The Perfect Life (33 page)

Oliver leaned the bulky metal equipment against the opposite wall then sauntered up next to me, dramatically crossed his arms over his chest, and narrowed his stare on the three gray squares I’d taped to the sheetrock, pretending he was in deep, serious thought.

“I think whoever comes up with these names should stick to writing Hallmark cards, and if this is gonna be your room, you’re forty-seven shades short,” he announced before erupting in a fit of laughter.

Rolling my eyes, I lightly slapped his arm as my face heated with embarrassment. Ever since I’d admitted to him a couple of nights ago that I was intrigued by the thought of using a blindfold in bed, he’d been making
Fifty Shades
jokes every chance he got. Naturally, when we’d gone to the home improvement store the previous day for things we needed at the house, the abundance of rope, cable ties, and tape provided him an endless amount of opportunities.

Admittedly, most of it was pretty funny, especially since there was not a chance in this lifetime I’d allow him or anyone else to restrain my hands and/or feet. Oliver had opened both my mind and heart up to so many things that I never thought possible for me, but with my past, I didn’t care how much I trusted him—it was a big N-O on the bondage. But the blindfold . . . the blindfold I would consider, because I could remove it myself if I started to get freaked. I needed that control.

“Keep making fun of me and we’ll see who’s laughing tonight when Iron Chef goes to sleep without dinner,” I warned before sticking my tongue out at him.

Doing his best to wrangle in his amusement—but failing miserably—he scooped me up in his arms and kissed me long and hard. My limbs instinctively wrapped around him. “Rizzo, you know I’m just teasing you ‘cause I like you,” he said when we came up for air.

“Mhmm,” I mumbled, pretending to be unconvinced. “‘Cause you like me, huh?”

Oliver caught my lips with his again, this time softer and slower. I clung to him, giving as much as I took. The man could make me forget about the entire world when his mouth was working its Bat Magic, the coarseness of his facial hair mixed with the soft, silkiness of his lips creating the perfect, mind-blowing sensation.

“You know I do a lot more than just like you, right?” he whispered as he tenderly rubbed the tip of his nose in small circles against mine, our eyes locking on one another’s.

My heart skipped a beat, maybe two, before it began thumping wildly in my chest. I couldn’t speak, my tongue a dried up rag in the middle of the desert. “Yeah?” I breathed.

“Yeah, beautiful girl, don’t act like you don’t know.” He grinned wolfishly while tugging on my hair. “But I’m not gonna tell you how much until we’re in the clear. At least with him. I know we don’t know what happens after that, in the future, but we face those hurdles as they arise. Just like in every relationship, there are risks we both have to take, and I’m willing to take every single one of them for you, Monroe, but Colin
has
to know.”

I nodded my agreement. “I know. And I swear to you once the season is over, which could be as early as four weeks from now, I will tell him. I just couldn’t Sunday with the way he was . . .” Furrowing my brow with annoyed confusion, I asked, “You said you understood?”

“I
do
understand, and I’m not upset with you. But I just want you to understand what’s keeping me from crossing that next barrier. I’ve given you everything I have but that. It’s all I have to hold on to until you can give me all of you too,” he replied, kissing my forehead until I relaxed it. “There. That’s better.”

Even though I didn’t like his reasoning, there wasn’t much I could say, because in the end, he was right. All I needed to do was talk to Colin and it would be a non-issue. Plus, the longer I carried on with Oliver without telling my husband, the more hurt and upset Colin was going to be once I did. But I really didn’t want to let him down, not when he needed the stability I offered more than ever.

If we could just make it until the season was over—somewhere between four and nine weeks depending on their playoff run—then we could all sit down together and talk about what’s next. Hopefully, that would include me getting to be with Oliver on a permanent basis. I loved him enough to ask Colin for a divorce, but I couldn’t just yet.

“Ollie, you know how I feel too,” I gently nipped at his full bottom lip, “and I’m giving you my word. As soon as football is over, I’ll tell him everyth—”

“Hello? Anybody home? I brought lunch for everyone!” Effie’s voice filtered into the bedroom seconds before she appeared in the doorway.

Somehow, Oliver managed to lower me back to the floor and we both turned to face the paint swatches in just the nick of time. Well, I hoped it was in time. We must’ve been so absorbed in our own conversation that we didn’t hear the alarm chime when she came in the front door, and it was only by sheer luck that she called out at all. I didn’t want to think about if she hadn’t.

“Hey, Effie!” I spun around to greet her, hoping she didn’t hear the shakiness in my voice. “Oliver just came in to help me choose a paint color. I could use your opinion too. What do you think of these three?”

Distract and redirect. Distract and redirect.
My training as a therapist kicked in immediately, and all I wanted to do was to make her think and talk about anything but discovering me and Oliver in the middle of a tense conversation.

“My choice is definitely the elephant one,” Oliver announced matter-of-factly then turned to smile at Effie. “And yes, food! I knew I liked you, pixie girl. Let’s go set it up downstairs in the kitchen. I’ll help you.”

Swooning at Oliver and giggling like a school-girl, Effie floated on Cloud Nine right out of the room. I may or may not have snarled in her direction.

“No need to channel your inner Poison Ivy, beautiful,” Oliver chuckled, swiping his thumb across my cheek. “I only see you.”

After he followed her downstairs to help with lunch, I was left alone, staring at those damn gray squares on the wall, and the only thing I could think about was where I could buy a blindfold.

“She doesn’t see what I see.

To her, she is imperfection.

She is dust on pages of torn

books and broken hands on clocks

that used to spin in lovers

homes. To me, she is perfection.

She is the sun the moment it is

washed by the sea

and the children’s heartbeat

the moment

it explodes from the water

once more.”

–Christopher Poindexter

Oliver

“YOU KNOW, YOU
might as well tell me now,” my mom probed, taking a drag off a cigarette, even though she convinced my dad she’d stopped smoking ten years before. “I can wait out here as long as you want, but it’s a helluva lot warmer inside the house.”

As she exhaled, I watched the cloud of smoke dissipate into the frigid, late-night December air just past the porch we sat on. Bundled up like Eskimos with a space heater pointed directly on us, we looked like fools sitting outside watching the snow fall around us, but my mom didn’t care. This was her thing—the porch swing in the backyard. She used it with her kids like a therapist uses a couch with his patients. We knew when we were summoned there, we were about to be grilled with tough questions, and after the interrogation, we’d receive a valuable piece of Mom-advice that we didn’t usually want to hear, but always needed to hear.

Mom did not fuck around in the swing. If I was acting like a little shit, she had no problem slapping me upside the head and telling me I was acting like a little shit. And when I was about thirteen or fourteen, I spent way too many nights on the swing being told just that. Thankfully, at thirty-three, I’d grown out of the swing sessions . . . or so I’d thought until that night after Christmas dinner—once my older sisters had packed their families up and gone home, my dad had gone to bed, and Charlotte and Camille left for an impromptu late movie—when my mom knocked on the door of my childhood bedroom, where I was texting with Monroe, and told me to meet her outside in ten minutes. I knew then I was in trouble.

“There’s nothing else to tell, Mom. I’m not sure what you want me to say,” I played stupid again, hoping she’d miraculously drop the whole conversation.

“Oliver Bradley Saxon, you may make six figures, live in a swanky high-rise, and have some fancy string of letters behind your name, but I am still the woman who gave birth to you, and I can tell when my son is in love!” she roared, her eyes wide and full of intensity. “From the minute you got here a couple of days ago, you’ve been walking around in this fog with a stupid-ass grin on your face that only gets bigger when you check your phone every other minute. I thought you were acting a little funny at Thanksgiving, always disappearing at the most random times, but then I was worried the deviled eggs had upset your tummy, so I didn’t want to say anything. But now . . . now you may as well be wearing a blinking neon that says, ‘Idiot in love.’”

“Mother, I’m a grown-ass man,” I retorted. “Grown-ass men have stomachs, not tummies. Grown-ass men also do not need to report the status of their love life to their parents until a relationship develops that warrants that discussion.”

“So there is someone!” she screeches, clapping her hands together. “I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!”

Sighing, I dropped my face into my leather gloves and shook my head. Why did I even say anything?

“What’s her name? Can you at least tell me that?” Scooting closer to me on the swing, she hooked our elbows and kissed my cheek. “You have no idea how happy this makes me, Ollie. When all of your friends started getting married and beginning their own families and you didn’t show any interest, I worried that because you grew up with so many females in the house that you would never settle down, knowing how crazy we can all be. I mean, even your friend Danny, who I thought would be single forever, finally shacked up with that Mo girl who’d been busting his balls since you guys were kids.”

She paused to take another drag from her cigarette then continued her rambling. “So tell me more. What does she do? Is she beautiful? Wait, don’t answer that. Of course she’s beautiful. You’ve always had a selective eye. How old is she? Does she live in Boston? I knew there was a reason you were supposed to go on this trip. Wh—”

“Mom, please stop!” I shouted, raising my hands in the air to surrender. “For the love of God, please stop with the fucking questions.”

Hurt and disappointment washed over her face as she retreated from me, and instantly, I wanted the words back.
Where is that damn rewind button?
I didn’t mean for my tone to sound so harsh; the last thing I ever wanted in my life was to upset my mom, especially after all she had done to keep our family together during some crazy-ass shit. And I had done just that, all because she was happy for me that I’d found someone. I was a dick.

“I’m sorry, Mom. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that,” I apologized as I wrapped my arms around her shoulders and tugged her back close to me. “I’m just really uneasy about it right now, and I’m scared if I talk about it, something will happen to screw it all up.”

Her forgiving gaze lifted to meet mine and she tenderly patted my cheek. “You really like her then, eh?”

“I love her with a love I didn’t know my heart was capable of,” I confessed in a whisper.

“Then what’s the problem, son? I see the hesitation in your face. Are you not sure if she feels the same? Scared to tell her?”

I shrugged and cut my eyes out to the yard, where she could hopefully not read anything else I wasn’t saying. “It’s just really complicated. I feel confident she feels the same way about me, but there are a lot of outside factors at play, and unfortunately, I have to wait and see how it all works out.”

“Will it all work out before you return to Chicago, or are you planning on staying in Boston when the six months are up?”

The questions she asked were the same ones I’d been asking myself for the better part of the last week. December was almost over, and I was supposed to return home to Chicago at the end of February. The Patriots had already clinched a playoff spot after Colin led the team to three straight wins when he came back from his injury, so even though the upcoming Sunday was the last week of the regular season, nothing regarding Monroe and me and him would be resolved yet.