The Whole Golden World

by Kristina Riggle

  So far they’d been talking about his college days. He’d been telling her about a guy named Bill, famous in college for his ability to eat the hottest chicken wings, handfuls at a time, without taking a single sip of beer or water.

  He leaned back in his chair—the picture of elegant cool, like George Clooney—and said, “So where are you going to college?”

  That yanked her back to her actual life, to the e-mails she got in the same week from both Central Michigan and Boston U accepting her as a student, and how all she could do was file away BU’s in her “save” folder, because she couldn’t bear to look at it, couldn’t bear to delete it. She shook her head and sipped the wine.

  “I don’t want to talk about that. I’d rather talk about . . . travel. Where would you go, if you could go anywhere?”

  For a moment—so quick it seemed like déjà vu, something she wasn’t even sure happened at all—his smile turned into a sneer. “You mean if I were fabulously wealthy like my brother?” His face relaxed in the next instant. “I wouldn’t waste my time baking on some bland beach. I’d explore some part of the world. Japan, or India. An African safari. Something like that.”

  Morgan sat forward then, nodding. Yes, go on!

  He winked at her. “With a fancy, civilized hotel and a huge, soft bed waiting at the end of the day. What about you?”

  She tossed her hair back—it was itching her face—and for a moment she wanted to brush her hair in front of her cheek again. But she did not. She made herself leave her hair alone and face him, scar and all.

  “Actually, I think first I’d want to explore our own country. We’re so lucky to have so much variety here, you know? I’d take an epic road trip. I’d go east first, to New York. Then work my way to California and north to Oregon. It would take months. I’d keep a journal, and take pictures, write poetry . . .”

  “Oh, you write? I didn’t know that.”

  Morgan flashed on her poetry notebook, hidden under her mattress. “Nah, not really. I was just rambling.”

  “That’s interesting,” he said, regarding her with one hand on his chin. “I would have guessed that most girls your age would say something like Paris or Hawaii.”

  “I’m hardly a girl,” Morgan replied, tossing her hair in what she hoped was a flirtatious way.

  “Come here,” he said now and held out his hand. She took it and let him pull her from her chair.

  He walked her into the living room in front of a fire full of wispy dancing flames, tugging her gently down to sit.

  “I don’t understand why I feel this way,” he said, his eyes on hers. He clasped both her hands and ran his thumbs softly over her fingers. “But I do. You make me feel like a hero, you know that? Like I could run to California and back. Like I could conquer anything and anyone, and it’s all there in your face. I thought I had that with . . . I thought . . .”

  Morgan held her breath. She did not want to talk about his wife. Did not even like thinking the word.

  He cleared his throat. “I wish I could make you promises. But I don’t know what tomorrow holds. I don’t even understand today, right now.”

  She exhaled and squeezed his hands. “You don’t have to understand it.”

  “But can you live with that? That’s what I need to know. I can’t promise you what will happen between us. I can’t promise how often I’ll be able to see you. Or how long.”

  A gasp escaped Morgan before she could help it. “How long?”

  “That’s just it. We can’t proceed as normal, like an ordinary couple. It may feel natural to us, but . . . it’s not that simple. Do you follow me?”

  Morgan nodded. Of course. She was not a naive child, after all. She could not expect him to abandon everything he had and run off into the sunset with her. She set her jaw against the growing lump in her throat.

  He scooted forward on the floor. Morgan began to feel deeply cold, despite the warm fire and the humming furnace.

  He said, “I need you to not make demands on me is what I’m asking. Because I don’t know what I can do, or when I can do it. If you can’t live with that, I understand and we’ll stop this now, before anyone gets hurt . . .”

  Morgan held herself still, considering what was worse: having just one piece of him, or nothing at all.

  He moved in closer to her, and she thought he was going to kiss her lips, but he tilted his head and instead kissed her neck, then moved up to her earlobe. Almost involuntarily she tipped her head, opening her neck to him, her hair falling away from her scar, which he then kissed in a succession of soft pecks.

  He moved down her chin then to her chest. She tilted far back such that she almost fell, so he caught her from behind and kissed his way down her chest to the first button on her shirt, which he unfastened with his one free hand.

  Without understanding how, she was suddenly in his arms, and he was standing. She felt drowsy and light-headed, and light in body, too, seeming to weigh nothing.

  He started to walk her toward the stairs and then he stopped on the first step, asking her in a hoarse, strained whisper: “Are you okay with this? All this?”

  She found she had only the strength to nod and reach her arms up around his neck as he bore her up, up, up the stairs.

  Morgan startled awake and almost cried out, then in an instant remembered where she was, and who that was sleeping next to her. A smile unfurled over her face.

  The four-poster bed was impossibly soft and roomy. She could stretch every which way and still not hit the edge. She rolled to her side, facing him, and sighed. The hall light was on, and in the soft glow through the open door, his arm outside the sheets was in silhouette. She could trace with her eyes the definition of his bicep.

  Maybe she should drop his class. There was no way she could sit in there every day, not now. She would combust right in her chair if she had to hold in the memory of this night and all the places he’d touched her. They had done it what, three times? Four? She wasn’t sure, the memory was fuzzy, as if seen through a scratched lens. She just remembered feeling wonderful and ecstatic, over and over.

  Had she taken her pill?

  Morgan sprang upright. She normally took her pill when she brushed her teeth, and she could instantly tell she had not done that. They’d just crashed out in the sheets together after a while.

  Morgan had to urgently pee, too.

  She slipped out of bed and padded through the semidarkened house, feeling her way. She was afraid to turn on many lights. Some night owl could notice the lights were on late with his brother on vacation.

  Morgan found her bag by the door where she’d come in and then took it back upstairs to the bathroom. As her sex haze faded, she was starting to notice her head felt sore, and she had a funny taste on her tongue.

  In the bathroom’s soft nightlight glow, she ripped open her makeup bag and found her pack of pills. She relaxed at the sight of the empty pill slot and suddenly remembered she’d taken one dry before she’d even entered the house, figuring she might be too distracted to remember.

  Thank goodness she’d convinced her mother she wanted them only to “regulate her period” when she started dating David. Dinah may have suspected the real reason, but if so, she’d apparently taken a pragmatic view and faked ignorance, and for that Morgan could only be grateful.

  After a trip to the bathroom, Morgan realized she hadn’t checked her phone in hours. She’d set it to vibrate and left it in her pocket, then as they tore off each other’s clothes it would have landed on the floor in her jeans.

  Morgan crawled around on the floor in search of it, her heart pounding harder with each second. What if something terrible had happened at home? What if Jared had a seizure? What if her dad had a heart attack like old Mr. Adamczyk . . .

  What if her mother couldn’t reach her phone and decided to try Nicole’s house directly?

  With quivering hands she read her messages. All from Britney, and one from Ethan. None important.

  Her head felt swimm
y and achy again. She wanted to search for some Tylenol somewhere but didn’t want to wake him and didn’t want to rummage.

  She pulled herself back into the vast, soft bed and snuggled next to his warmth. In his sleep, he slipped a heavy protective arm over her, and she closed her eyes to revel in its weight.

  But sleep never came.

  Somewhere in the vast house a grandfather clock chimed the passing hours, torture for an insomniac who didn’t like to think about the sleep she was missing.

  In a cruel twist, the nightmares she would have avoided, being awake, taunted her conscious mind, as their images popped up again and again, especially the new variety with her being crushed or consumed by him. . . .

  Him. She could no longer even think his teacher name.

  Morgan turned from side to side, her nerves increasingly jangly with anxiety, her mind exhausted from the effort of pushing aside her creepy dreams.

  It was nearly nine o’clock when he awoke at last.

  Morgan was in the kitchen, washing and drying dishes and setting them carefully on the counter. She’d already taken a shower, and then dried the shower with a towel, then carried the towel into the basement where she’d dropped it in a pile of towels in a basket.

  Her skin was starting to itch, being in someone else’s house, especially as daylight poured in through the tall, east-facing windows, their filmy curtains doing little to stem the flood of morning sun.

  Her head was still pounding, but she didn’t dare make coffee, not wanting to make the mess worse. For all she knew they were coming home today. She’d never asked.

  So when he finally appeared, she felt at first relief, a great whoosh of it that almost took her right down to the floor, tired as she was from only having dozed for a couple of hours.

  “Hey,” he said with a gravelly morning voice. “You didn’t have to do that. But thanks.”

  He started rummaging in the kitchen. In making coffee, he scattered the grounds on the counter and she flinched. He said, “Ah, don’t worry. I’ll clean it. They’re not back until Monday. And I’m not expected home right away either. I was out with my college drinking buddy last night you know.”

  He winked at her and then came over closer. He set down his mug, cradled the back of her head in his large hand, and pulled her toward him.

  His morning breath was terrible; the inside of his mouth was coated with goo, it seemed like. His whiskers were scratching her lips. She tried to return his kiss with enthusiasm, but she wished to hell he’d have brushed his teeth first.

  He released her head and sat down at the table. She hadn’t put away the wine bottle yet, not knowing what to do with it, so it glowed green in the bright daylight that filled the room. Looking at it now, in front of him, she realized the bottle was empty. Had they gone through the whole thing in such a short time? She couldn’t remember him drinking hardly any of it.

  “How did you sleep?” he asked.

  “Oh, fine. That bed is heaven.”

  He looked at her over the top of his mug. “It was last night.”

  They both froze at the sound of his ringing phone, sitting right where he left it last night, on the kitchen counter.

  He walked over to take it, already seeming to tense. He answered it and turned his back to Morgan.

  “Hey, hon. . . . No, just woke up. No, I’m feeling fine. . . . Yeah, not too much, Bill’s not that wild man he used to be. . . . Oh yeah? Well, that sounds cool. . . . A surprise, huh? Nice. I’m not forgetting an anniversary, am I?” Here he laughed with that deep chuckle that gave Morgan shivers. “. . . Good. Okay, sweets, gotta dash so I can get cleaned up and home. . . . Love you, too.”

  Morgan was frozen with her hand on a dishtowel. His banter sounded perfectly casual, and worse than that, genuinely warm and sweet.

  He hung up the phone and turned back to her. His face looked downcast and sad. “Sorry.”

  Morgan leaned against the counter and began to fold and unfold the dishcloth.

  “Look, I’m gonna have to hurry up here and get home earlier than I thought.” He stared at the floor a second. “Shit, that means I’m going to have to run those sheets through the wash later, I guess. Guess it’s good you started to clean up, eh?”

  He started roughly stacking the dishes and shoving them away in cupboards. He gathered up the takeout containers and the wine bottle and knotted them in a trash bag by the door to the garage. He removed the tablecloth and shook the crumbs into the trash.

  As he was doing this, he wasn’t looking at her, just rushing frantically. So she joined him in trying to put everything back the way it had been, by adjusting the throw pillows and pushing in chairs. She followed him upstairs and to the bedroom. The cornflower blue sheets were already half torn off the bed; they had to have been pretty vigorous. Morgan frowned and wished she could remember the details better; a night like this would have to last her a while. It’s not like his brother would go on vacation every week.

  He stood with the sheets in a ball in his hands. “I guess if I can’t get this done I’ll tell them I took a nap here or something. Or I spilled something on the bed. Ha! You could say that.”

  He stopped and pecked her forehead. “Thanks for your help. Do you need anything before you go?”

  She’d been looking forward to breakfast together over the table, having a conversation about how they would meet next, how much she enjoyed the night. Maybe more talk about travel.

  His arm was around her, and he was walking her down the stairs. He handed her the overnight bag by the door leading to the garage and then did a visual sweep of the open-plan dining and living room area, the wadded-up sheets still in one arm, braced on his hip. “We covered our tracks pretty well, I’d say. I’ll throw these in the wash before I shower, throw them in the dryer by the time I’m out, and tonight when I come back to ‘water those plants’ again, I’ll stick them back on the bed.”

  He grinned at her—the picture of satisfaction—as if he’d filled in the last answer of a difficult crossword puzzle.

  “I’d say we done good,” he added with a twinkle.

  “Sure we did,” she mustered, trying to match his enthusiasm. After all, he was right. You couldn’t tell anyone had even been there, and his bedsheet plan would work fine. For her part, no one had contacted her with any emergencies while she was gone.

  It was all going exactly according to plan.

  He leaned in for a kiss, and this time she dodged his morning breath but covered by tilting her head to kiss his neck next to his Adam’s apple. A groan rumbled in his throat, and he briefly grabbed her hair.

  Then he released her. “Bye, I’ll get in touch when I can.” He opened the door, and she stepped into the chilly garage.

  One word rang in her mind as he swung the door shut behind her: dismissed.

  26

  Rain arranged the gift on the center of the kitchen table, next to TJ’s favorite dessert: pineapple upside-down cake.

  It was a plain white box with an extravagant yellow bow: a riot of curls covering nearly the whole top of the box. Inside were two things: a silver rattle, the type meant to be engraved as a keepsake, and a cotton bib that read WORLD’S BEST DADDY.

  She’d planned to tell him that day at the mall, figuring school must be out by then, but when he didn’t answer his cell phone, she changed course. This was too huge to be announced on the phone.

  She was then going to tell him at home that night, but then he seemed so distracted and a little curt with her. That didn’t seem right, either. She was going to tell him Friday, but then his buddy had swooped into town and TJ was going to go hang with him in Royal Oak Saturday night and go drinking, so she figured maybe Sunday was the day, provided he wasn’t too hungover.

  Since he’d sounded so upbeat on the phone in the morning, Rain felt at last this was the perfect time to tell him all their dreams were coming true.

  Her ears pricked up at the sound of his car pulling into the driveway.

  She had r
ehearsed this moment so many times. In some of her daydreams, she’d shown him the two lines on the pregnancy test and they’d danced around the bathroom together, whooping with glee. In others, she’d told him while they were cuddled in bed and they’d held each other, then made love carefully, befitting her delicate state.

  The back door opened and she relaxed a couple of degrees, not realizing she’d been nervous. TJ had a cheerful, upright posture. His hair was slick and wet, and she could smell the soap all the way across the room, a fresh, almost minty scent that oddly reminded her of his brother, Greg.

  “Hey, beautiful,” he said, eyeing the package. “To what do I owe this pleasure? I’ve been racking my brain all the way over here about what occasion I missed.”

  “Not at all. You didn’t miss anything. You definitely did not.”

  He cocked an eyebrow and settled into the chair across from her. Rain sat on her hands to keep from ripping open the box for him.

  He clowned by putting the ribbon on his head, and then as his fingers pushed aside the tissue paper, her every nerve screamed.

  He picked up the rattle and blinked several times, looking at it like a monkey in a zoo regarding a strange piece of fruit.

  She prompted him by picking up the bib and handing it to him. His mouth fell open, and he looked up at her, bafflement written in the crook of his eyebrows and slightly narrowed eyes.

  “We’re going to be parents,” she told him, smiling hard, as if for both of them.

  “Are . . . are you sure?” he asked, the bib and rattle in each hand, that stupid bow still on his head.

  “Yes, of course I am. The doctor confirmed it with a blood test. It’s true this time. No early home test, no faded second line. And I’m late. No period, either. Look.” She pulled down her v-neck shirt. “Even my boobs are swelling up already.”

  He put down the bib and rattle carefully in the box, as if they were products he found unsatisfactory and intended to return. He closed the cardboard lid. “I’m . . . stunned.”