Slip of the Tongue (Slip of the Tongue 1)

“It’s fine. She’s heard worse,” Finn says about Marissa. “Mom here’s got the mouth of a sailor.”

“And you fucking love it,” Kendra says, slipping her arm around his waist. Finn glances briefly at me and then away. In my experience, this isn’t how separated couples act. I swallow at the subtle display of affection, and ashamedly, feel the slightest tinge of jealousy. “At the altar,” Kendra continues, “when the priest asked if I took Finn to be my husband—”

“She said ‘Of course I fucking do,’” Finn rushes out, slurring the words together. “Not only have I lived the story, but I’ve heard it over and over.”

“They haven’t, honey.” She rises up to kiss his cheek, then runs her hand over the stubble on his chin. “This is new.”

His jaw tenses. “It’s Movember. Mustache November. I’m growing it out.”

“Great,” she says cheerily. “Maybe I’ll grow my hair out too.”

A stiff giggle escapes me before I can stop it. She isn’t talking about the hair on her head. When Nathan understands, he also laughs.

Finn doesn’t look amused. He moves away from her. “Let them go. They have to get to work.”

“I do,” Nathan agrees, “and I need a shower.”

The men shake hands. “Thanks again,” Finn says. “I owe you.”

“Not yet,” Nathan says. “But once I fix it, I expect a six-pack. And none of that generic bull. The expensive, craft beer.”

“Nathan,” I scold, shaking my head.

“What?”

Finn smiles. “You got it.”

Nathan flashes Kendra his panty-dropper smile. I know it well, but not from this angle. Does he smile like that often when I’m not around? “Nice to meet you ladies.” His eyes linger on Marissa. He started looking at babies that way last year. At least, that’s when I started noticing it. Is it wrong for me to be jealous of a little girl?

I follow Nathan inside our apartment, my mind spinning. I feel like a fool in a number of ways. I want to know what Nathan and Finn talked about. Why Finn didn’t mention a family.

As soon as the door closes, Nate’s smile is gone. He unbuttons his flannel as he walks away.

“You didn’t have to go over there,” I say. My tone is unintentionally accusatory.

He disappears into the bedroom.

My blouse sticks under my armpits. I’m hot one minute and cold the next—it’s starting to annoy me, and winter hasn’t even technically begun. I remain where I am. Finn claimed honesty was his reason for telling me he wanted to kiss me, but not mentioning a family was a lie. I don’t know why I care. It’s not my business. I don’t like being blindsided, though.

I remove Ginger’s leash. Belated embarrassment over my behavior sets in. I’d thought Finn was flirting with me. And it was as if everyone in that hallway just now was in on the joke, waiting for my reaction to finding out Finn was married. Even Nathan.

What do I care anyway? I hang up my coat. I’ve got something pretty good right here in my own apartment. Our hot sex from a couple nights ago hasn’t been far from my mind. I find Nathan in our bathroom, steam curling over the top of the shower rod. I pull the curtain open.

His eyes are squeezed shut as he scrubs shampoo into his hair. “What are you doing?” he asks.

“Joining you,” I say, unbuttoning my collar.

He doesn’t respond right away, doesn’t look at me. “Didn’t you already shower?” he asks.

“I don’t care.”

“You were leaving for work.”

“I, don’t, care,” I intone. I pull my blouse out of the waistband of my skirt. “You know how I get when I’m in the mood.”

His cock twitches. My insides clench. Yes. This is what I want. Seeing his desire with my own eyes will always get me warm between the legs.

Nathan runs his hands over his face and rinses. “I’m already late.”

“So what?” I slide my hand down his bicep, elbow, forearm. I reach for him. “I want you.”

He catches my wrist. “I said no.”

I withdraw. Shower water drips from my hand to the toe of my boot. “What?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I told you. I’m late.”

“That’s never stopped you before.”

“And I don’t want to.”

My heart cracks, and it must be audible. Nathan drops his eyes from my face to my chest. He can switch off his attraction to me, just like that? Or have I been blind, in denial? Maybe he’s felt this way for some time. “You mean me. You don’t want me.”

He looks away, and after a brief hesitation, picks up a loofah. He squirts body wash onto it but doesn’t move, as if he’s forgotten its purpose. “No. Not right now.”

It dawns on me that maybe he didn’t want me the other night, either. Maybe he wanted a slut, not a wife, and that’s what I gave him. But it’s a lot harder to pretend you’re fucking someone else when it’s daytime. “Then when?” I ask.

“I don’t know. I’m not having this conversation in the shower.”

“Are you kidding me? You can’t just drop this on me and end the conversation.”

He turns his back to me and puts his palms against the wall. “Maybe not. But right now, I think it’s best if you leave me alone.”

My jaw tingles. My blouse hangs open. It didn’t really occur to me, over the past couple months, that he might not want me. If he’s angry, if he’s sad, if he’s screwing someone else—that, I can find a way to deal with. But if he feels nothing for me? That’s as deadly to our relationship as a bullet in the heart. My hand hovers over his back. “Why?”

He slaps the tile with one hand. “For fuck’s sake, Sadie. I said I don’t want to talk about it.”

I step back, almost tripping over the bathmat. My urges jump from ripping the shower curtain off its rings to begging him to stop this. I don’t know which of the two will make things worse and which will make things better. Is it even that black and white? Stumped, I leave the bathroom, leave the apartment, leave his bullshit. In the elevator, my hands shake as I close my blouse, tuck it back into my skirt, and get my coat on.

Before all this, Nathan had never denied me so much as a kiss. I’m the one who pulls my hand out of his first, who has to be called back to the doorway for a goodbye peck when I’m running off to work. I love his affection. Sometimes I forget to show mine, but he doesn’t.

He takes care of me—not because he has to, but because he wants to. That’s the fundamental difference between him and other husbands I know. A few years back, my girlfriends and I went to Atlantic City for a weekend. I drank one or six too many dirty martinis, got sick, and according to my friends, wouldn’t calm down without talking to Nathan. He picked me up that night, a three-hour drive to the casino and another three back home. I fell asleep with my head in his lap as he stroked my hair with one hand and steered with the other. In the morning, anyone else would’ve lectured me. But he made me bacon and eggs while we laughed.

Outside, the sun shines, but it’s blustery. The wind freezes my ears, nose, fingers. Somehow, it gets inside me and ices over my heart. The heart that’s unprotected and defenseless because Nathan broke down the walls around it.

Because Nathan once loved me hard enough to make me feel safe in his care.

“Space. That’s something I’ll never give you too much of. Promise me the same?”

EIGHT

Amelia Van Ecken gives me a dirty look across the conference table. I don’t know how long I’ve been on the receiving end of my boss’s stink eye—black-framed glasses tipped to the end of her nose and everything—but I know why. We’ve been in this meeting forty-five minutes, and I haven’t contributed a word.

When she dismisses everyone from the conference room, she tells me to wait. “Let’s go to my office.”

I shut my laptop and follow her out. Amelia Van Ecken Communications, or avec, takes up the seventh floor of an office building near Bryant Park. The ope

n, partition-less space is bright with sunlight from the floor-to-ceiling windows. There’s a chandelier in the center and plush, blue velvet club chairs near the elevator. She never reveals her real age, but for her early-thirties, she’s done more than almost anyone I know personally.

“Howie,” Amelia calls. Her long, blond bob moves as a unit, like it belongs on a Lego instead of a human. “We’ll take two lattes from that place I like. You know the one.”

Howie slowly rises from between the rows of desks where my colleagues tap and click furiously. His mouth is thinned into a line. “Do I look like your assistant, Amelia?”

“All you boys under thirty look the same to me. I don’t know where Jack is. He must be cleaning up the meeting.” She stares him down. “It’s on Sixth Ave.”