Page 126 of Let It Breathe
“Shut up.”
Reese shut up.
“I got a couple things to discuss,” her grandfather continued. “Move over, make room for me on the sofa. I gotta show you something.”
“Axl, if you’re going to show me your nipple piercing again, I’m not interested.” Reese squeezed her eyes shut. “If it’s infected, call your doctor.”
“That’s not it. Gimme one of those brownies. They got anything good in ’em?”
She opened her eyes. “If you mean eggs, sugar, vanilla, flour, and cocoa powder, yes.”
“Go get me a glass of wine, then.”
Reese sighed, knowing it was futile to argue. She got up to open the Pinot her mother had just brought. Retrieving a good Riedel wineglass from the cupboard, she poured a slosh of Pinot into it. She returned to the living room, setting it down in front of her grandfather.
Axl grinned and took a sip, then belched.
“Nice,” he said. “It’s the 2022 Resonance Vineyard Pinot Noir from Sineann, right?”
Reese raised an eyebrow as she dropped back onto the couch. “Good call.”
“Yeah, I’m full of surprises,” he muttered. “Like this one.”
He reached into his leather satchel and pulled out a picture frame that was tarnished around the edges. He looked at it for a moment before passing it to Reese with uncharacteristic reverence.
“See that?” Axl said, stabbing at the photo with one finger. “That’s me and your grandma at our twentieth anniversary party.”
Reese looked at the photograph, pretty sure it was illegal in most states for a granddaughter to see her grandparents in such a state.
“You had your twentieth anniversary party at a nudist resort?” she asked at last.
“Happiest time of my life,” Axl said. “She was a good woman, your grandma.”
Reese frowned. “I thought you called her a no-good, cheating, skanky excuse for a?—”
“I was just mad,” Axl interrupted, waving a dismissive hand. “That was after she ran off with Floyd and things were a little rocky, you know what I’m saying?”
“Sure.”
“But up until then, we had it pretty good. Man, we had such good times when we were first married. The date nights and the swingers clubs and the?—”
“Um, Axl? I don’t know that I need to hear all this.”
Axl glared. “My point is this, Peanut Butter Cup—your grandma and me, we had a damn good marriage.”
Reese couldn’t help it. She felt her eyebrow rise with a skepticism she couldn’t hide. She half expected Axl to curse her out, but he just shook his head.
“People’s marriages aren’t always what you think they are,” he said. “Sometimes the ones that look shitty on the surface have a lot of good stuff underneath. Nice stuff. Stuff that keeps you together and happy and doing the dirty every day for thirty-three years.”
“Axl, I don’t?—”
“Shut up. Let me finish.”
He folded his arms over his chest, looking unusually serious. Reese sat up a little straighter, the photo still gripped in her hand.
“Sometimes the marriages that seem perfect—well, they’re not,” Axl said. “That doesn’t mean they’re bad, or that they won’t work out. It just means some folks are better at hiding stuff than others. Some people have to work harder than others, you feel me?”
Reese frowned and handed the photo back. “I guess so.”
