Stitches

“I’m not adorable,” she mutters.

“You are. The meanest thing you can think of is cutting the butt cheeks out of her favorite pants. That’s fucking adorable.”

“I opened with kicking her in the face,” she states. “That was mean. And Nair in her shampoo? That’s super mean. Ashley would be ugly without hair. She even looks weird when she pulls her hair back in a pony tail. All of this is purely vicious—totally not adorable.”

“Yeah, with all this badassery, we better lock you up and throw away the key.”

“Damn straight,” she agrees. “Lock up your sons and daughters; I’ll corrupt them all and cut the butt cheeks out of their pants if they piss me off.”

I can’t stop smiling. That’s a nice change from earlier. We sit here for a few minutes in companionable silence. I don’t know how silence can be companionable over the phone, but I just listen as she gathers her things and gets in her BMW. I’m feeling the alcohol hard, but thankfully I have this building here to hold me up.

“Tell me something nice,” I tell her.

“Something nice?” she asks gently. “Like what?”

“I don’t know.”

That’s not helpful, so she has to think about it for a minute. “My sister finally had her baby. It was a girl. They named her Layla. I’ll show you a picture when I pick you up; she’s so adorable. Looking at it gives me just a touch of baby fever.”

My face screws up with displeasure. “That’s not nice.”

She sounds surprised. “Why isn’t it?”

“Because you’re going to have babies with Seb.”

Laughing lightly, she says, “Well, yeah, he’s my husband, so I should hope he’s the one I’m having babies with.”

“Like I said,” I mutter.

She falls silent. After a moment, she wrongly interprets why this bothers me. “I’m sorry, that probably made you think of—I meant to distract you with something nice, not rub your nose in… I mean, I don’t even know if you and Ashley were planning to have… Sorry. I’m just snowballing. Let’s pick a new topic.” She misses a beat, then she says, “You’re going to spend the night at our place tonight, and I won’t hear otherwise. I have the guest room already made up. Then tomorrow morning I’m going to make you and Sebastian both breakfast—and cookies,” she adds, inspired. “Because cookies make everything better.”

“You’re not his housekeeper, you know,” I mutter.

“No, I’m his wife.”

Just hearing that clear fact makes me surly as hell. “You do everything for him.”

She doesn’t reiterate what she already said, but she probably wants to.

“Ashley never made me cookies,” I mutter.

Displeasure seeps into her tone. “Ashley’s probably too stupid to read a recipe. Clearly she couldn’t read her marriage vows.”

Her words cause me to visualize Ashley with some nameless fuck. That image has played through my head about a thousand times today. I never saw it before—never saw the guy from the wedding, never even knew his name. I didn’t want to, after the fact. When I decided to stick it out with her, the best thing to do seemed to be to learn as little as I could about it so I had less to relive.

But Seb had to go and tell me there was footage this time, so once he left, I just had to go back and watch it. That was a mistake. Now I’m haunted by her enthusiasm—enthusiasm she hasn’t had for me in a long-ass time.

“I can’t get it out of my head,” I finally say.

Her tone is soft and understanding. “I can imagine.”

“Why am I not allowed to be happy? I tried so fucking hard.”

“Oh, Griff.” She says this like I’m breaking her heart.

“It’s just… impossibl

e. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m the problem.”