Page 47 of This Might Hurt
JUDE
It rains hard and fast in Wyoming, here and gone again.
In New York it’s drizzling steadily under a smoky, pale gray sky like it’s always been this way and might never stop.
That intense bodyguard, Grant, is standing on the tarmac when we land, holding an oversized black umbrella like we’re going to a funeral. I guess we kind of are.
Andrew scrambles up, stretches, and grabs his bag.
The look he shoots me is strained but weirdly gentle.
Maybe because he spent most of the flight asleep with his face in my neck while I looked over his head at Lake Michigan and Lake Erie and envied his gravelly little snores.
At least the flight attendant made me a large coffee spiked with whiskey.
“This is it,” Andrew murmurs, his skin even paler than usual. I wonder how much he remembers about last night, how we could be on a plane to fucking Australia right now if I hadn’t made us come here instead.
A wave of clammy, humid air rolls through the cabin from the open door.
I haven’t felt nervous so far, not when my alternative is sprinting away while out-of-shape truckers try to chase me for stealing their stuff.
But my heart starts pounding so hard it makes me nauseous as I follow Andrew down the slippery steps.
Grant rushes forward with the umbrella before the rain can touch the shoulders of Andrew’s camel-colored jacket.
The man’s face isn’t built to show emotion, but he looks incredibly stressed.
I can’t hear what Andrew says, but Grant touches his shoulder, then pulls him into a hug.
Even I’m surprised to hear myself growl low in my chest. The man glances up and meets my eyes with a fucking alpha dog stare, like this one belongs to him and I’d better back off.
I hold his glare without blinking, and maybe we would have stayed like that forever if Andrew hadn’t pulled away, oblivious, and jogged toward the SUV idling at the edge of the runway.
Grant goes after him with the umbrella, leaving me to squelch behind them. I take the back seat and watch the streets get narrower and busier, the skyscrapers taller. Up until this minute, the biggest city I’d ever seen is fucking Albuquerque.
We cram our way through tighter and tighter traffic as Andrew does an awful job explaining the situation to Grant.
He leaves out everything he wants to keep private, without realizing that what’s left doesn’t make any sense.
When Grant finally grasps that we’re married, he gets very quiet.
His eyes find mine in the rearview mirror, Andrew still rambling away, and instead of the anger I expected he just looks really fucking worried.
I shrug, unable to think of a way to tell him without words that I’m doing the best I can.
Andrew can’t seem to slow down, filling the confused silence by talking faster and repeating the same things in different ways.
I sneak a hand past the headrest and stroke the short, soft hairs at the back of his neck until he sinks deeper into his seat and quits bombarding Grant with questions about his grandfather’s death.
All the man knows is that the family is sequestered at home, keeping quiet.
Even through a curtain of rain, I can see that I was right as soon as we pull up to the curb. I’m not going to have any fun here. Warm light spills out of a glossy, aggressively beige storefront, framing a row of male mannequins in the most insufferable, up-your-own-ass menswear imaginable.
Andrew pulls his jacket over his head to keep the rain off as we jog up to the front of the shop.
A woman in a sleek gray uniform opens the door, letting us into a strangely hushed, high-ceilinged room that looks like an art gallery for upscale men’s clothing and smells like spices I’m too poor to know the names of.
This feels suspiciously like the start of one of those makeover montages in Lena’s favorite movies, except in this one everyone’s stressed out of their minds and I’m not going to look any better at the end.
“Mr. Innes?” A slim, pale man with black hair drifts over. “Welcome, sir. My name is Patrick. We have a room ready for you and—” He looks at me like I baffle him.
“Jude.” For once I’m too out of my element to add anything snarky.
“Thank you.” Andrew steps around me and follows Patrick to the back of the showroom. “We’re extremely short on time today. I need him measured, then you can pull anything off the rack that’s close to that size.”
“Understood, sir. That should be no problem.” We turn into a moodily-lit hallway lined with fancy trying-on rooms that remind me way too much of long, strained afternoons in clothing stores where I stared into the mirror at outfits that never fit right, listening to Mom tell Lena how cute she looked in everything.
I don’t know why it stuck with me, why it always makes me feel kind of depressed, because it was the truth—Lena’s fucking adorable and I’m…
fine. I kind of wish Andrew didn’t have to see it, though.
“My assistant will come in to measure you.” Patrick points us into a room at the end. “And I’ll be right back with some refreshments.”
Andrew inhales to tell him we don’t have time for snacks, but I clap my palm over his mouth as Patrick bustles away. “If I have to play dress up for you after watching you sleep for four hours, you will not deny me anything that might involve sugar and caffeine.”
I expect him to roll his eyes and shove me off, but he gives my palm a quick, warm lick like an apology.
“Thank you for letting me sleep,” he says when I move my hand.
I don’t get a chance to answer because an athletic guy with bleached hair in the same uniform as Patrick shows up with a notebook and tape measure.
These two are freaking me out with the way they keep appearing and disappearing and doing things before we ask, but Andrew doesn’t even seem to notice.
“Hello, I’m Rin. If you could kindly remove your sweatshirt, sir, I will take your measurements.”
“I wear a medium mostly,” I offer, throwing my hoodie on one of the chairs and standing obediently in whatever pose Rin nudges me into. “It doesn’t matter though; I look shitty in everything. My mom said I was cursed. She hated taking me shopping.”
Andrew’s eyebrows furrow, perplexed. “You have a long waist. When they take that measurement into account, everything will fit right.”
“What do you mean?” I look down at Rin to see if he’s getting this, but he’s studiously ignoring us as we talk over his head like he’s not there.
Andrew reaches out and rests his hands in a firm grip on either side of my waist, studying my shape. “Your torso is disproportionately long compared to your legs. Didn’t you play sports? I’m surprised no one mentioned it. And your shirts were probably all too short.”
I blink at him as he regards me with such assurance, like none of this ever needed to be complicated.
No one mentioned it because no one thought that hard about it.
I’m just Jude. Everyone always had something more important to worry about than me.
Andrew’s always been the most important, as far as I can tell, so I think it would be hard for him to understand.
Before Rin finishes, Patrick comes back holding a white ceramic tray with two cappuccino mugs topped with foam.
“To warm up from the rain,” he offers, setting it down on a table distressingly far away from where I’m trapped under Rin’s hands.
He takes out a notebook and pen. “Do you know what pieces you’re looking for? ”
Andrew brings one of the cups over and gives it to me before getting his own, because he really is such a good boy behind the ten-foot wall of spikes. “Semi-casual separates, knitwear, a jacket, about a week’s worth. And a couple of suits just in case, some shoes, underwear, socks.”
Patrick is somehow keeping up with this as he scribbles down shorthand and nods. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll bring some options back.”
It takes Andrew a few sips of his coffee to notice I’m burning a hole in him with my eyes. “Is there a problem?” Apparently we still don’t care about the guy measuring my thigh.
“I thought—” I lower my voice, even though it’s pointless. “Why are you ordering an entire-ass wardrobe? I thought this was like a two-day thing.”
He plays with the foam in his cup without answering, his shoulders tense.
A split-second surge of fight or flight stirs in my gut.
It’s been there all day, ebbing and flowing.
I live off instincts, and today they’re all out of whack, like how the clouds used to fuck up my family’s satellite TV dish right when my dad wanted to watch March Madness.
“Andrew.” His eyes flick up to mine obediently. “What do you think is going to happen?”
This time he does wait until Rin stands up, thanks me, and disappears. “I don’t know,” he says hoarsely when the door shuts. “I don’t know anything right now. Please stop questioning me for five minutes and let me have this?”
“Sure.” He looks surprised, but I think it’s fair, honestly. If he wants to spend a million dollars on clothes we don’t need, if that makes him feel better, I’m more than happy to let him do his thing while I try to keep us from spiraling off a cliff.
When Patrick and Rin come back with a fucking load of clothes, Andrew sees the look on my face and shakes his head. “Try on one outfit to make sure the sizes are right, then you can wear it the rest of the day and we’ll bag up everything else.”
Patrick steps forward to recommend some combination of clothes, but Andrew waves him off and looks through everything himself.
He picks out a dozen pieces and lays them out next to each other, mixing and matching and shaking his head before making his final choices.
He presents them to me with a tenderness that I’m not sure is for me or the clothes. “Put these on.”