I get to work for the rest of the day. Organize notes, give a lecture on medieval monasteries, and head a grad seminar on visual culture. There’s a Medieval Studies meeting in late morning, then a few of the other professors and I go to lunch.
After we’re done eating meatball subs and discussing a course on Latin paleography, I step outside and call Liv on her cell.
“Hi.” She sounds breathless. “Are you at work?”
“Just finished lunch at the Boxcar. Where are you?”
“Deli down the street,” she says.
“I’ll come and meet you.”
I shut my phone and head to the intersection of Avalon and Poppy Streets. The Italian deli is crowded with lunch customers, so I wait outside.
Through the window, Liv is giving her order to the young guy behind the counter. He says something that makes her smile. He smiles in return, then gestures with his hands. She laughs.
Jealousy floods me fast and hard. I know that kid. His dad owns the deli. He’s friendly to everyone. And I fucking hate that just the sight of Liv smiling at him makes me feel like… like this.
I stalk away from the window and wait at the curb. My blood is hot with anger at myself for not trusting her, at her for not trusting me.
It’s a knife-like stab, the memory of Liv’s hesitation when I asked if she believed Maggie’s lies. Five years ago, when Liv and I first met, she’d never have thought I was capable of wrongdoing. Never. She wouldn’t have given me a chance if she had.
Liv steps out of the deli with a paper bag in one hand. She gives me a little wave as she crosses the sidewalk. She tucks herself against me for a hug and kisses my chin. Some of my anger drains.
“How was your morning?” Liv asks.
“Good. Busy.”
“I picked up our Thanksgiving turkey before my shift at the museum. Anything else you want for dinner?”
“Whatever you make will be great.” I pull her closer. “Let’s get a coffee, and I’ll walk you to the bookstore. My next class doesn’t start until three.”
She slides her arm around my waist as we walk. I wish it were enough to make everything okay.
“This is it!” Liv circles the entire Douglas fir and reaches out to skim her hand over one of the branches. “Nice and fluffy. There’s this space back here, but we can turn that toward the wall. What do you think?”
“Looks great.”
“Good.” She beams at me. She’s all bundled into her winter coat with her cheeks red from the cold. “Let’s get it, then. I’m going to buy some holly and mistletoe too. You get them to wrap the tree up, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She trundles off to the shack to pay, and I flag down a guy to wrap the tree in netting. We haul it out to the car and get it secured on the roof before Liv comes out with a bag containing enough holly to fill our living room and a bunch of pine boughs tucked under her arm. She has always insisted in getting our Christmas tree the weekend after Thanksgiving, as if she’s trying to extend the holiday season as long as possible.
“I’ll make us some hot chocolate when we get home,” she says after unloading her bounty into the backseat.
At home, we drag the tree into the foyer and up the stairs. Liv disappears into the kitchen to make the hot chocolate while I set up the tree in its usual spot beside the window.
“Perfect! I love it.” Liv hands me a mug of chocolate and puts another one on a table. “Let’s get the lights up. I already checked them, and they all work.”
I watch her as she puts on a CD of Christmas carols and unwraps the lights. There’s a pretty glow about her, a sense of anticipation that she always gets around the holidays as she decorates and plans, making Christmas into a freaking magical winter wonderland.
The way she’s always made it for me. The way she never had it as a kid.
That’s the thing about Liv. She’s pure. Despite experiences that could have irrevocably fucked her up, turned her into someone hard and jaded, she’s still wholesome. She has a wary edge, a guard against the world, but it never affects her core of innocence.
I love that about her. When she looked at me over the counter at Jitter Beans, her brown eyes glowing with sincerity (“Room for cream in your coffee, sir?”), I felt like my heart was about to pound out of my chest.
She might as well have said, “Room for me in your life, sir? Room for me in your bed?”
Yes. And hell, yes.
Sure there was some Neanderthal instinct. Not just for sex, though that was powerful. There was also an urge to make her mine, to claim her so she’d never belong to another man. So she’d never want another man.
Which is just one reason her thing with that cook is still messing with my head.
What the fuck did I do wrong? How did I fail?
It was more than not having told her about my first marriage. It had to be more than that. If that was it, then maybe I shouldn’t have told her at all because I can’t for the life of me figure out how to fix any of this.
“Can you get the top branches, Dean?”