Page 13 of My Favorite Lost Cause (The Favorites #2)

MAREN

B efore I’ve even looked at my phone, I can tell it’s early—the sun is up, but low in the sky still.

I go to the French glass doors and step out onto the deck, though I promised Charlie I wouldn’t.

The water moves in gentle ripples from the soft breeze, the marsh grass waving.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. When they open, the first thing I spy is Charlie, running the path around the inlet.

He cleaned up his act here, once upon a time. If we were staying longer than a week, he might manage it again, simply because there’s no one to drink to excess with, no one to sleep with, and nothing else to do.

He’s running hard, drenched in sweat, and a surprising bubble of envy rises in my chest. I used to run. I’d be antsy on the days I couldn’t do it, as if my body was overflowing with energy it needed to expend.

I don’t know what happened to that version of myself. It’s as if I’ve been holding perfectly still, scared to take a breath, while I wait for an outcome that never arrives.

I head to the kitchen. Juicing takes forever—I’ve only just finished and am in the process of making him some eggs when he enters the kitchen, freshly showered.

“You made eggs?” he asks. “You hate eggs.”

I shrug. “I made them for you.”

His mouth lifts into a quiet smile as he takes a seat at the table. I set the plate of eggs and a glass of green juice before him. He drinks the entire thing with neither complaints nor vodka.

“We should stay,” I blurt. We were supposed to go home next Thursday, the nineteenth. But there’s really no reason we can’t remain through the following weekend, is there?

He glances up from his plate. “Huh?”

“Through the following weekend. I won’t be ready to leave on Thursday, and you can be gone a few more days, right?”

His fork lowers. “What about the dogs? And, less importantly, your spouse?”

“I checked on the dogs this morning and they’re great, and Harvey—” I attempt a nonchalant shrug. “He’ll be fine. He was only going to be home three days next week anyway.”

This is a lie. Harvey will not be fine. In part because of his inexplicable jealousy of Charlie, in part because he’ll view this as a dereliction of duty on my end, though all that duty consists of is patiently waiting to get impregnated and being at home when he calls.

“I don’t know that there’s going to be much for you to do, Maren,” he warns. “Most of the cosmetic stuff is a long way away.”

“That’s okay,” I tell him. “I just want to stay.”

I’m doing it for him, but it wasn’t a lie. I don’t want to go anywhere yet.

We’re still having breakfast when Elijah and his crew arrive. I pour Elijah a cup of coffee while he slaps a notice on the table—a warning that the house is scheduled for inspection.

“This was on the door,” he says. “I don’t know what triggered it. Maybe me pulling the permits yesterday. I wouldn’t worry about it too much. We’ve made it clear we’re fixing it up.”

Charlie runs a hand over his face. “Or the property developer who wanted this place is pissed that I turned him down.”

Elijah shrugs. “It’s a formality, either way.”

He pulls out an iPad and starts to review his plans for the renovation.

They’ll get started in the basement—underpinning the foundation will apparently take weeks—and he suggests that Charlie can get started replacing the rotting wood.

Charlie was, I’m sure, hoping for a role that involved drinking and threesomes, but he hides this as he nods.

“Is there anything I can do?” I ask.

Elijah bites his lip. “It’s still several months out, but I’ll eventually need to know what you want to do with the kitchen, the light fixtures, the bathrooms…

I’m assuming you’ll want to overhaul a lot of that, but like I said, you’ve got months to decide.

I guess if you want to help you could start stripping the wallpaper? ”

Elijah’s being kind, but it sort of leaves me feeling like a kid instructed to draw pictures just so she stays out of your hair.

I can be useful. I know I can. I just wish I knew how.

I spend fifteen minutes reading online about wallpaper removal, and then ask Charlie for the car keys, which he only provides after forcing me to share my location with him.

“In case you wind up in a ditch,” he explains.

“So you can come save me?” I ask.

“Possibly,” he replies. “But mostly so the funeral home will have coordinates to find your body."

I laugh. He’s such a dick when he’s trying to pretend he doesn’t care.

I drive to the nearest hardware store, which is not near at all, for wallpaper spray, a scraping tool, and a wallpaper steamer.

When I return to the house and unpackage everything, the real work begins. I start off hesitant but soon discover there’s no reason to be careful. The walls will need to be touched up anyway, so there’s not too much harm to be done.

Removing wallpaper is quiet and boring but also…

peaceful. Once I stop thinking about how boring it is, my mind seems to float in a million different directions, some of them good, some of them bad.

And in those moments when my head goes entirely blank, my gaze turns toward that looming split staircase, where the sun flows through a stained-glass angel at its center.

I still haven’t been up there—and Charlie asked me not to since he’s worried about the attic ceiling caving in. But it still feels, just as it did the first day, that the house really wants me to go take a look.

In the afternoon, I take a quick shower and drive to the store.

I can’t remember the last time I left the house with wet hair and no makeup, wearing flip-flops.

At home I’m too worried about running into someone I know to go anywhere like this.

Too worried about the way they’ll gossip later that I looked sad or tired or rough , the sort of words you use when discussing someone in decline.

..or headed for a divorce. No one looks aghast when I step out of the car here, though.

They smile or they ignore me and both those reactions are a relief.

A gentle easing of some weight I didn’t even know I carried.

Charlie’s in the kitchen, freshly showered, when I return with the groceries.

“Do we still have a rental car, or do I need to call a tow truck?” he asks, pouring me a cup of wine.

“Ha ha,” I reply, though I did actually run it up onto the curb while parking. I pull chicken out of the bag and grab the cutting board I bought yesterday. “I’m making coconut curry soup for dinner, by the way. Loads of protein, turmeric, very healthy.”

“Just to be clear, the phrase ‘very healthy’ is not a selling point for me,” he replies, “but put me to work.”

I blink. “With cooking?” Not in a million years would Harvey have offered to help.

Charlie shoots me a leering gaze. “Unless there was something else you wanted me to work on. I’m incredibly good with my hands. Other parts too.”

I laugh as I return to the chicken. “No, Charles, there’s nothing else I want you to work on. I guess you can chop the onion?”

“We need music for this,” he says, pulling out his phone and choosing a playlist.

I’m about to argue. I’m about to say, “ You don’t actually need music in order to chop onions. ”

I stop myself because…why not? When did I become someone who thinks you shouldn’t listen to music while you cook? Probably around the same time I stopped having a glass of wine at dinner and began worrying excessively about the glycemic index of pizza crust.

Charlie’s just finished with the onion when Florence + the Machine comes on. My head nods in response to the beat almost unwillingly. He grins at me and turns the volume up as loud as it will go.

“Isn’t it too loud?” I ask.

“For whom? There’s no one but us for miles.”

He crosses the kitchen and removes the knife from my hand before spinning me in a circle.

A part of me wants to object to all of it—to the volume, to the dancing, to the fact that I have raw chicken on my hands, which means he now does too.

But he is spinning me and I do love this song, and there’s no reason we shouldn’t be dancing or listening to music as loudly as we are .

The real issue is that I don’t want to start loving things I’m going to have to give back in a few days. I don’t want to start loving things Harvey will immediately snatch from my hands.

And in a few months, I might have my fondest wish—a pregnancy—but it will mean being stuck with Harvey, to one extent or another, for life.

I guess I’m giving up an awful lot. I wonder if it might be too much.