• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“God, you love him,” she said in despair, almost a wail.

I shrugged and drank coffee, because talking was making it worse. “Maybe,” I said.

She shook her head. “No, no, your face goes all soft when you talk about him. You love him.” She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at me like I’d betrayed her somehow.

“Look, Micah moved in gradually, but I didn’t feel crowded the way you did with Louie. I like having his things in the bathroom. I like having a his and her side of the closet. Seeing his stuff with my stuff gives me a full cupboard feeling.”

“A what?” she asked.

“Getting a T-shirt out and realizing that it’s one I bought for him because it brings out the green in his eyes gives me that I’ve got my favorite foods in the cupboard and it’s a winter night, and I don’t have to go out in it feeling. I’ve got everything I need at home.”

She looked at me in soft horror.

Hearing myself say it out loud was a little frightening, but mostly it was thrilling. Because I’d answered my question, in trying to answer hers, I’d answered my own. I was smiling, even as she looked at me in shock. I couldn’t help the smile, I was feeling better than I’d felt in days. But another thought occurred to me. I wasn’t smiling when I said, “Remember how you couldn’t understand why I didn’t just jump at Richard when he asked me to marry him?”

“I didn’t say marry him, I just said dump the vampire and keep the werewolf.”

That made me smile. “I remember coming home, and Richard had used his key to get in to cook me dinner without asking, and I hated it. I felt all grumpy and like my privacy had been invaded.”

She nodded. “That’s it, it’s like putting on a new sweater that’s just the right color and fits perfectly, but the next time you wear it, you realize it’s scratchy, and unless you wear a shirt under it, it itches you. It’s a great sweater, but you need a little distance between it and your skin.”

I thought about it and had to agree. “That’s pretty good, scratchy, yeah.”

“But you didn’t feel that way when Micah moved in?” she asked in a voice that had gone soft and small.

I shook my head. “It was very weird. I knew nothing about him, really, but it just . . . clicked.”

“Love at first sight,” she said, softly.

“ ‘Marry in haste, repent at leisure,’ they say.”

“But you didn’t marry him,” she said, “why not?”

“One, neither of us has asked, and two, I don’t think either of us feels the need.” There was also the matter of Jean-Claude and Asher, and Nathaniel, but I didn’t want to muddy the waters, so I didn’t bring them up.

“Then why does Louie want to get married?”

“You’d have to ask him, Ronnie. He did say he’d offered to just live together, but you didn’t want that either.”

“I like my space,” she said.

“Then tell him that,” I said.

“I’ll lose him if I tell him that.”

“Then you’ve got to decide whether you like your space or him more.”

“Just like that,” she said.

I nodded. “Just like that.”

“You make it sound simple.”

“I don’t mean to,” I said, “but Louie wants the two of you to go to bed together every night and to wake up beside you every morning. That doesn’t sound so bad.”

She laid her head on her arms, so that all I could see was the back of her head. As far as I could tell, she wasn’t crying, but . . . “Ronnie, did I say something wrong?”

She said something I couldn’t understand.

“Sorry, I didn’t hear that.”

She raised her head enough to say, “I don’t want to go to bed every night and wake up every morning with him.”

“You want separate bedrooms?” I asked before my brain could tell me it was a stupid question.

“No,” she said and sat up, brushing at the tears that had just started. She seemed more angry or impatient than tearful. “What if I meet a cute guy? What if I meet someone I want to sleep with, and it isn’t Louie?” The tears were gone. She was just looking at me with that appeal on her face. That, Don’t you understand? look.

“You mean, you don’t want to be monogamous,” I said.

“No, I mean I’m not sure I’m ready to be monogamous.”

I wasn’t sure what to