Page 6 of Happy Wife

And I want to say: Who’s going to see us? The house is at the end of a small peninsula that juts out over the lake. We might as well be on an island. I want to tell him to live a little. But I know Will, and he isn’t going to go for spontaneous sex on the lawn furniture when Italian cotton percale sheets are right upstairs. So I sit up carefully and straighten my dress, trying not to break the moment.

“Let’s go upstairs,” I repeat as I retrace my steps toward the living room.

He follows close behind, holding my hand so loosely that sometimes it’s just my fingertips balancing in the palm of his hand. As we reach the top of the stairs, I turn to face him, fantasizing that he’ll pull me into him and hike my legs around his waist, then carry me to bed like some scene in a movie.

Instead, his phone starts buzzing in his pocket. He looks at the caller ID and then to me. “Sorry,” he mouths.

And the moment—the one I had been hoping not to break—shatters. I nod, letting out a heavy sigh.

“Hey,” he says, putting the phone to his ear. “It’s Mia. Just a minute,” he whispers to me, and I believe him because he doesn’t walk away like he would if it was a work call. Instead, he wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me close. I put my head on his bare chest.

“Where?” he says to her. “Okay. Just give me a second.” Her side of the conversation is inaudible, but I can tell from his tone that she’s upset about something.

He hangs up and loosens his grip on me as he puts his phone back in his pocket.

“Mia left her Taylor Swift hoodie in the boat.”

I kiss his jaw. “Get it in the morning.”

“She’s all worked up. It’s her prized possession, and she’s worried it’ll rain.”

I wonder if this is when all of the composure I’ve been working so hard to maintain tonight might dissolve. My lower lip is threatening full pout, and Will must see it because he kisses my forehead and says, “Give me five minutes.”

I don’t agree, but I don’t disagree either. So, I watch him descend the stairs, shirt still unbuttoned, then turn on my heel and head to our bedroom.

Standing in the bathroom, I debate if I should let him undress me in some sort of tantalizing foreplay, or if I should just cut to the chase and be stark naked and waiting when he gets back. Deciding on the latter—itishis birthday—I slip onto the bed and prop myself up, ready, waiting, my head a little heavy from the wine. But sometime after 1:00a.m., the wine wins, and I fall asleep.

Chapter5

The day after

Every morning at nine, a kayak tour pushes off from a public park called Dinky Dock, near downtown Winter Park. Boaters put in under the shade of mossy trees, and over the stretch of a couple of hours, they paddle through part of what is known to locals as the Chain of Lakes—the six lakes of Winter Park, connected to one another through a collection of canals spanning almost a thousand acres.

Save for the odd hurricane days, the boating conditions hold up almost year-round, offering a perennial playground for water sports. It takes time and effort to paddle past the waves kicked up by wakeboarders and Jet Skis. And of course the wildness of Florida is never far from view: Snakes and egrets linger near the sandy shorelines. No alligators, though. In a state that boasts a seven-digit alligator population, Winter Park residents will tell you they “got rid of” the alligators in their lakes in the seventies.

Money really can buy most anything.

Those who aren’t scared off by the wake or the wildlife are rewarded with views of some of the city’s most historic and beautiful architecture. On Lake Osceola, they can take in the Palms, a Colonial Revival–style home that gained prominence in the 1920s for its architectural beauty and then notoriety in the 1980s whenit was occupied by a drug trafficker and seized by the federal government.

Paddling through the Venetian Canal, the last and longest of the connecting waterways on the tour, will bring you to Lake Maitland. Home to the Rollins College crew team’s boathouse, the Winter Park Racquet Club, and an ultraprivate, less-than-a-quarter-mile-long peninsula called the Isle of Sicily.

It sounds kind of ridiculous when you say it out loud. It’s a place in Florida with Venetian canals. But around here, you get what you pay for. And people pay a lot for it.

On a good day, I’m up before the tour reaches our lake. Este and I go for a run through the neighborhood and then grab a coffee on one of our pool decks. But the morning after Will’s birthday party, the blackout shades in our bedroom stay drawn long past the time the tour ends. And it’s not until the sound of a humming vacuum creeps into my dreams that I realize it’s time to wake up. In fact, it’s well past noon, and Autumn’s cleaning crew is downstairs.

I roll over, stretching out a searching hand for Will. This is wishful thinking, of course. Will doesn’t sleep until noon. Will doesn’t sleep past seven unless he’s at death’s door. But I open my eyes when I feel that his side of the bed is still neatly made. I remember washing my face and brushing my teeth, and then getting into bed naked to wait for him. Did I fall asleep that quickly?

Poor Will. He came upstairs expecting birthday sex and found me out cold.

I grab my cellphone off the nightstand. There are three missed texts from Este waiting for me.

11:00a.m.

Wanna come over for green juice before hot yoga?

Shit. I completely forgot about the hot yoga torture session I said we’d go to.

11:50a.m.

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