Her eyes got wide. “You’d better punch me in the face, Maddox. I’d punch you in the face.”
“For a billion dollars I’d actually be okay with that,” I said.
She gasped. “Oh, so you can get punched in the face, but I can’t? That is so sexist.”
“It is not the same thing,” I said. “I’m stronger than you. I could shatter your jaw.”
“And I couldn’t shatter your jaw? This is one billion dollars we’re talking about. Xfinity needs to go to college.”
I barked out a laugh.
“Who’s Xfinity?” Daniel asked over his beer, looking back and forth between us.
“Our fictional, traumatized daughter whose name was chosen so we could get free internet.” She looked back at me. “Tell me you’d punch me in the face, Jacob.”
I looked at her, amused. “I thought we were supposed to be harmless to each other.”
“You being the only reason why I’m not a billionaire is not being harmless to me. That harms me greatly.”
I shook my head. “I can’t hurt you. I’d pay one billion dollars not to hurt you.”
She gave me a small, reluctant smile.
Doug made his way over to the table with a guitar in his hand.
Briana rolled her eyes. “Doug, do you know what the definition of insanity is?” she asked, raising her voice so he could hear her before he got to the table.
He looked indignant. “This isn’t for you,” he said, holding up his guitar. “You had your chance.”
Briana snorted.
“There’s fresh meat over at the bar.” He nodded to a pair of women drinking beers.
Briana craned her neck to look at them. “Oh. Well, make sure you call them meat to their faces. Women like that.”
Doug seemed to think this over. “That’s a good idea. I’ll do that. Thanks.”
Everyone laughed.
Doug nodded to Daniel. “Hey, spot me twenty bucks, yeah?”
Daniel dug in his wallet and pulled out a bill.
“Thanks,” Doug said, taking it and shoving it into his shirt pocket. “Wish me luck.” And he left.
“He’s gonna need a lot more than luck,” Briana said.
“You’re never getting that twenty back—you know that, right?” Alexis said to her husband.
“I do,” Daniel said into his beer. “But at least those poor women will get free drinks.”
Briana shook her head. “That guy has more red flags than a matador.”
Alexis laughed.
Briana turned to me. “Want to walk back? I am here to relax and make fun of Doug, and I am all out of Doug.”
“We’ll probably stay for a bit,” Alexis said, rubbing her belly. “The house is unlocked, you can just go in.”
I put money on the table, and we slid out of the booth and started for the door. I wanted to leave, but not because I wanted to go. I wanted to be alone with Briana.
I was having a good time. Briana had said if I got overwhelmed at any point today, we could go, which helped a lot.
When I was a kid, Mom would always try to gently coax me into new activities. She’d never force me. But she’d tell me that if I went to the birthday party or the field trip, or the day camp, she’d wait in the car outside, and if I wanted to leave before it was over, I could. Most of the time I’d have fun and I’d end up staying. And then after a while she didn’t need to wait at all. It was knowing that leaving was an option that gave me the courage to try.
Briana was the same kind of safety net. And I bet she didn’t even realize how much it changed the outcome for me.
Amy had always thrown me into things with both hands, and then couldn’t understand why I was anxious and withdrawn and wanted to leave the second whatever it was began. But with Briana I felt slowly submerged. Gently set down. And then once I was in, I was comfortable. I felt like everyone else probably felt. Calm and easy and normal. It protected the shelf life of my internal battery. And I don’t even think this was a conscious thing for her most of the time. I think she just inherently knew to do it.
It was just one of the many amazing things about her.
We came out into the warm early June air and started for the house. I had to fight the urge to take her hand.
Touching her in public was second nature to me now. But that’s because most of the time we were in public, one of my family members was there, and touching was necessary to hold up our fa?ade. We didn’t have that here. Daniel and Alexis knew about our arrangement, so I didn’t have an excuse to put a hand on her back, or brush her hair off her face, or sit close enough that my leg pressed into hers. It was the only thing I hated about being in Wakan.
I’d suggested taking a picture for Instagram earlier for the sole reason of getting the hug that I couldn’t get when I arrived. And then I didn’t want that hug to end. I wished we could have shut the door and stayed in that bed. I wanted to hibernate with her. Forget the rest of the world existed.
I squinted at something large standing under a light post across the street. “Is that…a pig?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “That’s Kevin Bacon. He’s Doug’s. He’s like the town mascot or something. He just runs around and takes selfies with tourists.”
He was huge. At least three hundred pounds, and wearing a reflective vest.
“Can we pet it?” I asked.
“Yeah, let’s go.”
We crossed the street and the pig grunted at us as we came up. He was enormous and pink. I crouched and ran a hand over his head and he snuffled around us, looking for food. He found the mints I had in my pocket and I pulled them out and unwrapped them and let him eat them from my hand.
His vest had a Kevin Bacon hashtag and a Venmo on it.
“I have to give it to Doug, he is a hustler,” Briana said, eyeing the Venmo. “Doug would punch me in the face for a billion dollars.”
“Then I’d have to punch Doug in the face for free.”
She gawked at me trying to look serious, but she was fighting a laugh. “You’re punching the wrong person. I’m the billion-dollar punch—though I do understand the impulse to punch Doug for nothing. But still.”
I chuckled, petting Kevin’s wiry fur.
“No, but seriously,” she said. “We need to get on the same page with this.”
I shook my head. “I’m not doing it. I’m not punching my wife.”
“Nick would do it.”
“Well, it sounds like there’s a lot of things that Nick was okay doing to you that I would never do.”
She bobbed her head. “Okay, good point.”
“And why is the money that important?” I said, standing. “You make a good living. You don’t need a billion dollars.”
She looked up at me. “Jacob, I grew up poor. Extremely, extremely poor. Like, food-instability poor. No matter how much I have, I will never turn down the means to never live like that again.”
“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t realize your childhood was that tough.”
She shrugged, looking at the pig. “It was. I mean, it was good. But it was hard. I had to start working at a pretty young age to help my mom. She used to clean houses, back before she got her nursing degree, and I’d go and help her.”