Her phone vibrated, and she glanced down at the text from Madison. Did you have any questions about the exercises I gave you?
Of course Madison was up. She was probably doing interval workouts in her living room. No, I got them. Still on for Tuesday night?
You mean for date night with the brothers Thorne? Hell yes!
Hannah laughed. She didn’t know what was so exciting about dinner with both Jon and Will, but Madison had been practically bouncing since Hannah suggested it at the end of their session. It would be nice to have a break. November had already kicked into high gear a week into Deafening Silence’s annual “30 Concerts in 30 Days” event. The schedule had been set for weeks, but Hannah had no idea how she was going to manage it.
A yawn wracked Hannah’s body. As much as she enjoyed her nightly dream romps with her husband, the truth was that she’d forgotten what living with Will was like. In her memory, everything about Will was rosy and happy and silly. He had promised her when they wrote their marriage rules that he now picked up his socks. And that much seemed true. His dirty socks were in the hamper every morning since she moved in. She pulled herself to her feet and came back inside. Irritation sparked as she walked through the living room. Will’s suit jacket had been flung across the back of the couch, and a collection of ties covered one of the kitchen-nook chairs. Binx batted at one, his nail catching it before Hannah could shoo him away. Great. A thread had pulled from the silk fabric, and Hannah dreaded showing Will what Binx had done—again. But she’d told him to put them away every day since Binx had wrecked the first one, and he’d left them out anyway.
Hannah collected the ties and placed them on the counter. She took in the pizza box Will had left out the night before, the last slice still inside. She hoped this bachelor lifestyle was a consequence of living in his father’s apartment with a built-in cleaning lady and not his norm. It wasn’t like her apartment had been spotless, but this situation was unsustainable. Between Clara’s weekly cleanings, laundry accumulated in the hamper, dishes festered in the sink, takeout filled the fridge, and empty cartons stuffed the trash bin. Was it that difficult to walk down the hall to the trash shoot?
Two stacks of reports sat on the coffee table. The dining room table was cluttered with leftover takeout plasticware, napkins, and ketchup packets. Her old bedroom still housed all her boxes, and on the kitchen nook was an inordinate amount of mail addressed to Jonathan Thorne, which Will never went through. That was why she had been sitting outside before sunrise in November. The apartment was submerged, and if Hannah spent waking hours inside it, she felt like she was drowning too.
She shook out her shoulders, trying to roll out the frustrations. She would be better about cleaning too. She’d take the pizza boxes to the recycling room on her way out and empty the dishwasher before bed no matter what time she rolled in. She’d unpack. Tidying up could become part of their Saturday-morning ritual.
Another yawn hit her, and Hannah contemplated trying to go back to bed. Riley wasn’t there to see her comings and goings, and the other editors were just as ransacked by November as she was. That was another problem: Hannah wasn’t used to sharing her living space. She wasn’t used to someone’s morning routine disrupting her sleep, and Will—despite having had a live-in girlfriend—was not used to being quiet in the morning. She hadn’t slept in since the honeymoon. Will’s morning routine, weekday or weekend, was far too loud for that. He hummed while he picked out his clothes, he turned on lights, and things—she couldn’t even tell you what—clinked around the bathroom as he got ready. And Hannah was by no means a late sleeper. She loved waking up early, but she also needed to compensate for her late hours a few days a week.
She refilled her mug. Her fatigue was showing in her skin, in the bags under her eyes, and in her mood. Will had noticed that their easy banter was not quite so easy lately, but he hadn’t said anything directly. Were they always so passive with each other? A memory of college-aged Will, backing away from her, his hands held up haltingly, came to her—she’d cleared out space in her closet for his clothes, unable to take the spray of wrinkled boy clothes across her and Kate’s living room for another minute. Two weeks later, his clothes hadn’t moved, and half her closet had remained empty.
“Morning, Mrs. Thorne.” Will leaned against the door jamb. He wore suit pants and an unbuttoned shirt. Her stomach fluttered despite her bad mood, and she shivered as she conjured up the dream version of her husband, who pulled her into the shower and did dirty things to her. Real-life husband still hadn’t brought up Rule 3a and resolutely stopped every kiss just when it was getting good. It was a special kind of torture. Because she knew he felt every kiss, but something held him back. Maybe Kate and Jonathan were wrong. Maybe Will didn’t love her. Or maybe he was considering all the same things she was—mainly, what if something went wrong? How could they stay friends after sharing that intimacy?
Will held up
