Page 69 of Dearly Unbeloved
“You have to take yourselves on a honeymoon now,” the lawyer’s assistant says as we descend.
The elevator is glass-fronted, facing dreary Downtown Seattle. Raindrops stream down the glass, and heavy clouds sit low in the sky, casting everything in blue. “Definitely,” I agree. “Maybe somewhere sunny.”
The assistant laughs, shaking her head at the view. “It’s been endless lately. Sunny sounds nice. Any ideas where you might go?”
“Hmm…” I wrack my brain, but Rose answers before I can think of anywhere.
“Japan. I want to see where Sierra’s family came from.”
The assistant gushes about a trip her sister took to Tokyo a couple of years ago, but I barely hear her. I want to take Rose to Japan. I want to show her where my family’s from and tell her all about my grandparents. I want to take her back to Toronto, show her around my old neighborhood, introduce her to my aunts and uncles, and take her to my grandparents’ old furniture store. I want to share my family with her.
I don’t want to give any of this up. I don’t want to miss seeing her opening up to her siblings. I don’t want to miss family dinners. I don’t want to miss Rose meeting Jazz and Liam’s baby for the first time. I want to see her flourish as an aunt, and I want to be Aunt Sierra.
But those aren’t my things to want. That’s not what Rose and I agreed on. And even if, by some miracle, she wanted those things with me, I wouldn’t know how to let myself have them. I have no idea how to stay.
“Hey.” Rose squeezes my hand hard, and I blink. “You okay? You’ve been staring blankly at me for like two minutes.”
I look around, realizing we’re standing at the door, and the assistant is already waiting for the elevator again.
“Shit, sorry. I didn’t sleep well last night. I think I spent too much time napping with the buns yesterday.” It’s not a lie, just not the whole truth. Neither Rose nor I made any move toward either of our beds last night. We cuddled before dinner, ordered takeout, then fell asleep wrapped around each other on the couch. Or Rose did, anyway. I stayed awake for hours, just watching her sleep, listening to her breathe, and memorizing every freckle on her skin. Until she woke up and jumped out of my arms, taking off like she couldn’t wait to get away from me.
Rose reaches a hand out, as if she’s going to touch my face, then lets it fall between us. I look down, watching it dangle by her side, the diamond on her finger twinkling as the overhead lights hit it.
“We should get home so you can have a rest, then,” she says, folding her arms across her chest, like she’s not quite sure what to do with them suddenly.
“I figured you’d want to go back to the lab for a couple of hours.”
Rose shakes her head. “I took a half day. I wasn’t surehow long this would take or how stressed you’d be about it, so I wanted to be there in case…” She trails off, looking outside the glass door before finishing. “In case you needed me.”
Fuck, she’s making this so hard.
“Let’s go out,” I say, before I can think about it, and Rose squints at me, like it’s a foreign concept to her. It kind of is, I guess.
“Out?”
“Yeah. We have the whole night to ourselves, and we’re already here. Let’s get dinner and… I don’t know, we could see a movie or something?”
It’s not a date. Sure, it sounds suspiciously like one, but asking my wife on a date a week or so before we plan on getting divorced would be unhinged behavior.
“Um…” Rose chews her lip, and I brace myself, ready for her to decline the invitation. She’s kept me at arm’s length all day, so I can’t imagine she wants to spend the night out in the city with me. I should’ve just taken her up on going home and taking a bath, leaving her to do her own thing.
“We’re near that Italian place that Liam and Maggie like. You know the one that shows obscure foreign movies with really out-of-sync subtitles? We could go there.”
I swear I breathe out all the air in my body, rushing to say yes. “That sounds perfect. Let’s do that.”
It’s an awful idea, spending more time together when I already know how hard it’s going to be to walk away, but that doesn’t stop me from holding the door open for her.And when Rose accidentally bumps my shoulder as we walk down the street, it doesn’t stop me from threading my fingers through hers and holding her hand.
33
ROSE
1. Twister
2. Scotland
3. Katherine Howard
4. Purple
