“I say now that I hate him,” Marie says. “After what he has done. The humiliation. But I don’t. I loved him then and a part of me always will.” She looks at me. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I guess there was no one else to tell. My parents are gone, and even if they weren’t, I wouldn’t have told them. Of course they disapproved of him from the start. He was an outspoken atheist. He and my father, they’d get into it. Not friendly father-in-law and son-in-law banter, mind you. War.”
“What about your mom?”
“My mother never said a word about Thomas, good or bad.” Marie sips her tea and seems to contemplate this. “And, I suppose in her silence, she was saying quite a bit.”
“And Jake?”
“Jake wouldn’t have voiced his disapproval, but I knew he didn’t like him. I think back to family dinners, holidays. Jake would always have a reason to leave the room or the table. It was like he couldn’t stand to be close to Thomas for too long. There was something poisonous about him, I see that now. Jake saw it. They all saw it, but I didn’t.” She plucks a chocolate from the box and skips the slicing, pops the whole thing in her mouth. “Anyway. That’s my sad life story and how I ruined it by falling in love with the wrong guy. I’m sorry I’ve been talking so much. You probably think I’m pathetic.”
I shake my head. “Not at all.” I swallow hard, clear my throat. I want to tell her something, some truth about us, but I can’t. It’s not safe, for her or for me.
“We finalized the divorce just before I came here. It’s strange that somehow, that feels simultaneously like a great victory and a terrible failure. My parents were married for twenty-nine years before Mom got sick.”
She picks up our mugs and walks them to the kitchen counter. It’s late, so I stand and tell her good night. Marie walks over and stops right in front of me. She reaches up, places her hands behind my neck, her fingers warm and soft. She presses them into my skin. We stand there, like that, so close. “I see why Jake loved you,” she says at last, holding my eyes and waiting for something, and then she rises up, standing on her tiptoes, and kisses my cheek before pulling away. “Good night, Cooper,” she says.
I think I mutter good night but—hard to say. I stumble into the small bedroom, slip past Finch, who rolls over when I step on the wrong floorboard, and then I stub my toe on the bed. I slide out of my jeans and flannel shirt and crawl into bed, toe throbbing. Head spinning, too. What just transpired between Marie and me? Did I step back when she reached out to touch me? Did I flinch? I think maybe both. And was she going to kiss me? I mean for real, not a friendly kiss, not on the cheek.
This isn’t new for me, this ungainliness around females. In high school, there were opportunities. Well, let me be clear. There were two opportunities, two times that I was with a girl and maybe something could’ve happened. They seemed willing and available, and I wanted it, whatever they were offering, but I was always afraid and nervous. Plus, there was the factor of me imagining that one day, Cindy and me would get together.
I pulled away from those girls, both times. Just like I did now, with Marie.
It’s cold in the bedroom, and I pull the extra blanket from the foot of the bed and cover myself. The moonlight slides into the room through a small sliver of space between the curtains. I can’t sleep. I still feel Marie’s fingers at my neck, the softness of her body pressing into mine. It’s different from those girls back in high school. Back then, I wanted it but I also didn’t, and my desire for one thing was greater than the other. This time, there’s no conflict that I can pinpoint, no clash of desires: only want. And yet.
I double back, replay the moment, doubt myself. It had been there, hadn’t it? Something blooming between the two of us. A closeness. A possibility. And what had I done? Pulled away.
TWENTY-FOUR
The next morning, I open my eyes to see Finch standing at my bedside and leaning over, watching me, her face a few inches from mine. I squint in the sunlight, which is pouring through the windows and hitting her hair so that it appears to glow.
“Look!” she says, smiling, mouth wide.
I frown.
“It came out. My tooth!” She holds it out. “Look. Marie washed it off for me. It was bloody.”
I nod and rub my eyes and sit up, the transition of waking more disorienting than usual. “Did it hurt?”
She shakes her head. “Well, maybe a little.” She drops the tooth in my palm.