Till Summer Do Us Part(48)

Sanders holds up his hand. “Okay, we’re going to pause right here.” He lets out a deep breath. “I see there’s a lot of deep-seated animosity between the two of you, and that’s what today is about. Today’s about getting it all out there, not holding back anything that might be sitting on your chest. So I’d like you to get comfortable, because we’re about to get down to the nitty-gritty.”

I glance over at Wilder, facing off. Seems like he has no intention of keeping this tight and pulled together. So I slip my shoes off my feet, turn toward him completely, and sit cross-legged.

Let the games begin.





“It started when he stepped on Velcro,” I say.

“They were brand-new, expensive socks,” Wilder snaps. “The Velcro was going to tear them apart, and then what, I’m just going to flush fifteen dollars down the drain?”

“Maybe don’t buy the expensive socks,” I counter.

“Says the girl who has caveman feet. You know my feet are sensitive. You know if my socks touch me in a weird way, I can’t walk properly. That’s how I ended up with that lopsided gait.”

“You ended up with that lopsided gait because there was a rock in your shoe.”

“There was not a rock in my shoe. Stop saying that. You make me sound like a crazy man.”

“Because you are,” I shout. “You’re crazy. You ruined an entire day at the pumpkin farm because you stepped on Velcro. Velcro, Wilder! Who ruins a day over Velcro?”

“The people whose socks get destroyed from it!”





“You should have seen her,” Wilder says as he walks back and forth in front of the sliding glass window, tossing Sanders’s baseball. “The look of utter satisfaction on her face as I rummaged and rummaged and rummaged, looking for the lid. Sitting there, on her high perch, looking down at me as if I was her Tupperware peasant, and the entire time, she knew there was no matching lid. Fucking knew the whole time.”

I shrug my shoulders. “I told him he needed to organize the drawers. He needed to learn a lesson.”

“You got rid of it on purpose.” He points at me. “Vindictive, that’s what you are.”

“Lazy.” I point back at him. “Utterly lazy. You can’t do one thing when asked.”

“Oh really?” he says, stepping up. “So when you asked me to pick you up pads with wings, did I not deliver?”

My face falls flat. “You came back with pads…and buffalo wings.”

“That’s what you said, pads with wings.” He turns to Sanders, whose eyes are bouncing back and forth between the two of us. “She said pads with wings! What the hell am I supposed to assume?”

“If you knew me, like you claim you do, you’d have known that I was talking about the type of pads that have wings attached to them.”

“How am I supposed to know that when you won’t even talk to me about your period? I don’t know what you’ve got going on down there. And it’s not from a lack of effort on my end. I’ve asked to help.”

“You’ve asked to insert my tampon,” I deadpan.

He throws his hands up in the air. “I was curious. It was for science!”





“Don’t you dare say it,” Wilder says, shaking his head. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

I run my tongue over my teeth and very slowly and deliberately say, “Bologna.”

His nostrils flare.

His chest heaves.

And in a very maniacal voice, his eyes boring holes into me, he says, “You son of a bitch.”

“I think we should all take a moment to remember the breathing exercises we learned a few seconds ago,” Sanders says.

But Wilder holds his hand out to him. “You stay out of this.” Then he gets close to me and whispers, “Say it again. I dare you.”

Wetting my lips, I lean even closer and whisper, “Bologna.”

“You…strumpet.”

“Bologna, bologna, bologna.”

“No!” he screeches, holding his hands to his ears. “Don’t you dare Beetlejuice me. Don’t you fucking dare.” He glances over his back, checking around the room. “Is it here? Is he here?”

I point off to the window and yell, “There he is.”

Wilder lets out an ear-splitting scream and then falls to the ground and shimmies under the coffee table. “You devil woman.”





“Is that a hint of horseradish I’m detecting?” Wilder asks as we chow down on our lunch.

“A homemade sauce,” Sanders says with a nod.

“Really brings out the roast beef flavor, don’t you think, Pips?”

“Delightful.” I lift my bag of chips to Wilder. “Barbecue?”

“Yeah, thanks, babe.”





“Do you see what I’m dealing with?” I say as I walk around the room, a hockey stick up against my shoulder like a bayonet while Wilder lies across the couch, tossing the baseball up and down.

“So I have to take interest in her love of cacti, but she can’t bother to learn the correct Pokémon names?” He sits up. “It’s Jigglypuff. For fuck’s sake, it’s Jigglypuff!”