One Less Problem Without You

by Beth Harbison

  What the hell was the matter with her? She might not have even a spare hour in her schedule right now, but she could have been nicer about it. She wanted to kick herself.

  When she heard the shoilet turn on and the curtain rings scrape across the metal rod, she dropped her towel—without a witness this time—and got dressed in a hurry.

  It would be very uncool if she were to still be there when he came back out.

  * * *

  THE BELLS JINGLED on the shop door when she arrived. She was ten minutes late, but Prinny was a nice boss. She knew Chelsea was running around like a chicken with her head cut off, or, to be exact, an actress with a seemingly endless stream of outrageous bills to pay.

  Prinny Tiesman was organizing the impulse buys at the front and turned when she heard the jingle.

  Chelsea was fascinated by her boss, because she was one person whose motivations and goals weren’t always clear. She’d be hard to play on film. Prinny came from an extremely wealthy Loudon County family, whose wealth had been divided between her and her brother upon their father’s death, yet she didn’t seem to spend money on anything other than necessities.

  Meanwhile, her brother was reportedly horrified that she got half. The business manager in charge of Prinny’s inheritance was always insisting the store needed a solid plan and profit margin in order for Prinny to protect her assets, but Prinny seemed a lot more concerned with pleasing the finance guy than with saving herself from this mysterious fairy-tale “wicked stepbrother.”

  Chelsea had never met the wicked stepbrother, but she kind of wanted to. What would an evil, youngish, rich, and powerful man like that look like? Not that she’d be interested in an evil man, not romantically, but from a theatrical standpoint both options—bulbous-nosed wart-covered monster and handsome devil—seemed clichéd. It would be more of a surprise if he were utterly ordinary. Maybe even wore terrible suits from Walmart. If Walmart sold suits.

  Anyway, Chelsea had no idea which category he’d fall into because, despite her job, she was not psychic.

  Though she could read cards, and she could definitely read people. Prinny had very fixed ideas about Spiritual Integrity, so the business was running with as much integrity as possible. Even though Chelsea was not psychic, per se, she was extremely good at reading voices, gestures, and choices and had managed to convince Prinny that she was outside the normal range of perception and, if not clairvoyant, then certainly intuitive—helpful in any business really, Chelsea would imagine.

  “Hey, Prinny,” she said, shutting the door behind her and starting to unwind her scarf.

  Her boss knitted her brow. “What’s wrong?”

  “Wrong?”

  “Something’s up.” She pointed her finger and then stirred the air with it.

  Most people would ask this question because of a dark mood cloud rising above the person who’s upset. Sometimes people want to be asked what’s wrong. Chelsea was not this sort of person. She was far more likely to pull out her best mood, so as not to have to answer any uncomfortable questions. And for her, any questions about herself were pretty much uncomfortable.

  But in this case, Chelsea wasn’t hiding anything. Not on purpose, anyway. Prinny was Prinny, however, and she was the real deal when it came to this sort of thing. Either psychic stuff was genuine or she was an exceptional people reader, even better than Chelsea.

  “Something’s going on,” Prinny said.

  “I feel fine, really. I think?”

  Prinny planted her hands on her hips. “No, it’s nothing bad. Just something new. Maybe something to do with a guy?”

  Again, a generally basic question from anyone but Prinny. Chelsea often was faced with these sorts of inquiries from her, and more often than not she had to dig through her mind to find whatever it was Prinny was picking up on.

  In this case, Chelsea wondered how far into her mind she was delving.

  “I mean … someone just asked me out. Well, not out out.”

  “Ooh, what did you say?” Psychic defenses down, girl-talk game face on.

  “I told him I was busy.”

  “You are,” Prinny said. “But too busy?”

  Chelsea shrugged. “That would depend on the circumstances. I was too busy under these circumstances.”

  “Hmm. Not cute?”

  “No, he was cute. Really cute, actually. I honestly don’t have the time.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Chelsea, you can always take a night or a few hours off. I haven’t seen you go on one date this whole time you’ve worked here.”

  “I know.”

  “Not your scene?”

  “I really just don’t have time, that’s all.”

  Prinny nodded at her, both of them knowing she could have made the time if she wanted to.

  “You should go out with this guy. Find the time. It’s time to get over the breakup. I have a good feeling about it.”

  “Honestly, he didn’t even ask me out. He’s just new in town and asked me if I’d grab a drink with him. He’s looking for friends, that’s all.”

  “Well, if that’s the case, that’s even worse! Someone makes an effort with a stranger, just hoping to make a friend, and you rejected that? Shame on you.” She smiled, letting Chelsea know that she meant it but was teasing her.

  “I’ll let him know next time I have a few hours.”

  “Good.”

  A tiny flint in Chelsea’s chest caught alight as she wondered, cautiously, if Prinny really was picking up on something. This surprised her. She’d feared that hope was gone.

  “What’s his name?” she asked.

  “Jeff.”

  Prinny nodded. “Hm.”

  “What?”

  Prinny laughed. “Nothing! I’m trying to pick up on it, but you keep interrupting. Anyway, I’m not getting a gay vibe. That’s good for a good-looking eligible guy in this day and age.”

  “I’ll say.” Chelsea shook her head. “It’s a jungle out there.”

  Prinny nodded. “Just make real sure you’re the predator and not the prey.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Diana

  It was scary how obvious the idea of killing my husband seemed once I thought of it.

  I could get away with it, I was almost sure. There were so many tinctures that could go wrong—or right if that was what I was doing—and create a “natural death” that no one would ever suspect I might have made it happen. There’s an art to everything. Curing disease, boosting immunity, quelling depression, calming anxiety.

  Even killing.

  Maybe even especially killing.

  I sat in my dimmed kitchen, drinking my own tea with the hopes of calming down, but my thoughts raced so hard that I felt they were knocking into the sides of my brain, banging a headache in that would never go away. Pain that would never go away.

  “Hey.” The lights clicked on, and I winced like a nocturnal animal, squinting in the direction of the doorway, where Leif stood in his briefs, tanned body looking every bit as muscular and delicious as it had when I’d met him ten years ago.

  He still made me catch my breath. Even all this time later. My first thought was I should be ashamed of myself for being so weak. But that wasn’t fair. If he were faithful and his wife still loved and admired him like that, it would have been great. The ideal situation.

  I shifted in my chair, as nervous as I would be with a stranger, unsure what to say that wouldn’t just come out as I read your texts and you’re a cheating sonofabitch and I hate you I hate you I hate you!

  “Did I wake you up?” I asked, hoping if I had, it had been just now in the kitchen and not when I was prowling around the bedroom like a cat, invading his privacy.

  “You weren’t in bed.” He gave that pirate smile I’d always loved. “How am I supposed to sleep without you in the bed with me?”

  You seem to have managed to do a lot of things in bed without me. Sleeping is probably one of the lesser ones. “I was having some anxiety, so I decided to make a
tea.” I pointed at the cup, as if I had to prove it or something.

  “Do you need one of your pills?”

  A little splinter of irk pierced my consciousness. “That’s not actually the answer to everything.”

  “It’s what they’re for.”

  “I don’t like the way they make me feel.”

  “You prefer this?” He gestured at the cup, which was rapidly starting to seem like a child in the middle of our conversation.

  “Yes, I do.”

  He sighed and shook his head, indulgent but a little bit annoyed, clearly. “Should I get my mom on the phone?”

  “What? Why? So she can talk me into taking a pill?” It wasn’t such an absurd suggestion, actually. She was the one who had prescribed them to begin with. Presumably she did think they were a good idea. “This is stupid.”

  “Okay, okay.” He held his hands up, the universal sign of sarcastic surrender.

  “It’s more convenient for you when I’m a zombie, isn’t it?” I asked suddenly.

  He frowned. “What?”

  “Put me to sleep so I stay out of your way and don’t ask any inconvenient questions?”

  “What are you talking about?” But something in his expression shifted and made me think I’d struck a nerve and he knew exactly what I was talking about.

  My heart was pounding. I wanted to back off this, quick, but I’d started it, and in my gut I knew I had to finish it. “Don’t pretend you’ve never cheated on me, Leif.”

  He wasn’t one to blush or go pale, but the set of his mouth tightened. “That was a long time ago. You know I’m sorry. I’m sorry for it every single day. You know it was a onetime thing.”

  I knew with absolute certainty it was far from a onetime thing, and the Plumber tonight was just more of the same old same old. Or maybe she wasn’t even the same. Maybe this one was different.

  That would be the worst. If one of them was actually different. Different enough to replace me.

  Suddenly I wondered if I was the one dispensable part. Icing. The thing that made a muffin into a cupcake but was sickeningly sweet by itself.

  That’s what I’d been with him. Sickeningly sweet. So forgiving, so understanding. I’d gone so far out of my way to forgive him and assuage his guilt that it was amazing I hadn’t gone under in the Pacific Ocean.

  “I don’t believe you,” I said, low and steely. My tone wasn’t on purpose; it was just all I could work up.

  “What are you implying?”

  He knew. Of course he knew. He had to know because he’d been with her!

  Still, I didn’t want to tip my hand. I couldn’t allow him time to work up a defense.

  “Just that you spend a lot of time at work, Leif. A lot more hours than most people do, and sometimes you come home smelling more like perfume than printer’s ink.”

  His brow lowered, and the blue of his eyes seemed to cloud like cheap ice. Don’t your pupils dilate when you love someone? He was looking at me as if he hated me.

  “Do you have any idea, any idea at all, how many responsibilities I have at work?”

  My spirit cowered, but I tried to keep my body straight. “How could I? You never talk to me about it. You never have me to any office events, not even the holiday party. What kind of company president doesn’t have his wife at the holiday party?”

  “The professional kind.”

  “Yeah? Or is it because your girlfriends work there and you don’t want us intermingling?”

  He waved the suggestion away as if it were a gnat. “You’re being completely ridiculous. When did you get to be such a jealous harpy?”

  The question incensed me even while some part of me feared it was true. What I needed was the strength and dignity to walk away and not hammer at an issue that was clearly intolerable. “You know what?” I said with a strength I didn’t feel. “I’m done.” I stood up and rinsed my cup out, trying to ignore the tingles that went down my spine where I felt his eyes on me.

  I also tried to ignore the feeling of him coming up behind me, his warmth pouring out toward me, going right through the cotton nightshirt I was wearing.

  But I couldn’t ignore it. I’d never been able to. And even though my mind was telling me to get the hell away from him, my body refused to move.

  He put his arms around my waist and pulled me close against the heat of his torso. “Baby,” he murmured against my ear, his voice low and sweet. He could have been threatening to strangle me and I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from sinking into the bliss of his embrace.

  But he wasn’t threatening to strangle me. It was worse than that. He was threatening to seduce me.

  “Don’t,” I said, but my voice was feeble. He might not even have heard me.

  “I love you.” He trailed his lips along behind my ear and down my neck. I shivered and knew he felt it.

  Triumph for him.

  “This isn’t love.”

  He chuckled softly. “Whatever it is, it’s hot. You know it and I know it.”

  Oh, I did know it. It was always hot. Hot enough to compel me to stay in this toxic relationship. It wasn’t that I needed him to change. Obviously that was never going to happen, but even if it could, there was too much water under the bridge. There were too many things I could never forget.

  “No,” I said, but reached my hand behind me, as I had a million times, and held it on his hip.

  “Yes.” He turned me around and moved me still closer. It was as if I were melding right into his body.

  “This is over.” I felt his hardness against me, and my core sprang to life. The button had been pushed. I wasn’t just walking to my doom, I was running to it.

  As I had so many times before.

  “You’re my wife. It will never be over.”

  “Why do you even want me? You have so many extracurricular activities. Why hold on to the old ball and chain when there are so many things, so many people, you prefer to me?”

  “Because you are my wife. I married you. I made a vow, and I don’t break my vows.”

  I noticed he didn’t deny it that time, and something in me died even while I knew it was the truth and any other objection would have been bullshit. “You’ve broken plenty of your vows,” I said tartly. “You can’t cherry-pick which ones to honor and which ones to completely ignore.”

  “You are the one I chose.” He ran his hands down my bare arms, and my skin rose in goose bumps beneath his touch.

  “Once.”

  He lowered his mouth onto mine and drew me into his familiar kiss. It never got old. What was it about him? I’d had the most frustrating moments of my life with him, the most heartbroken moments of my life over him, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to resist him.

  So I kissed him back, tightening my arms around him and running my hands up his back.

  He slipped his hands under my nightshirt, his skin so warm against mine that I thought I might melt. He pulled the shirt off over my head, leaving me naked in front of him, and trailed his fingers down my back and across my hips before pulling me closer against his hardness.

  “I don’t want to do this,” I murmured against his mouth, even while I allowed his tongue in and played at it with my own.

  “Yes, you do.”

  “No…”

  He walked his fingers down my abdomen and reached between my legs, instantly finding the proof he wanted.

  My body’s betrayal.

  He smiled against my mouth. “Yes, you do.”

  “You hurt me.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  How could he even say that? “Yes, you did!” I said with more strength. How could he dismiss so much pain so completely?

  “You know me, you know the deal. You stay because you want it, too.”

  “No, I stayed because I believed in you, like an idiot. I didn’t know how big a liar you were!”

  “Shhhh.” He kissed me silent again.

  And I let him.

  Damn it, I let him.
>
  “Turn around,” he said.

  “No.”

  “Yes.” He spanned his hands on my ribs and turned me, forcefully, to face the counter. Now his touch stopped feeling good and left an ache behind.

  “No!” I said, and I tried to wriggle away, but he held me in place easily.

  “You know you want it.” He touched my wetness again. “And I know you want it.” He used his hand to guide himself into me and began to move.

  At first my body betrayed me yet again. I had spent a long time loving this man and his touch. But very quickly his movements grew harder, slamming my pelvis against the cabinets we’d just paid way too much to have replaced. I’d hated them when he picked them out, hated them when they were installed, and now I hated them more than ever. Who would have thought those brass plumbing-pipe drawer pulls would end up being so painful to me this way?

  “Stop!” I was begging. My voice trembled. Everything in me was alert to danger.

  He put a hand over my mouth and used his other hand to spank me. Hard. It wasn’t the first time he’d slapped my butt in bed, it wasn’t even the first time it hurt, but a resolve grew in me that it would be the last.

  “Leave me alone!” I cried, and tried to get away again. I had to be drying up fast. Nothing about this was a turn-on. It was pain. Pure pain. Nothing more to it.

  “Shut up!” He banged into me so hard, the slapping noises echoed in the kitchen.

  Tears burned in my eyes and spilled out, plopping onto the cement counters Leif had insisted were the latest and greatest thing, even though I’d found them as industrial and depressing as a Walmart floor.

  Finally he turned me back around, looked down, and saw me bleeding where the hardware had cut me.

  He drew back, reviled.

  Leif hated blood. Total phobia. It was amazing; as strong and bullying as he could be, the minute he saw blood he’d go pale and shaky. Not visibly shaky, but definitely shaky.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked, anger sharpening my tone to a point. “Don’t like your handiwork?”

  “That’s not my fault.”

  “It is.”