Page 41 of This Might Hurt

His snarky little snort, the one that comes out before he can stop it, always makes me feel calmer.

The gentle, breeze-less warmth outside caresses my skin like a relief after the chill of the house.

I do know how to operate the deck lighting, so I turn it up, then take off my shoes and roll my jeans around my knees.

Once I’ve retracted the beige vinyl pool cover halfway, I sit on the edge and dangle my legs in the artificially blue water.

My family made sure no one could develop the adjoining land around this property, so the only voices we can hear in the thick hush are the chirps of insects.

Jude bangs around the grill, turning knobs and opening and closing drawers in a way that should be annoying but soothes me instead, an animal pull toward the one who feeds you and watches over you.

When I’m half asleep, wondering vaguely if I’ll fall in and drown, I realize Jude is talking, but not to me.

I scramble to my feet, heart pounding as water scatters across the pale stones.

“So put it on medium? How long? This thing looks like a space ship, does that make a difference?” He’s holding his phone out, angled to show himself and the grill.

My panic dies slightly when I recognize the woman’s voice on the speakers.

“They’re all the same underneath the bells and whistles, honey,” Ramona chuckles.

I didn’t realize how much tension Jude was carrying in his face until it smooths away into a huge grin as he listens to her.

“Put the veggies on for fifteen minutes, and do the salmon for the last five. Oil them all up first.”

“We don’t have oil.” He shoots me a look. “Not my fault.”

“Then just be careful and don’t move the fish around too much.” Her voice brightens. “Is Andrew there? Where are you boys staying?”

I freeze, but Jude beckons me with impatient fingers. “It’s like an Airbnb.” I forgot how good he is at lying until I see it in action. “It’s a little big, but the price was unbeatable.”

“What the hell are you doing?” I whisper, refusing to come closer. “Hang up.” There’s absolutely no reason he shouldn’t be allowed to call her, but I hate the feeling that he disturbed the sanctity and safety of the total isolation I created for us.

He lowers the phone, his eyes caught somewhere between frustration and warmth. “Come here and say hi.”

Or maybe… The thought makes my stomach turn.

Maybe this dark rot in my chest is what jealousy feels like.

Maybe I took him and I don’t want him to talk to or look at anyone else, to smile at them like that when he’s supposed to be with me.

Jesus Christ. Did he do this to me, or was I always this messed up?

Jude leans across the distance between us and grabs my wrist, reeling me into his side like some fisherman coaxing in a prize catch.

I find myself blinking at a slightly blurry Ramona with the sky behind her, the same pinkish early sunset we’re looking at right now.

Occasionally a white and gray tail and arched furry butt wander past the camera and back again.

“Andrew,” she exclaims happily, like my presence somehow improves her life. “Are you having fun? Is my boy behaving himself?” I look skeptically at Jude, who paused to throw the vegetables on the preheated grill, and she bursts out laughing.

“We went for a hike,” I say, defaulting to my one and only decent lie because I’m no good under pressure. “Thank you very much for breakfast,” I add, not sure what else to say. “It was very good.”

“Oh, I’m so glad you liked them. I’ll make them for you again sometime. Now please send me a picture every day. And enjoy your dinner.”

“Uh-huh,” I mumble. “You too.” Which doesn’t even make any sense.

Jude plucks the phone out of my hand. “Love you. Text me how your eye appointment goes, okay?”

“I don’t need any appointment,” she grumbles.

Jude’s voice goes stern. “You’d better go. You promised.”

She sighs more unhappily than I thought was possible. “I will. Goodnight, honey.”

He says goodnight, then tosses his phone moodily on the metal prep surface next to the grill.

“She’s having vision problems, but she doesn’t want to go because she’s scared they’ll tell her she’s going blind.

It took months to convince her. I wish I could be there.

” The tension has leaked back into his jaw, his bony shoulders.

“Why did you call her? I didn’t say we could call people.” God, I hate myself. It’s that rot inside me, made worse by the guilt of separating him from his grandma when she needs him.

“Because I don’t fucking know how to grill shit,” he snaps, waving a hand at the heat shimmering out from under the lid. “Did anyone ever tell you you’re a bitch when you’re stressed out?”

“I know.” I drop into one of the swivel chairs at the head of the glass-topped patio table and rest my face on the slightly dusty surface. “It’s not going to stop, either.”

He huffs out a half sigh, half laugh. “Oh, I’m aware. You don’t have to be scared of her,” he adds after a contemplative pause. “She’s just a nice old lady. She likes you.”

Propping my head sideways on my arms, I let my eyes drift shut. “There’s no reason for her to like me. I haven’t done anything.”

“You haven’t done much for me either, and I like you okay.”

I flip him off apathetically, without opening my eyes. “There’s something wrong with you.”

He snorts again, then goes back to whatever process Ramona told him to do.

Eventually I prop my chin on my arms and watch him light a cigarette on the grill flame and smoke it while he experiments with every single spatula and pair of tongs on the hooks nearby even though they’re totally unnecessary.

Eventually he produces a pile of roasted vegetables and a salmon fillet that are fully cooked and fairly edible despite a bunch of burn marks.

“I’m sorry you got such random shit,” he offers ruefully as he sits down opposite me, studying my pile of chopped, salted vegetables. “But this—” He pokes his salmon, shredding the skin. “—doesn’t look much better.”

“I’m too hungry to care,” I mumble through a mouthful of pepper, watching his wide, agile hands mangle the piece of salmon as he tries to pick out the bones.

The breeze in my hair feels dry and remote, so expansive compared to the more manicured landscapes in New York.

It’s the only part of this place I prefer to Carrick House.

You haven’t done much for me either. He was probably kidding, but it’s true enough that I can’t get it out of my head.

I treat him like a fucking asshole because I don’t know how to be good to him.

I’ve always considered myself decent because I wanted to save the planet, support fair wages for workers, all these ideals that are so easy to talk about.

When it comes to sitting across the table from someone I’ve been bitching at and pushing around all day, I don’t feel decent at all. I feel lost.

“Why were you reading about bicycles earlier? At the courthouse,” I ask after a long stretch of quiet chewing. It sounds stiff and fake, like I spent ten minutes thinking it up, which is exactly what I did.

He drops a bite of dry-looking salmon, seeming genuinely startled that I cared about anything he was doing today. “What?”

“You heard me.” I’m clearly great at this.

A small grin twitches at his lips. “Ramona’s working on a library display for National Bike Month. She told me to find books about bikes that aren’t nonfiction or picture books.”

“And how’s that going?”

He pushes his half-finished plate away, pulling a face. “Awful.”

Something snags in the back of my mind—a memory of sitting on a bench in the hothouse at our Italian villa when I was little, a heavy, old-fashioned hardback on my lap. “There’s a Sherlock Holmes story, I think. ‘The Solitary Cyclist’? Some creep on a bike stalks this lady or something.”

“Really?” It felt like the most pointless thing I’ve ever said, but he looks thrilled as he scrabbles for his phone to Google the story.

“Oh my god, thank you. If I had to read any more cycling forums about whether some book accurately portrays gear shifting, I was gonna cry. Plus, Ramona loves mysteries.”

“Uh-huh.” I stab my last charred slice of pepper, unsure how to feel about that whole experiment. Trying to be nicer mostly highlights how not-nice I am the rest of the time.

“Well,” I venture after all the food is gone.

“We have countless bedrooms to choose from tonight.” Though when I start counting down—I don’t want mine, I don’t want any of the ones Colin and Archie use, I certainly don’t want my mother’s—there aren’t so many choices after all.

I don’t tell him that I’d rather sleep on the floor than go deeper into the house.

Jude wrinkles his nose, then kicks my shin gently with the toe of his boot. “You should clean up the dishes, and I’ll reconnoiter the area.”

“Reconnoiter?”

“Hey, if you’re allowed to act like the FBI is tracking our video calls, I’m allowed to reconnoiter.”

“Do whatever you want.” I shrug, trying not to look relieved.

When he disappears inside, I stack everything we dirtied into a rickety tower, then scrub salmon skin off the grill with a wire brush like I saw Ramona do.

Crossing the main room back to the kitchen feels wrong.

My grandfather hated this house; Archie’s the one who built it.

When Hugh came to stay, he’d sit by this window in a foul mood, tying brightly colored thread onto fly-fishing hooks.

Everyone, even my uncles, took the long way around to keep from drawing his attention, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a common room at all.

I hoped Jude would be back by the time I returned to the den where we left our bags, but he’s still missing. Trying not to think about what he might be doing, I collapse onto the couch and close my eyes.