and swirled her fork around in it. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. But I could tell that it did. I’d have a conversation with my whole family, and if they weren’t good to Lexie they’d have to answer to me.
“Can I ask you something?’ she asked, turning to face me. Her lips were glistening from the butter and I had to look away, my pants suddenly too tight.
“You bet.”
“What do you actually remember? From that night.”