Page 31 of Margot
CHAPTER NINE
LENNOX
“Are you seriously booking a flight right now, Lennox?” Sutton asked over my shoulder. We’d been home for all of twenty minutes before I was pulling up vacation destinations and prices. Taking a trip sounded like the perfect thing to do. I wasn’t going to waste any time.
“Yes, I am. Isn’t that what was suggested to us? It makes perfect sense to me. You can’t drown your sorrows in music and you don’t need to right now. You need to take this time to observe yourself.”
“To observe our marriage,” she countered. I clenched my jaw to keep a few choice words inside because they wouldn’t benefit anyone outside of my mouth.
“There’s a flight to Honolulu tomorrow morning,” I told her.
“Tomorrow? Lennox, this is all happening so fast. Why the rush?” She paced the floor behind me. I could hear the soft creak of the floorboard each time her feet moved past a specific spot.
“If we don’t do it now, we won’t do it. I’m gonna lock it in.” I ignored Sutton’s indecisiveness in the background and booked us a first-class flight to Honolulu.
“Done,” I said, clapping my hands together. “Now, let’s pack. Once we’re done we can start on our assignments from Dr. Adler.”
“Lennox, I don’t know about this at all. It seems so extreme. I mean to just pick up and leave on vacation all because I broke my finger. Don’t you think it’s a bit much?” Sutton stood with one arm tucked under the other, staring at me for an answer. I didn’t know what to tell her.
“The longer we stand here trying to analyze this, the less time we have to pack. You also need to call the orchestra and the Philharmonic to let them know what’s happened and that you won’t be in for a while.” Sutton stood blinking those beautiful brown eyes that I couldn’t get enough of then she pouted.
The fact that I wanted to do nothing more than kiss and suck on her lips was enough reason for me to get up and pack. I wanted to go somewhere alone with my wife. I wanted to pull her outside of her head and into our own little bubble where nothing and nobody else existed.
“Fine,” she huffed before stalking into the bedroom. I did all the work though. I knew she couldn’t pull down suitcases from the highest closet shelves, so I did it. I knew she couldn’t fold her clothes the right way, so I folded them for her. I did it all while she delegated and tried in vain to do things with her hand.
Having to be dependent on help for certain things seemed to eat away at Sutton. If I was being totally honest, it was cute as fuck to watch her struggle with needing help. She was such a loner that this was burning her the hell up.
It took an hour and countless quiet tantrums before we were packed. “Thank you,” she said from between stiff lips.
“You’ll feel better once we’re in Honolulu, I promise. You can’t be mad in Hawaii, Sutton.”
“Are there pianos in Hawaii that I can play?” She quizzed.
“No…you know that,” I groaned rubbing my forehead.
“Then it’s possible to be mad in Hawaii.”
“Stop fighting this. Who fights a vacation to Hawaii?”
“Me. I do. Especially when I’m not feeling like myself,” Sutton argued.
“All the more reason for us to do this. I don’t want to hear anything else about it. I just want to go and enjoy our time together.” I didn’t say anything else to her as I rolled the bags to the front door.
Once everything was ready for our flight in the morning, I started sending out work emails. It would be easy to take time off because I rarely missed a day. It would be good for my boss to see how things fell to pieces when I wasn’t there and the only people he really had to rely on were Ebony and Jovan. I cleared my showings for the week and rerouted them to other agents who were more than happy to take on my workload. I purposefully left Ebony out of that reroute pool.
Once I was done wrapping up work emails, I called Jovan on his personal cell. He sounded shocked to hear my voice when he answered the phone.
“What’s up, Lennox? Everything okay? I heard what happened to Sutton.”
“Everything is okay, no thanks to Ebony. Did she tell you that she was the one who let the door close on Sutton’s fingers this morning?” A flare of anger turned my face into solid rock.
“What? No, she didn’t tell me that. She told me that she saw everything but she failed to mention she was the one who let the door go. What the fuck?” I was glad he wasn’t trying to cover for his wife. He sounded rightfully disturbed.
“Yeah, man. That’s not exactly why I’m calling though. The other day, Ebony and I had a showing together.”
“Yeah, she told me about that,” Jovan said.
“Well, she…” I sighed heavily and rubbed my forehead with the heel of my hand. “Listen, Jovan, I don’t know how you’re going to take this but I refuse to sit on it anymore after the shit Ebony did. I know that’s your wife and you love her so I say this with all due respect to you, Jovan but your wife tried to fuck me. I can’t say it in language any plainer than that.” The silence was immense. It hovered over my head like a thick cloud of uncertainty.
