? ? ?
AS SHE PULLED into the driveway, Laura noticed Brian’s bedroom light was on. Either Brian was home or Janet was in the process of doing a turn-down service and leaving chocolates on their pillows. Laura wouldn’t put it past her. When she got inside, she saw her husband lying on the bed, texting.
“Hey, babe! How was your night?” She greeted him with a kiss on his lips. He tasted like liquor. When he didn’t answer, Laura sat on the edge of the bed. “What did y’all do?”
He looked up from his phone with bloodshot eyes. “Drank too much.”
“Was it just you and Kenny?” She finger-combed his messy locks and pushed them away from his eyes.
Silence. Groping. Kissing.
“Oh, someone’s feelin’ good,” Laura said as he moved her onto the bed. He unbuttoned her jeans and began lifting up her shirt. “Wait,” she said. “I’ll be right back.” She hated to stop him, but she’d drunk two Cokes at the diner and needed to go to the bathroom before they did anything more. She hurried down the hall; when Brian drank like this, there was a fine line between amazing sex potential and well, nothing. He was either a lion in bed . . . or passed out like a kitten.
Unfortunately, this time he was the latter. She returned to find him face-planted on the bed, snoring. “Good night, babe,” Laura said, kissing his forehead and turning out the light.
? ? ?
EARLY-MORNING SUN PEEKED in through the blinds. Brian was sprawled out on top of the comforter, wearing nothing but his boxers. His stomach was looking a little softer than it usually did, Laura noticed; he hadn’t worked out since the injury, and it was starting to show. Perhaps a result of too many Natty Lights. Low calorie, my ass, she thought. At least the black graphic tattoo he’d gotten when he was sixteen still wrapped snugly around his arm muscle, hugging one of her favorite parts of his body. Her other favorite part of his body was just waking up. She decided to kiss it. That’ll get him movin’, she thought. Brian continued to snore as she leaned into him. He woke up immediately as she gently tugged on his boxers, pulling them down.
“Oh, hello,” Brian said in his scratchy, sexy morning voice.
“We didn’t get to play last night,” Laura said with a purr.
Even though he was sluggish, he wasted no time lifting up her tank top and kissing her breasts. His rough hands glided down her smooth skin, waking up each part of her body. He began kissing her neck, then moved to her stomach. She always felt self-conscious about that area, but it felt way too good to worry about right now. His kisses moved south, stopping at the inside of her thighs.
“I want you,” she called out, clutching his arms tightly. She rolled him over and positioned herself on top. The buildup was so intense, she wanted nothing more than to have him inside her, right that second.
Knock, knock. “Morning, kiddos!” Janet yelled from outside the closed bedroom door.
“Shittttt,” Brian whispered, whimpering with frustration.
“I’ve got beignets and coffee ready. Come ‘n’ get it!” The sound of footsteps drifted off in the distance.
Laura glared at the door. “Did that just happen?” she asked as her body slowly lost all the heat they had just created.
“Forget about it. Let’s do this,” Brian said, pulling her close.
“No way,” she said angrily. “I’ve completely lost the mood.” She got off of him and put her tank top back on. She didn’t know who to be mad at—Janet for not giving them their space, or Brian for putting them in this situation.
“Are you kidding me?” He glared at her.
“I can’t do this, Brian. We are married. We should be able to have sex anytime we want without your mom interrupting.” She got out of bed and put her pajama pants on. “I don’t want to be here. I don’t wanna be stuck with your parents while you go off and get drunk with your friends. I don’t wanna stay at home all day with your mom. This wasn’t the plan. This wasn’t how I pictured our first year of marriage.”
“And you think I did?” Brian asked, his voice raised. “Do you seriously think I wanted this? I’m the one who this affects the most. I’m the one who can’t do what I love right now.”
She paused in the middle of the room. “And you think I love working at the Sea Shack?”
“How is that any different from what you were doing at Magnolia?” He was still sitting in bed naked, making it harder to take him seriously.
“Well, for one, when I was off from Magnolia, I didn’t have a forty-year-old woman force-feeding me breakfast and hoggin’ the TV.” She grabbed her paddle brush and started stroking her hair with it furiously.
“You’re being a bitch.”
“Excuse me?” Laura fumed. He had never called her that before.
“My parents are giving us a place rent-free right now. They’re paying for all our food. Why can’t you just suck it up for now?”
“We may be saving money, but I swear I’m gonna lose my sanity.” She threw her brush on the desk.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” Brian said, finally putting his clothes back on. “Suck it up. This is our life right now.”
Laura didn’t want to be under the same roof as him—or Janet—at that moment. But there was nowhere else for her to go. Or was there? She glanced at the framed picture of Claire and the girls on the desk, remembering the conversation they’d had the night before. She contemplated it for a moment more.
“I’m going to get some breakfast,” Brian said.
She turned around and looked at him. “And I’m going to go back to school.”
8
claire
MRS. DEBORAH, THE church’s sweet silver-haired secretary, had brought in a homemade praline pie so rich that one tiny sliver had to have been about a thousand calories. But Claire brushed that thought aside as she took bite after bite of the decadent dessert that was quickly turning into her lunch. She had been in the church library all morning working with Beau, one of their youth group members and their current media intern, to develop a reel of Gavin’s best sermons for the church’s website. Now it was almost two o’clock, and the video was finally turning into something they were both excited about.
“Oh, this would be a great place to put that part where he talks about being forgiven for sins,” she said, pointing at the computer screen.
Beau nodded and dragged the clip across the screen, inserting it between the sections on “feeling blessed even in difficult times” and “the importance of forgiving others.”