• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“You ready for biscuits?” I asked.

“Does he actually cook?”

I almost said, If you were around more, you’d know, but I was good. “Yeah, he cooks. He does the grocery shopping, most of the menu planning, and most of the housework.”

“My, isn’t he a regular domestic goddess.” Her voice was ugly when she said it.

I’d be nice because she was hurting, but that would only cover so much, then she’d piss me off, and I really didn’t want to fight with Ronnie this morning. “I needed a wife,” I said, and managed to keep my voice neutral.

“Don’t we all,” she said, and there was no malice now. She took the tiniest sip of coffee. “I don’t think I could eat right now.”

I took a much bigger sip of coffee, and said, “Okay, do you have a plan for how this talk will go?”

She looked up at me, still wearing the glasses so I couldn’t see her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“You wanted to talk, I assume about Louie and what happened last night, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then talk,” I said.

“It’s not that simple,” she said.

“Okay, then can I ask a question?”

“Depends on the question,” she said.

I took a big breath and plunged into the deep end. “Why did you say no to Louie’s proposal?”

“Oh, not you, too.”

“What?” I asked.

“Don’t tell me you expected me to just say yes?”

I wanted her to take off the glasses so I could see her eyes, see what she was thinking. “Actually, yeah.”

“Why, for God’s sake?”

“Because I’ve never seen you happier for longer with anyone,” I said.

She pushed her coffee away, as if she was angry at it, too. “Happy the way things are, Anita. Why does he have to go and change everything?”

“You spend more nights at each other’s places together than alone, right?”

She just nodded.

“He said he offered to move in together first, why not try it?”

“Because I want my stuff. I love Louie, but I hate how he’s taken over my closet, my medicine cabinet. He’s taken two of the dresser drawers over for his clothes.”

“The bastard,” I said.

“It’s not funny,” she said.

“No, I know. Did you tell him you didn’t like him moving his stuff in?”

“I tried.”

“Do you want him gone, poof, out of your life?”

She shook her head. “No, but I want my apartment back, the way it was. I don’t like coming home and finding that he’s rearranged everything in my cabinets so it’s easier to find. If I want to dig through every cabinet to find tomato paste, then it was my choice. He didn’t even ask, I just came home one night, and he’d organized everything in the kitchen. I couldn’t find anything.” She must have sounded pouty even to herself, because she jerked off the glasses and gave the full force of those pain-filled gray eyes. “You think I’m being silly, don’t you?”

“No, he should have probably asked you before rearranging everything.” The fact that Nathaniel had not only rearranged everything in my kitchen, but also thrown out the non-matching stuff was probably best kept to myself.

“I love dating Louie, but I don’t want to marry anybody.”

“Okay.”

“Just okay, you’re not going to try talking me into it?”

“Hey, I’m not headed for wedded bliss either, who am I to force you into it?”

She looked at me, as if searching my face for a lie. She was pale and hollow-eyed, as if she hadn’t gotten much more sleep than Micah. “But you’ve let Micah move in with you.”

I nodded and drank coffee. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you want him to move in with you? I thought you liked your independence as much as I do.”

“I’m still independent, Ronnie. Micah moving in didn’t change that.”

“He doesn’t try to order you around?”

I just looked at her.

“I’m sorry, Anita, but my dad was such a bastard to my mother. I’ve seen pictures of her on stage in college. She wanted so much, but he wouldn’t have a wife that worked. She had to be the perfect little homemaker. She hated it, and she hated him.”

“You aren’t your mother,” I said, “and Louie isn’t your father.” Sometimes in these heart-to-heart talks you have to state the obvious.

“You weren’t there, Anita, you didn’t see it. She fell