Page 74 of Paradox
“When I woke up. When you were nowhere to be found.”
I wash my hands, turn to him, and lean against the counter. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
“Maybe I wanted to go fishing.”
“It took me two hours each way.”
“And?”
And what?
I push the cooler towards him. “I found a bunch of oyster mushrooms.”
He slaps his hand to his chest, and says, "Oh, Eden. Thank you sooo much. What would I ever do without you?”
“I’m not sure exactly what I’ve done wrong here.”
He hangs his head, and the sarcastic passion that just sparked within him, fizzles before my eyes. “Don’t worry about it.”
I grab his arm. “Don’t walk away from me.”
“You don’t get to leave me here alone all day then demand things of me.”
I pull him closer. “I was getting us food.”
He looks in the sink. “Where are the heads?”
“At the lake.”
“I could have made soup out of them. And you’d have known that if you’d taken me along.”
“How the hell am I the bad guy? I made you food, then spent all day finding more.”
Another pause stretches out, enveloping us.
I clench my jaw and fight against my hair-trigger instinct to make him hurt.
It was easier then; when I thought with my fists.
But now… now my heart rate is climbing in the way it always does when I know something bad is going to happen—like the wind before a storm.
Jin clears his throat softly and looks down at where my fingers are digging into his bicep. “Did you sleep in the loft?”
“What?”
He repeats, "Did you sleep in the loft?”
“My back hurt from sleeping on the floor.”
“Then why was I on the sofa?”
“Because I put you there, you ungrateful fuck.”
“When?”
“When I got up. There was no point in you staying down there on your own.”
“Why couldn’t you have woken me?”
