Page 14 of The Summer Save
I grabbed my bag from the passenger seat along with my coffee mug and yogurt, then headed into the house. I didn’t bother knocking because this place had been my second home during the summers growing up. As soon as I opened the door, I kicked off my sandals and called, “Mer Bear, I’m here.”
“I’m in the kitchen. I just pulled banana bread out of the oven.”
I dropped my bag onto the sofa before rounding the corner into the kitchen. My eyes immediately fell to the kitchen table covered in hair dye, gloves, combs, and plastic bottles. “Mer, what is all of that?” I asked as I plopped onto the barstool. I took a sip of my coffee before removing the lid from my bowl. “Hope you don’t mind. I’m eating breakfast while you tell me what’s going on. This looks like enough color for multiple people.”
“Or one person who wants rainbow hair,” she said as she took off her sleep bonnet to reveal blonde hair that almost matched mine. Minus the gray.
“When did you go blonde?”
My best friend threw her head back in laughter. “You really don’t know anything about hair color, do you?”
“I warned you.”
She quickly sliced the warm bread and set a piece on a small plate for each of us before taking the spot on the stool next to me. “I didn’t dye my hair blonde. I stripped it so I can go extreme with the color.”
Meredith has had some wild ideas in the past, but at-home rainbow hair dye with me as her assistant is definitely close to the top of the list for the most outrageous. I took a huge bite of my yogurt because I was too stunned to say anything.
“Cat got your tongue, Anne?”
My head bobbed up and down. “This feels like a lot of work. Are you sure you don’t want to go to the salon?”
“No. I’ve done this before without help. It’s just so much easier to apply color to the back and rinse when someone else is around. I promise this isn’t the first time I’ve done multiple colors. I know what I’m doing.” She slid the banana bread plate toward me. “Plus, this gives us plenty of time for you to tell me all about your daily dates with your husband. How are things going?”
I broke the bread into four even pieces. “It’s like that first summer. When we spent every minute possible together, and each moment apart felt like an eternity.”
“You’re falling in love with him again.”
I finished my bite before responding. “I’ve always loved him. That’s never been our issue. It changed over time, and in the last few years, it was difficult to love him. But I think it’s become easier to love him. Less forced.”
She peered at me over her mug. The chamomile and honey were strong enough that I could smell it. Mer rarely drank coffee. “And since you have the house to yourself without the risk of either of your kids showing up, you’re probably going at it non-stop in every room.”
I shook my head. “Nope. We’re still in separate rooms. He’s in PJ’s and I’m in Amber’s. It started as my request for five days. Then, when we were ready, we could move into the primary bedroom and wait for the other. Neither of us has moved.”
Her hand clamped over my wrist. “Are you kidding me? You have been alone in that house with your husband for a week and you haven’t had sex?”
“We committed to taking our time and really focusing on fixing the parts of our relationship that are broken. Sex has never been our issue. Communication and prioritizing our relationship has. The morning make-out sessions, dancing in the kitchen or on the patio that then leads to more kissing, and goodnight kisses against the bedroom door leave me aching for more. I want to pull him into the bedroom and climb on top of him. But something’s stopping me.” My eyes dropped to my empty coffee mug as my teeth scraped along my lower lip. “I can’t have sex with him until I know his plan for the end of the summer. Maybe it’s silly or even stupid, but I want the first time we have sex this summer to be when we’ve recommitted to our marriage. And if that doesn’t happen, then I’d rather not have the memory of a final roll in the hay or a goodbye fuck. Whatever you want to call it.”
Meredith turned her head to the side, looking away from me, and hid behind her hand. “Yeah, don’t do the friends-with-benefits thing with your ex or soon-to-be ex. That’s my advice and something I wish someone had told me.”
I grabbed my bowl, mug, and empty plate and took them to the sink. “That sounds like a much more interesting conversation. How did I not know about this?”
“One last fuck turned into a ‘Netflix and chill’ situation, and then it got messy because we let it go on for months. Then, we each decided we needed to move on and decided to try online dating. We matched with each other on two dating sites. It’s a nightmare.”
I couldn’t contain the laughter. Online dating sounded like a nightmare. Amber had shared her horror stories over the years, and that was enough for me to know that I never wanted to go through them. Meredith and Michael’s matching actually didn’t surprise me because, on paper, they were perfect. Like me and Jonas. But sometimes that wasn’t enough.
Annie texted me as she was leaving Meredith’s. She warned me that she was coming home covered in hair dye and was afraid to walk through the house because our carpets were light and she had dye everywhere. Her plan was to enter the house from the garage because that led into the laundry room, where she would strip out of her clothes and head to the shower. The gentleman brought up to respect women did not mentally picture every step of that plan. The husband with a smokin’ hot wife did.
And since I knew one of the selling points of this house over the others we’d looked at was the large soaking tub, I had it ready for her when she scurried into the primary bedroom en suite. Neither of us was using the bedroom yet, but she’d been getting ready in this bathroom since the second day in the house.
I’d just turned off the water when I heard her footsteps against the tile floor. “Oh, hi. I didn’t realize you were in here. I’ll go shower in the other one.”
I rose to my feet and spun to face her. “I got it ready for you, sweetheart.” Keep your eyes on her face. She hasn’t let you see her naked in months. Now is not the time. Behave.
Behaving proved difficult when her naked body pressed against me. “Thank you. I didn’t expect this. It’s very sweet.”
My index finger raised her chin until her eyes met mine. “You’re welcome. Enjoy. I’m going to start dinner. By the time you’re out of the tub, I’ll have everything ready for date night.” I lowered my face to hers and kissed her briefly. It took every ounce of my self-control to walk out of that bathroom.
As soon as I placed our pizza in the oven, my phone vibrated on the counter. My father’s number flashed on the screen. I quickly answered. “Hey, Dad. You’re on speaker. I’m working on dinner prep.”