Page 44 of Only and Forever
“I’llkillthem!” she yells.
“I won’tletyou kill them!” I yell back.
A couple with a few kids trailing behind them gives us a concerned look.
Tallulah reaches for the fake succulent, but I swipe it up, holding it over my head. “No. Fake. Plants. Tallulah. For the love of God.”
“You’resorude!” She scowls at me. “Using my height disadvantage against me.”
“Desperate times, pipsqueak.”
She stomps on my toe. I hiss, hopping as she storms away. “Fine!” she yells over her shoulder. “We’ll get real plants! We’ll buy the flatpack cabinets and assemble them! But I’m warning you, you’re going to regret it.”
—
Turns out, Tallulah’s right. I do regret my decision when, two hours later, I find myself halfway through assembling the first offourStäll shoe organizers. While I consider myself a nonviolent man, I am about to break something.
“That’s wrong,” Tallulah says, standing over me, pointing at thefirst half-assembled shoe organizer. “We definitely put it on backward.”
I glare up at her. “Tallulah, would you let a man put a shoe cabinet together in peace?”
“Nope.” She plops down beside me. “I get to participate. They’re my shoe cabinets. I paid for them.”
“I offered to pay for them,” I mutter between gritted teeth.
“With what money?” she asks.
“Credit card debt would have been well worth it to spare myself this torture.”
She rolls her eyes. “When I move out and leave them here, you can reimburse me, but for now, they are my purchase, and I am helping ensure their successful assembly.”
“ ‘Helping,’ ” I grumble sourly.
Tallulah sits back, an evil little smirk lifting her lips. “I told you you’d regret it.”
I shake my head, taking a deep breath as I refocus on the furniture. It’s that or scream into a pillow, and I can’t let Tallulah know how much she’s getting to me.
“Maybe having them assembledwouldn’thave been so bad after all,” she whispers, leaning in. Her breath is hot on my neck, and a shiver rolls down my spine.
“I swear to God, Lula.” Turning my head, I’m about to glare at her in warning, but she’s right there, her mouth a few flimsy inches from mine. I stare at her, fighting the impulse to grab that bun, wrench her head back, and kiss her so hard, so long, until she stops driving me up the damn wall. Her gaze dips to my mouth, then flicks back up. A swallow works down her throat.
Tallulah’s phone beeps, breaking the moment. She blinks away, then picks it up, silencing the sound. Then she stands, brushes off her hands, and says, “Dinnertime.”
TWELVE
Tallulah
Playlist: “I Think I Like You,” Donora
Viggo does not join me for dinner, despite the alarm I set to make sure he’d stop working and eat something. I didn’t have the courage to harass him into eating when he didn’t follow me out of the room, even though I think it might have helped improve his mood. I know it improved mine. Between the work of moving, unpacking, and shopping at IKEA, I got a little low, and I feel better now, having eaten. Even so, I can’t blame my behavior solely on my blood sugar drop, though it likely played a minor role in my moodiness. Because I know I willfully pushed him. I’ve been willfully pushing him since the moment we walked into IKEA, side by side, bickering about cutting through the store straight to the organizers (my preference) and walking through the whole display floor (his), when I realized what it looked like, what it felt like:
Like we were anus. Like we were a unit, Viggo and Tallulah, steps in synch, his stride politely shortened for my sake as we begrudgingly compromised and agreed we’d browse the living room and bedroom sections before heading toward the shoe organizers.
It scared the hell out of me. Because it felt—itfeels—easy, familiar, being this way with him. His woodsy sugar-spice scent, his arm brushing mine as we walk, the way he holds open doors for me and calls me goofy nicknames; how he rolls with my snark andgives it right back, all with a warm smile on his face that’s begun to thaw my icy edges.
And we’re just getting started. I have twomonthsof cohabitating with him to make it through.
I’m not deluded enough to think I’m incapable of caring about someone, wanting them—I just don’t call it love, because I don’t believe love is real. What I do believe is real is vulnerability, its power to draw you in, lower your defenses, teach you that you’re safe to rely on this person you’ve opened yourself up to. It’s so easy to get hurt then.