Page 48 of (My Accidental) Killer Summer (Summers in Seaside)

forty-seven

. . .

Elle

The rest of the day passes like a blur as we attempt some semblance of normalcy. But I don’t think either of us has any idea what normal is or worse yet, what our new normal is.

We go grocery shopping because apparently normal people need things like fruit and paper towels.

He pushes the cart. I try not to make it a metaphor.

He steals a kiss in the cereal aisle that tastes like coffee and cinnamon and a threat to my resolve.

I poke him with a box of cereal and tell him to show some decency.

We stop by the pharmacy. He doesn’t make me ask.

He doesn’t make it weird. He stands beside me at the counter, solid as a wall, and when the pharmacist asks if we have questions, he looks at me, not away.

I shake my head, pay, and we leave with the sort of small paper bag that has changed the course of empires.

The kids get home just after noon, courtesy of ride share.

We make grilled cheeses like we’re auditioning for a commercial — too much butter, the good pan, tomato soup because Jill says comfort food is medicinal.

After, Noah drives Jaq back for practice and takes the scenic route so they can talk about nothing that matters and everything that does.

Jill and I sit at the table drafting the reflection email to the principal. We delete every time she types “with all due respect” because she is not a senator and we are not on C-SPAN. And we both giggle at my poor attempts at a “ senator voice .”

Dinner is delivery pizza eaten on the floor picnic style, because it’s fun and we haven’t done it in so long while we watch a movie the four of us have seen ten times and can still quote every line.

Noah mouths my favorite parts with me like a secret handshake.

His knee leans into mine and stays there.

And it’s innocent and erotic at the same time.

When she goes to bed, Jill asks Noah to check the window lock because a girl in her class had a peeping-tom TikTok scare and it’s living rent-free in her head.

He checks twice, then shows her how to prop the chair in a way that’s safe and satisfying.

Jaq pretends they’re too old for a goodnight, then hollers from their doorway, “Night,” like a dare.

Noah answers like it’s his favorite word to his favorite person.

When the house goes quiet, Noah and I clean the kitchen in the soft, conspiratorial rhythm of people who used to live together and still know where everything goes.

He hums something under his breath, a tune that lived in our old Saturdays.

I stack plates. He brushes a crumb from my cheek with his thumb and looks at me too long.

“Don’t,” I whisper, but I’m smiling.

“Don’t what?”

“Make me forget why this is hard.”

He nods, like the only correct answer is to stand in the hard with me. “We can do both,” he says. “Remember that. And… this.”

“This,” I repeat, and let him kiss me against the counter until the world fades and my mind spins.

We go to bed early because we can, because we’re separately pretending tomorrow isn’t a maze we still have to navigate.

Me in that I don’t suspect his plan to detonate his investigation and potentially put his career on the fast track to destruction to save me from myself.

Him in that he doesn’t intend to do exactly that.

He makes love to me for hours using tender caresses and beautiful words, soulful looks and soft touches.

Worshipping my body like a temple. When he falls asleep on his back, I fit myself into his side and breathe him in like oxygen I haven’t had in years.

I think about how different this day could have gone, and how instead we chose pancakes and paper towels and a hundred tiny mercies.

I fall asleep feeling secure, sated, and loved.

I wake once to rain ticking against the windows and the weight of his arm heavy across my waist. I tuck his hand closer, selfish. He murmurs my name like a promise, like a fact, and I let sleep pull me back under.

A while later — minutes, hours, I can’t tell — something shifts. The bed lightens. The air moves in that specific way a body does when it’s trying not to be noticed.

I keep my eyes closed.

The mattress dips near my calves. The whisper of cotton. The soft, practiced hush of a man stepping around the floorboard that squeaks. The faint click of the closet safe where he keeps the things that make him him : badge, gun, the parts of a life that never really fit inside a home.

I could say his name. I could ask where he’s going. I could make him choose between lying to me and telling me a truth I’m not ready to carry.

“Be boring,” he whispers from the doorway.

I could let him know I’m awake. Instead, I slide my hand across the warm space he leaves and curl my fingers into the sheet, trying to hang on to this moment a bit longer.

Where the only things that can’t be undone were caused by me and me alone.

Rain beats softly against the house. Somewhere down the block a dog barks twice and goes back to sleep.

I picture Noah in the kitchen, pausing, looking back down the hallway like a man deciding between sins.

The porch smells like wet dirt and rosemary when it rains. In the morning, I will pretend I don’t know I know that if he mentions it.

The back door sticks unless you lean left at the latch. He remembers and leans. It doesn’t thud.

The front lock clicks. Quiet. Careful.

I roll to his pillow, press my face into it, and pretend to sleep.