Page 48 of The Marriage Deal
As I finished cooking, I heard him take out the plates and cutlery and place them on the small breakfast table that was in the kitchen corner. We sat and ate in relative silence, Levi occasionally complimenting my food.
Levi liked his phone a little too much. Constantly checking it even when eating. He was like this at work too, and if he wasn't fucking me like a madman all weekend, I would have been jealous enough to think he was texting another woman. "My dad used to say it was bad manners to look at your phone while eating," I said after he checked it for the fifth time. "What's preoccupying you?"
"The cryptographers are having trouble decoding the letters," he said.
"Probably because they don't know Old English," I said as I buttered my toast.
"You're right." He took a sip of his coffee. "If anyone is going to solve it, it's probably going to be a historian."
He checked his phone again. But when he saw me looking, guilt flashed across his face.
"How about this?" I said. "Let's put our phones in a box for the rest of the weekend and not check them until evening. We can lock them in that safe of yours."
"I don't have a safe!" His denial was unconvincing.
"Please. I can spot fake books a mile away. Part of your bookshelf in your bedroom is a safe. I even opened the book while you were in the shower, but I didn't open the safe inside, of course. I didn't have your code, unfortunately."
His eyes narrowed, but it was clear he was not angry. If anything, he seemed impressed. "I should be careful around you. No one I know has ever guessed that it was a safe."
"No one? How many women have been in your bedroom, Mr. Hawthorne?"
He shifted in his seat and averted his gaze. It was so funny it made me giggle.
"Don't worry, I won't boil their bunnies. We're fuck buddies, right?"
He smiled. "Fine. Give me your phone."
I swiped it out of my sweats and handed him the little black gadget covered in a pastel pink case. He placed his own beige and brown cased phone on top of mine and took them to his bedroom. When he came back, his hands were raised, saying, "Phone free and ready to spend the rest of this Sunday with my fuck buddy."
For fuck buddies, we spend most of Sunday watching movies. Since he didn't have one, I proposed installing mine in the living room. He didn't mind, even though I thought he wouldput up a fight. He found a table big enough to place it, and we put the TV in front of his bookshelf. And since he had no cable, the only things we could connect it to were the internet and my streaming accounts. The man didn't even have a single streaming subscription. Pathetic.
After breakfast, he asked me if I've ever watched a disaster movie that wasn't trying to be the Titanic. And when the conversation turned to Jack and Rose, and Rose not letting Jack on the door, I told him it was because they both could not fit.
"It's in the movie. Jack tries to get on. It bobbles, and he stays in the water."
His brow furrowed. "I don't remember that part."
"That's because you were watching it through tears," I said smugly.
"Come on," he insisted. "That can't be it. Rose does not let Jack on."
"Bet?"
So we sat down and watched the entire movie. We could have just watched a clip, but watching the whole thing felt more accurate. Wrapped in his arms, I lay on the couch with half my body against his chest. The popcorn bowl was long depleted when we finally reached the scene. "See! Told you!"
"I've watched this movie so many times, how come I remembered it differently?"
"Justice for my girl Rose. She was viciously maligned for years. Did you know James Cameron actually did a test in a pool because so many people were arguing they could both fit?"
"Huh."
As the credits rolled, he said, "He should have addressed other inaccuracies in his film instead of the door thing."
"Molly Brown?"
He squeezed me tightly. "Justice for Molly Brown."
"I knew you'd latch onto her. I mean, at least she has her own movie."
