Page 21 of Sleepover

My pulse picks up a notch. This should be interesting.

“Elle?”

I jerk my attention back to Trevor.

“Anything else going on with Madden I need to know about?”

“Nothing I haven’t mentioned.” Trevor and I stay in touch by email and sometimes text.

Every time I reach out to him electronically, I think about the fact that for nearly a decade, he was texting and emailing and messaging and Skyping another woman, telling her the details of his day, his thoughts and feelings. All those parts of him I thought were for me, they never were. They belonged to her.

When I found out, I thought, Our whole marriage is a lie. And cried so hard and so long that my whole body hurt.

I turn away from Trevor and watch Sawyer unfold his linebacker’s body from the front seat of the car. It’s a riveting sight—long, strong lines and a surprising amount of grace for such a big guy.

He’s very athletic. I know from personal experience. My mouth goes dry and something throbs appreciatively in my southerly regions.

Trevor’s eyes follow mine.

“That’s the new neighbor?”

“Yep.”

The urge to tell Trevor—with words or implication or body language—that I’ve had sex with Sawyer is almost overpowering, but I manage to keep my mouth shut as Madden and Jonah run toward us.

Sawyer keeps his distance as the boys bound up, talking over each other in their eagerness to tell me about the map and the salamander and the coyote and the river they waded into and and and…

“Sounds like fun,” Trevor says. “How would you guys like to go kayaking with me sometime soon?”

My eyes meet Sawyer’s, and his eyebrows go up, just a notch. Giving Trevor the benefit of the doubt, he’s probably just running with a theme, but it does sound a bit like he’s trying to one-up my new neighbor.

“Wow!” Jonah says. “Dad, could we do that?”

“Don’t see why not,” Sawyer says easily.

Trevor strides down the steps toward Sawyer with his hand out, all jovial. “Hey there. Trevor Thomas. Great to meet you.”

“Sawyer Paulson.”

I bite my lip in an effort not to smile at Sawyer’s cool response.

Sawyer’s probably not more than five inches taller than Trevor, but he’s at least fifty pounds heavier, all of it well-distributed muscle. As a result, he looms over Trevor. And I catch Trevor’s wince mid-handshake, which makes it even harder not to smile.

“And this is Jonah,” I say. “They’re our new neighbors.”

“Welcome,” Trevor says.

But you don’t live here anymore,I think. You don’t get to issue the welcomes anymore.

“Madden, Helen made your favorite dinner for tonight!” Trevor says. “Spaghetti with meatballs!”

I feel only the faintest flicker of annoyance. One of the things that’s been most difficult since the divorce is that when Trevor’s around, I don’t like either of us—him or me. Obviously, I used to love him. I loved his little quirks and foibles—was even amused by the way he dealt with his insecurities by posturing. But overnight, once I knew that he no longer loved me, my own emotions soured. And in the last year, when I’ve been forced to be in the same place as him, I mainly wished he would go away so I could stop feeling…small.

But today for some reason, I’m not feeling that way. I think it has something to do with Sawyer’s presence, or maybe with the way he makes Trevor seem like the small one.

I hide a smile.

Trevor turns to me. “Elle. How’s the car running? Want me to check the oil and tire pressure while I’m here?”

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