I head down to the pool. It’s closed, as he said, so I have to use my imagination. It’s a little lap pool that makes a perfect oasis of the tiny yard. An eight-foot fence provides privacy, and I can imagine coming out here for a pre-work dip, enjoying the quiet of the morning.
I envision climbing vines on the fence, ones that bloom bright flowers, turning a dawn swim into a tiny sliver of the tropics. I picture a night swim, those flowers giving off a heady scent, candles burning everywhere, a glass of wine and a book waiting on the deck. No, let’s be honest, as much as I’d love relaxing post-swim with wine and a book, what I’m really picturing in that scenario is Connolly. I’m up on the porch with my book, and he’s swimming laps, and I look up to see him climbing out of the pool in the moonlight.
Believe me, in that scenario, there is no handy towel in sight, and when Connolly joins me on the deck, he’s dripping wet and looking so fine. But I’m picturing more than the erotic scenario. I see past it to the domestic one. What if it wasn’t a date, wasn’t me staying over late while he went for a swim. What if it was just Tuesday? An ordinary evening, both of us enjoying a quiet summer night at home, Connolly going for a swim while I read, and then we’d share a glass of wine before deciding to make an early night of it, me leading him up to the bed we shared?
I want to stick to the first scenario. We’re just hanging out together, and he’s having a swim, and I’m admiring him and sparks fly and we actually follow through on them. An unexpected hookup on the deck. Or maybe a midnight skinny dip followed by sex beside the pool. Stick with that. Hot and sexy and fun. The other picture tugs at a yearning far more dangerous than lust.
This was supposed to be Connolly’s marital home. He may never have seen it that way, but now that idea has taken up residence in my brain. What would it be like—?
None of that. This is the house his parents expect him to share with the woman they chose. Not me. Never me.
Yet it isn’t about the house, as lovely as it is. It’s the image that sprang up, unbidden. The idea it dragged in its wake.
A shared home. A shared life.
Connolly says he wasn’t like Rian. He didn’t grow up picturing his future family here. Didn’t picture a future family at all. He had goals, and married life wasn’t one of them, not because he planned to avoid it but because it was a given for him. He would grow up and marry and have a family. That was settled. Inevitable. The rest were things he’d need to work for, and so he focused his attention there, on ambitions and achievements.
In my own way, I’m the same. There was no arranged marriage in my future, thank God, but it still seemed inevitable. People grew up. They married. They had children. A place like Unstable wasn’t as fixed as some small towns on the narrow concept of what constituted a family. It could be two people without kids. A mom and dad with kids. A single mom. A single dad. Two moms. Two dads. Grandparents in place of parents. I’d even had a friend with a mom and two dads, and they didn’t bother with the pretense of calling one dad “uncle.” That is Unstable. So while I’d been pretty sure my family would be myself, one guy and our kids, I’d known other configurations were possible. Yet the core concept of “family” remained. I would grow up and find a life partner. Not a goal, just an accepted fact.
A few moments ago, I imagined a sexy scene with Connolly, taking our friendship “to the next level.” Not friends with benefits, but something close to it. A light, fun, casual relationship. That defines every relationship I’ve had. Monogamous, yes, because that’s my preference. Committed, too, because that’s my preference. But monogamous and committed only in the sense that we’d be in an exclusive, long-term relationship, long term being “more than a month and less than a year.”
I’ve never lived with a guy. Never talked marriage with a guy. I don’t avoid it. My relationships have just never been that serious. We liked each other, cared about each other and so we stayed together until it was no longer convenient to do so.
Standing on this deck, I’m seeing something else. I’m wanting something else, and that’s scary as hell when it involves a guy I’m not even dating.
Am I getting in too deep with Connolly? Falling too hard? On the express train to real heartbreak?
Yes. I need to face the truth. I want more. A lot more.
Part of me wants to get the hell out of this house. Text and tell him I have an emergency at the shop and I caught a ride share and hey, let’s talk later, “later” being “possibly never.”
That’s ridiculous of course. I’d never ghost Connolly like that. I’d never overreact like that. But I feel the urge, and it worries me.
I head back into the house. When I reach to disable the alarm, I see it’s already flashing green.
Did I forget to reset it before I went outside? I remember thinking that I’d meant to, but I can’t pull up the memory of doing it, so I guess I’d forgotten.
I lock the door and set the alarm.
Consciously, I’ve accepted that I screwed up and didn’t reset the alarm. Subconsciously I know better, and when a floorboard creaks, I freeze, heart thudding, and I don’t for one second think some random thief broke in while I was outside.
I listen, but everything is still and quiet.
Am I wrong? It’s an old house, like ours in Unstable. Boards will creak without anyone stepping on them.
I take two steps into the kitchen. Silence. I glance around. There’s a butcher’s block filled with very expensive, very sharp knives. I slide over and ease one out.
A shadow moves into the doorway, and I swing the knife up.
“Uh-uh,” a voice says. “You don’t want to do that, Ms. Bennett.”
The guy filling the doorway isn’t tall, but he’s beefy in a way that’s at least part muscle. Maybe a few years older than me. Dressed in a suit. He’s familiar, and I don’t know why until he smiles, a smirk that slams into my memory.
“Travis,” I say.
He grins. “You remember me. Good. I do like to make an impression.”
I don’t know Travis’s last name. Or I’ve forgotten it. Doesn’t matter. What does matter is that he’s one of the Connolly family goons. Sorry, security personnel.
I’d met Travis last month when Marion Connolly sent him and two others to deliver a message to her son. Connolly had canceled brunch, so she’d tracked him electronically and sent three goons to see what he was up to, like any normal mother of a twenty-eight-year-old man.
Two guys stand behind Travis. Probably the same two as last month, but I wouldn’t wager on it. My attention had been entirely on Travis, because that’s where Connolly’s had been.
Connolly and Travis grew up together. Travis’s mother works for the Connolly family—housekeeper, I think. The boys weren’t friends. Travis had been nasty even as a kid, and Connolly had been small and bookish. I suspect there’d been a lot of envy behind Travis’s bullying. That might have excused some of it, if he’d grown up to realize that he was unfairly taking out his rage on a product of the issue rather than the issue itself.
Not understanding the root of their anger, kids lash out. Then they mature, realize what they did, apologize and explain, and their victim realizes it wasn’t actually about them, which helps. I know it took me a long time to realize that the relatively mild bullying I endured didn’t happen because I was weird or stupid or ugly or whatever my tormenters called me.