raining so hard, they thought I should stay.”
“I didn’t know you hung out with the neighbors.”
I snorted. “You don’t know a lot of things that happen around here.”
“Touche,” he said softly, not taking the bait.
I turned toward him so we were belly to belly. “What brings you home?”
“Same thing that kept you at the neighbors, I guess.” He stopped petting the cat and started petting me, his hand moving over my shoulder and down my side. “I was on my way back to Darron’s and it was raining so damned hard I could barely see.”
Darron the dungeonmaster. He had an apartment on the edge of campus and they played Dungeons and Dragons there three times a week. Mason and I had argued about how much time he spent there even before Isabella and now he was living in Darron’s basement.
I couldn’t help feeling disappointed. “So you didn’t come home to see me?”
“No,” he replied honestly. “But I’m glad I did.”
That warmed me. “I’m glad too.”
“Hey, I’m hungry,” he said. “What do we have for breakfast?”
“I can make eggs.” The fridge was pretty empty. I didn’t have to do a lot of shopping with Mason gone. He was a big eater, but I could live on Lean Cuisines forever.
“That sounds good. Can I take a shower?” He slipped out of bed, stretching, and I admired the taut flex of the muscles in his back. I really had missed him, in so many ways.
“Go for it. You still have clothes in the closet.” He’d never really moved out completely. He was doing it piecemeal, coming back and taking a few more things with him every time he left.
Mason ran the shower and I got dressed and cooked him eggs-four scrambled.
I even made him toast with extra butter and cut them into fours. I was humming to myself, just putting the ketchup on the table, when he came out wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else.
“Thanks.” He sat at the table across from me, squirting ketchup all over his eggs before digging in while I watched and nibbled my own slice of toast.
“How’s Darron?” I didn’t really want to know but it was somewhere to start conversation.
“Good.” His mouth was half-full. “We’re thinking about starting a new thing that just came out. It’s called
“Sounds cool.” I had no idea what that meant. I’d never paid much attention to his gaming.
“Right.” Mason snorted, giving me a look that said he knew just how much I cared-or not. “So what classes you got this semester?”
“Advanced Italian, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Senior Honors and Advanced Independent Study.” I rattled them off-my last year’s worth of work before graduation, all paid for by my scholarship. At least that was one thing Mason’s parents didn’t pay for. They’d paid for everything since we got married-our rent, our groceries, Mason’s tuition-but my education was my own.
“Heavy load.” He raised his eyebrows.
“So what do you have this term?” It hurt me to think we were so disconnected now we didn’t know these basic things.
He chewed his eggs and swallowed. “Survey of American Folklore and European History.”
“Are you still majoring in sociology?”
“I switched to general studies.”
The catch-all degree. He’d changed his major six times since we’d started school.
“So did you hear back from that study abroad thing?” He smiled when he picked up a triangle of toast and I knew he was appreciating that I’d remembered.
I stiffened and shook my head, busying myself with my own toast. The “study abroad thing” was my dream. I’d always wanted to go to Europe and, because of my scholarship, I’d been asked to apply to a very competitive program that would allow me do all of my graduate work in Italy. The “study abroad thing” was also the topic of our last argument, the one that got me pushed into the kitchen table as Mason shoved by me on his way out the door. Needless to say, he didn’t want me to go.
“You still set on doing that?” He popped a whole quarter triangle of toast into his mouth, chewing fiercely. I just nodded, not trusting my voice to answer him. “I can’t go to Italy. My parents would have a fit. They’d never allow it.”
Sure. They allowed him to skip school, fail classes and play D amp;D all day, but follow his wife to Italy so she could pursue her dreams? Oh no, never that.
“You’re a big boy.” I stood and took my empty plate to the sink. “Don’t you think it’s about time you started cutting some apron strings and making your own decisions?”
I held my breath. It was like deja-vu. We were going to have the same argument all over again. Maybe this time he’d do more than just push me and bruise my ribs.
Maybe this time he’d break an arm or my skull.
“It’s not just them.” He was on the defensive now. “I don’t want to go to Italy.
What am I going to do in
“I don’t know.” I rinsed my plate, feeling Jezebel twining around my ankles. “What are you doing
“I have no idea.” He stood, the rest of his toast untouched. I closed my eyes as he started toward me and let out my pent-up breath when he passed, going into the bedroom. He came back out a few minutes later, fully dressed, while I was sitting quietly at the kitchen table and Jezebel licked up the remains of Mason’s eggs.
He didn’t even say goodbye when he grabbed his helmet from the table and took off out the back door. But I didn’t call him back either. I just sat there and cried and wished, not for the first time or the last, that I had died instead of Isabella.
* * * *
I was in the middle of reading Dante’s Divine Comedy-in the original Italian of course-just entering Purgatory and thinking about Mason and Isabella and the ruin my life had slowly become, when the phone rang.
“Oh my god, Dani, turn on the TV.” It was Carrie. I glanced at the clock-it was almost eight at night and I remembered she said Doc started at the hospital at five.
I grabbed the remote, my stomach clenched. “What is it?” I flipped the TV on, sure something horrible had happened. Like I needed one more disaster?
“Turn to channel three-sixteen.”
I frowned, pushing buttons on the remote. “Three-sixteen?” That wasn’t a news station. We had basic cable, but it was
“Did you turn it on?”
I was about to open my mouth to reply when the cable box responded. At first there was a sort of scrambled zig-zag image on the screen and then it evened out to reveal a blond women, naked on her knees, with some guy’s cock in her mouth.
“You found it.” Carrie laughed, understanding what I meant by my tone even if she didn’t know the word. “What does that mean?”
“Fuck,” I whispered, watching the blond try to swallow the guy’s cock to the hilt and doing a pretty damned good job of it. “It’s actually also a term for…well…a guy’s cock.”
“How apropos!” She laughed again, sounding utterly delighted.
“How…?” I managed to get that strangled word out, leaning closer as the blond slid her tongue down to lick the guy’s balls, her hand still gripping his dick.
“Jen from across the street called and told me to change my TV to three-sixteen,”
Carrie explained. “Her six-year-old apparently found it when he was playing with the remote. She’d already called most of her mommy group on campus and they confirmed it too. We’ve got free porn!”
“I doubt that was her reaction.” I laughed.
“No, she was pretty irate, but I, for one, am thrilled.” Carrie giggled. “I just hope it’s still on when Doc gets home. I’m tempted to call him and tell him to come now.”
