His teeth scrape over the fullest part of his lip. “You can trust me, Harriet.”
In that moment, he pierces a little deeper into my heart, opens another door, finds an entire walled-off room I didn’t realize was there.
He pulls me into his chest, and our heartbeats sync. I’ve never felt so certain of anything, so right, so safe.
15
REAL LIFE
Wednesday
SOMEONE IS JACKHAMMERING inside my skull.
I roll over, press my face into the downy mattress.
THUNK-THUNK-THUNK.
A voice breaks the bodiless dark: “Everybody decent?”
My eyes snap open on a bedroom washed in the dim gray of morning. The smell of wet stone and brine wafts in from the open window, and rain pummels the roof.
“I’m coming in!”
Sabrina. She’s calling through the door.
My eyes zigzag around the room, my scrambled egg of a brain piecing together my surroundings. I’m sprawled in the middle of a king-sized bed, wearing only my underwear and Virgin Who CAN Drive T-shirt.
“In three . . .” Sabrina says.
My gaze finds the jumble of spare sheets on the floor, the golden-brown leg extending beyond it, the arm tucked under the mess of sun-streaked golden hair.
“Two . . .”
I hurl a pillow at Wyn’s face, and he jolts upright.
“One,” Sabrina says. “That’s it. I’m coming in. Cover up your”—I wave frantically at Wyn—“goods if you don’t want me to see them.”
His gaze clears, widens. He gathers the bundle of bedding around him and launches himself onto the bed, a trail of sheets spilling out behind him.
“Good morning,” Sabrina says, swinging the door open.
“What’s going on?” I jerk the blankets up over Wyn’s lap and mine.
Sabrina’s mouth curves when she notices the bedding half draped on the bed and half bunched on the floor, as if carelessly thrown there in a moment of passion.
“Breakfast was supposed to be twenty minutes ago,” she says. “Didn’t anyone read their itineraries?”
“Our novelty itineraries?” Wyn says. “For the rough schedule we always keep?”
Parth’s head pops into the doorway, still damp from a shower. “Come on. We’ve got a schedule to keep.”
Wyn pushes his hair off his forehead. “Are you two on steroids?”
“Back-alley Adderall?” I guess.
“Cocaine,” Wyn says.
“Pixy Stix and Robitussin.”
“Up, up, up.” Sabrina punctuates her words with impatient claps that I feel behind my eyeballs.
“Is it possible to be hungover on one glass of wine?” I grumble.
“Once you hit thirty, anything’s possible,” Parth calls, and the swell that carried the two of them in takes them right back out.
Wyn exhales, his shoulders relaxing.
The folds in the blankets and pillowcase left little indentations all over his stomach and face. As he stands and ambles toward the bathroom, rubbing his hands over his face, I catch myself studying them like there’s going to be a test later. He looks over his shoulder at me, his voice gruff: “You want to shower?”
Any remaining haze of sleep zooms off me, cartoon-roadrunner style. “Shower?”
He looks puzzled, possibly by the sudden lack of blood in my face. “Do you need the shower, or can I use it?”
Right. As in, Do you want to shower by yourself. Not Do you want to take a shower together. Obviously.
“I’m good!” I squeak. “Give me a minute to get my stuff and get out of here.”
He laughs as he leans into the shower, the water sputtering on. “It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, Harriet.”
I slide off the bed and start digging through my suitcase for a pair of jeans.
“I mean, aside from the new tattoo,” he says.
I turn around before I can tease out the obvious jest in his voice. He’s starting to pull off his shorts, and I yelp and spin back to my suitcase.
“You could wait thirty seconds to start your stripping,” I say.
Another gravelly, fresh-from-sleep laugh. “If it bothers you so much, close your eyes.”
I step into my jeans and hop to get them over my butt. He still hasn’t turned the fan on, and the steam is building behind me. I can imagine how it’s making the ends of his hair curl.
“What if I close my eyes?” he says.
“How would that help?” I grab a fresh T-shirt.
“I don’t know. Maybe it would make you . . .”
He trails off as I shuck my sleep shirt off and toss it onto the bed. I hold the fresh T-shirt against my chest and look over my shoulder at him. “Make me what?”
Wyn clears his throat and turns back to the shower. “Feel like I’m not here.”
“Not necessary.” I pull my shirt over my head. “I think I’m done here.”
He doesn’t turn around again until I’m out of the room.
In the hallway, a groan of “Haaaarrryyy” reaches me, and I backtrack to peer through the open door to the kids’ room.
Cleo and Kimmy lie in the pushed-together twin beds in the center of the room, the same way Wyn and I used to. While Cleo looks tidy and well rested, her braids tucked in a russet-colored bonnet and her skin luminous, Kimmy is starfished out beside her, freckled limbs strewn in every direction, last night’s sparkly eyeliner smeared and her hair in a nest atop her head. At least she remembered to take out her contacts, I guess, because she’s wearing her dark-framed glasses.
“Saaaaave us,” Kimmy moans.
“You,” Cleo gently corrects her. “I feel great.”
“Save meeeee,” Kimmy amends.
Cleo pats the sliver of space between them, and I flop into it like they’re my parents and it’s Christmas morning.
I mean, not my parents. I had one of those upbringings where my parents’ bedroom was treated like an FBI safe house: don’t go in it, don’t look at it, don’t even speak of it. Probably because it was the only room in the house that was allowed to accumulate mess （if clean laundry in the process of being folded can be considered mess）， and I’m pretty sure if given only the two options, Mom would rather join the witness protection program than let anyone see our laundry.
Wyn’s family was different. When he and Lou and Michael were small, the Connors had a rule that they couldn’t start Christmas morning before the sun was up. So Wyn and his sisters would sit in front of the tinseled tree waiting until the minute the sun rose, then run into Gloria and Hank’s room and pile onto their bed, shrieking until they got up.
Thinking about Gloria and Hank always gives me a homesick ache, or something like it. I used to feel that pang a lot as a kid, which never made sense, because I mostly felt it at home.
“I’m hiring a hit man to take out Sabrina for buying that last round of Fireball last night,” Kimmy says, flinging her forearm over her face. “Feel free to Venmo me your contribution.”
“I was starting to doubt you were capable of being hungover,” I say.
“It’s all the half drinks,” Cleo says. “She tries to drink less that way, and then loses track.”
“I didn’t lose track. I smeared.” She holds her arm out to reveal a row of lipstick tallies that run together.