Tough Luck Hero

“I was tired of waiting out on the porch. I thought the entire point was that we minimize gossip.”

She turned around, starting when she saw him standing in the doorway. “I did not invite you in. I, in fact, did the opposite of that.”

“Do you really want people to start talking about how your husband was standing on the porch looking lonely only hours after your wedding?”

“That’s so dramatic,” she said, attempting to look less perturbed than she felt.

“You’re the one with a lot of concern about appearances.”

“You’re not...disinterested in appearances, yourself. I have to find a suitcase.”

“I thought you were almost ready.”

“Okay, let’s not stand around acting like you would be fully on top of the procedure for going about all of this. I admit, I was feeling a little shortsighted. Like, I was kind of thinking of packing an overnight bag. And then I realized that we’re going to be living together for a few months.”

She could have sworn that Colton paled slightly when she spoke the words. “More like a month and a half.”

“Semantics. But we have to stay together until after the election. And presumably you need some time to allow your mother to adjust... Or whatever it is exactly that you’re waiting for her to do.”

“I would like to avoid giving her a mental breakdown,” he said, sounding exasperated.

“Right. Well, I don’t really know your mother, so I don’t really understand the situation. But I do understand that it’s kind of complicated. But all that means is that it’s not going to be a quick weekend stay at your place. And maybe I was in denial about that.”

“It’s not that big of a deal,” he said, while his expression said something else entirely.

“No,” she said, “not at all. We just have to learn to coexist.” She opened up her closet and began to rummage around, digging in the bottom until she produced her suitcase, which she hadn’t used in years.

“How hard can it be?”

Neither of them spoke the obvious, which was that they had a difficult enough time coexisting when they lived in the same small town, let alone the same house.

“I’m sure it will be super easy,” she said, hefting her suitcase up onto the bed and throwing it open. “Super, super easy.” She continued muttering as she walked into the bathroom.

She looked around at all of her things. Her makeup, put away neatly in the dark purple case that she kept on the left-hand corner of the counter. Her flat iron, snapped into its sparkly holder, which kept it and its cord carefully contained. Then she turned and looked at the shower, at the carefully organized caddy that contained her shampoo, conditioner and oil treatments.

Everything was right where she wanted it to be. Organized exactly the way it made sense to her. She didn’t have to compromise. Didn’t have to modify herself to be different for anyone. Didn’t have to contort so that she wouldn’t be in the way.

Darn it, she liked having her own space. Needed it, even. And maybe she was being really, really dramatic about the fact that she was going to be sharing a house with somebody for a couple of months. Maybe.

“It’s a vacation,” she muttered, picking up her various items. “A vacation on a ranch. With a surly roommate that will maybe cook breakfast?”

She walked out of the bathroom, back into the bedroom, where Colton was still standing in the doorway, his arms crossed over his broad chest.

“I thought you came in to help me.”

“You didn’t give me a directive. Did you want me to just aimlessly go through your things and try to decide what you needed?”

She made a scoffing noise in the back of her throat. “Obviously not.”

Silence stretched between them, along with a thick band of tension that seemed to wrap itself around her, more specifically, her throat. She found it difficult to breathe all of a sudden. For some reason, the air seemed to reduce around them. For some reason, she was unbearably conscious of the scent of the soap that he used, and just how familiar it was.

It was a reminder. A reminder that—whether she remembered it or not—she had absolutely smelled it on his skin before. Her brain didn’t remember, but right now, her body seemed to.

“Do you have a food processor?” she asked, because talking about food processors seemed as good a method as any for diffusing the unwanted crackle of tension in the room.

“Of course.”

“There’s no of course about that. A lot of men wouldn’t have one.”

“Well, I have a housekeeper. She cooks a lot of my food.”

Lydia’s eyebrows shot up. “A housekeeper?”

“You feel a little less victimized now, don’t you?”

“No. Thoroughly victimized.” She added as many clothes as she could to her bag, followed by shoes.

“It isn’t like you can’t come back to the house. You can make vague noises about how you intend to rent it out if anyone asks. But we’ll never get around to it.”

“You know, I hear some people live in cities, where nobody knows their name, or pays attention to what they’re doing.”

The corner of his mouth curved upward. “What must that be like?”

“I don’t know. Do you have a juicer? Because I juice.” She had juiced twice. Once right after she had bought the juicer, and another time when her pants had refused to zip after the holidays last year. But then, she had just bought new pants because juice with kale in it was an abomination.

Colton treated her to a baleful look. “Nobody juices.”

She scoffed. “Well, okay, I don’t do it every day. But I do stop at the store on the way to work and buy a bottle of juice sometimes.”

“Do you?” he asked, his tone rife with skepticism.

“I mean, I don’t always have time to stop on the way to work. But I do stop at the store on the way home. For a bottle. Of wine. But it’s almost grape juice.”

“I have wine, and several corkscrews. So why don’t you just leave your juicer here.”

She wanted to run through a list of yet more appliances that she would probably never use in his house, because she wanted to do something to delay the inevitable.

“Did you get Natalie’s things out of your house?” she asked.

“I paid some movers to come by this morning and take care of it. I think they took it back to her parents’ house.”

“Is that where she is?”

“You know, I didn’t make it my mission to figure out where the woman who left me at the altar was. But, seeing as she’s your friend, you might know.”

Lydia swallowed. “I didn’t exactly think she would want to hear from the bridesmaid who ended up marrying the groom.”

He laughed. “Coward.”