On one hand, I hate watching Rusty drive away. I’ll miss her every minute she’s gone. The house will feel weird and empty without her.
On the other hand, it’s really nice to get a break once in a while. Particularly this weekend.
“Daniel, I have a confession to make,” my mom says, still side-hugging me, both of us still facing the driveway where Crystal’s car disappeared.
“Is it that you hate Crystal and wish I’d impregnated someone better?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says.
I just put my arm around her and pat her shoulder. She says more or less the same thing to me every time Crystal takes Rusty for a visitation weekend, and I can’t say I disagree.
We stand there for a bit, just my mom and me, still facing the driveway.
“And you’re staying at Charlie’s this weekend?” she asks.
“Right,” I say, suddenly standing up straighter. It doesn’t matter that I’m a grown man with a child. Admitting — however tacitly — to my mom that I have sex is… weird.
“Tell her I said hello,” she says, disengaging with a final back pat. “And don’t come back without calling first.”
“Sure,” I say, turning and following her toward the house so I can get my stuff and leave.
Then I stop in the driveway, my mom still making her way to the house.
“Wait,” I call. “Why?”Chapter Twenty-ThreeCharlieDaniel: Heading over now.
Me: Everything good?
Daniel: Don’t make me talk about Crystal.
Daniel: Can we just talk about what you’re wearing?
Me: What makes you think I’m wearing anything?I watch my phone screen, waiting for a response. I see him typing, then nothing. Typing, then nothing.
I start laughing to myself. I’m lounging on my couch, half-assedly watching TV but actually thinking about tonight. My room is lit by battery-powered tea light candles that I impulse-bought off the internet last week, because real candles make me nervous that I’ll forget to put them out and burn my apartment down.
Daniel: I’ll be there in ten.
Me: Door’s unlocked, just come inside.
Daniel: My pleasure.
Me: That’s the idea.
Daniel: Don’t distract me, I’m driving eighty miles an hour.
Me: I’m not sorry.He doesn’t respond, which is good, because that means he’s busy driving.
I get off my couch, get undressed, and hop onto my bed.I come twice before either of us says a word. Daniel comes in, locks the door behind himself, finds me on my bed, and not ten minutes later I’m on my hands and knees and he’s buried balls-deep, hitting the exact right spot over and over and over again until I fall apart. Twice.
Once we’re finished, we collapse onto my bed, both facedown, on top of my sheets and duvet. Idly, I wonder whether I should have taken the duvet off, since it’s a pain in the ass to wash and it’s too hot to use it anyway.
“Hi,” Daniel finally says, turning his head toward me, his face smashed into a pillow. “How was your day?”
I can’t help but laugh at the polite, mindless small talk in light of what we were doing two minutes ago.
“It was fine,” I say. “Sanded some stuff. Sawed some stuff. You?”
“As good as any day where Crystal’s concerned,” he says. “She wanted me to pull Rusty out of school so I could bring her to the new house because her husband is having some shindig or something.”
I just snort. I don’t think there’s been a single visitation where Crystal hasn’t tried to get Daniel to do something extra for her. He used to say yes more often, until he realized that if he gave her an inch, she’d take two miles.
“You didn’t, did you?” I ask, even though I’m pretty sure I know the answer.
“Of course not,” he scoffs. “There’s probably an ancient secret society devoted to hunting down and killing her kind, I’m not going to help her.”
“When’s the hearing?”
“Two and a half weeks,” he says, and buries his face in the pillow, stretching. The muscles down the back of his entire body bunch and knot so I give him a good, long ogle.
“I should write it down,” I muse, not moving a single muscle.
Daniel just gives me a look.
“Give me your phone,” he says.
“Why?” I say, still not moving.
“Because you’re making me crazy right now,” he says, hoisting himself onto his elbows and reaching over me for my bedside table. “Thirty-six, huh?”
I finally turn my head as he grabs my phone and spy the thirty-six pack of condoms I bought earlier this week.
“Well, now there’s thirty-three,” I say.
“That’s ambitious,” he says, grinning as he types the code into my phone’s lock screen and opens it.
For the record, I also know that his phone password is 0305, Rusty’s birthday. My phone’s locked so that if I lose it, whoever finds it won’t have access to all my bank accounts, not so I can hide something from Daniel.
“We don’t have to use all of them this weekend,” I tease. “They’re good for seven years or something.”