The ease of her taking my hand before I saw my dad, the ease of kissing her on the cheek when I was proud of her, my funny, creative, fake wife.
I knew it was all an illusion, a life we’d dreamed up out of desperation, but in that moment it felt real.
Cassie
The day after the barbecue, a couple of hours before The Loyal’s last rehearsal before the show tomorrow night, I made my way to Toby’s. And I was on a mission.
So the thing about Luke, the thing about him kissing me on the cheek in a fairly regular, natural way, and my recent tolerance and even fondness for the nickname “honey,” and my saying I’d like to get used to you. So the thing about that was, I didn’t know. I was pretty sure these were surface-level gestures that had been made complicated only because I had seen him naked. Combine that with a cute dog and a cute baby running around his cute family, with the cute dad making cute burgers, and bam, you’ve got yourself Lifetime movie feelings.
Toby, as I’d decided today, was a real person with whom I had a real thing going on. I wasn’t saying Luke wasn’t real, but the circumstances through which I began to care for him were not. They were fabricated. Completely. So that detracts a certain legitimacy from said caring, does it not?
But that didn’t stop me from caring about Luke, and, in fact, I’ll be damned if it didn’t punch me right in the face with the fact that I was ready to care for someone. I was ready to share the space I’d built. And it should be with someone who wasn’t about to limp out of my life, leaving a trail of take-out boxes and dog hair and painkiller bottles.
And that someone was Toby. Toby with the Arkansas gap in his teeth, who was an encyclopedia of music and had nimble, rhythmic hands that had been backing me up for a year now.
When he opened his door, I pulled his face toward mine.
“Um, hey,” he said between kisses.
“I’m getting a divorce soon,” I told him. “You know that, right? Luke and I will be divorced when he gets discharged.”
“Yeah.”
“I also think . . .” The words caught. “I think you and I should give the living together thing a try.”
“Wait, Cassie, really?”
“Really.” The way his eyebrows drooped at the ends, eyes wide, that grateful smile. He was adorable. I took his shoulders. “I mean, it just makes sense, you know? We’ve known each other for so long.”
“And you don’t have to sign a lease or anything, you know,” he said.
He glanced at my hands, which were now unbuttoning his shirt. “Let’s not talk logistics right now.”
I unbuttoned his jeans, and they fell. It was time to show each other that we weren’t going to be that boring couple who goes out to eat and farts quietly while they watch TV and meets in the bedroom where they hump each other until they fall asleep.
“We’re going to live together,” I said, lifting my shirt. “And sometimes,” I continued, slipping off my cutoffs, “I’m going to be getting ready for work.”
Toby was still standing there, jeans at his knees, watching me.
I walked past him to the bathroom. “And I’m going to want it so bad,” I said, hopping onto the counter next to the sink, opening my legs. “That you’re going to fuck me right then and there.”
“Wait,” Toby said.
I stared at him. In the twelve on-and-off months I’d been removing my clothes around him, I’d never heard hesitation in his voice.
“I feel like this is special,” he said. He stepped out of his jeans and walked toward me, a soft smile on his face.
That was fine. He didn’t want to dirty talk. I could still work with this. He stood on the tile, kissing me small and slow in a line, starting at my ear, down to my shoulder.
I pulled him into me by his lower back, and noticed he wasn’t hard.
“I’m sorry,” he said, stepping back. “Can we just take a second to talk about the timeline?”
I tried to keep the mood going, hooking my finger in his shirt, looking at him with doe eyes. “Later.”
“It’s also weird to have sex with you while I can see myself in the mirror.” He pointed behind me. “Plus I bet this counter is really dirty.”
“Isn’t that kind of hot, though?”
He scrunched up his face. “Eh. I’m not drunk enough to ignore it.”
“Okay,” I said, hopping off.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his hands circling my waist. “Is it weird that I want to just savor this without a hookup?”