Page 23 of The Chosen Two

“Good question.” Everything is throbbing and it’s hard to tease out what hurts worse than what. So, my response is mainly a groan, and then I ask her to put the heating pad across the back of my shoulders while I lay on my stomach. The spasming going on there is some of the worst pain I’ve ever experienced.

Phoebe brings me a tray loaded with waffles, fruit, and hard-boiled eggs, and Natalie helps me roll over and sit up so I can eat. Then she puts the heating pad back on my shoulders.

While I’m eating, Phoebe fetches the bottle of ibuprofen from my medicine cabinet. Eleven years old, and she’s still respectful of not opening the bottle. I love my kids! Wow, I am really in some pain… I finish my meal, swallow two pills, thank my girls, and settle back into my pillows to try to minimize the amount of pain coursing through me. Napping is likely not going to be a possibility. I’m just attempting to achieve a level of pain that doesn’t tell me I’m going to die right here.

Thank goodness it’s Saturday! This way it isn’t a big deal when the pain killers kick in and I do drift back off to get a couple more hours of sleep.

But I’m woken up sooner than I’m ready when my phone starts buzzing with a call. I try shoving it under Jake’s pillow so I can ignore it but that just makes the entire bed vibrate, and not in a fun kind of way. I ignore it, assuming it’s Jake (and therefore he can wait), and I try to fall back asleep. But when the call repeats three more times and I’m more and more desperate for rest, I check who’s calling. I don’t recognize the number, so I’m hoping it is someone I can tell off for calling so many times.

Answering, I lay the phone against my cheek so I don’t have to keep my muscles engaged. “Hello?”

“Hey, Miranda. It’s George.”

“Oh…hi?” My voice raises an octave but that’s all the energy I can muster.

“I just realized you don’t have my number if you need to reach me, or if I need to reach you. Now you know it’s me… So, here I am.”

“Umm. Okay, but you could have left me a message, you know, instead of calling me four times.”

“Oh. I… Sorry. I also got a little worried when you didn’t answer. How are you feeling?”

I yawn. “Kind of like a giant minotaur beat the hell out of me. Thanks for asking. I’m going to go try to sleep now, until my body feels less broken.”

And I hang up. What a weird moppet of a man he’s turning out to be. This entire experience has been nothing but bizarre. I’m just about asleep when my phone buzzes again but with a much shorter alert. A text instead of a call. Jake.

Taking the Red Eye tonight. See you all soon. I truly cannot wait to show you how I have missed you. Love you.

Okay, whatever weirdo. It even hurts when I roll my eyes. I lean back into the nest of pillows Natalie set up for me and drift into blissful unconsciousness.

I pass the day in a cycle of sleeping, waking up sore, taking more pain relievers, and going back to sleep. The kids take turns checking on me, feeding me, and assuring me they’re all fine. The good news is every time I wake up, I feel a little less sore and more myself. When I wake up at 2 a.m., all traces of my pain have subsided.

“That’s so weird,” I say aloud, but softly, and only to myself.

I stretch and get out of bed, unable to comprehend how the pain could completely vanish. Jake must be in the air now, I assume. Considering he didn’t bother to send me his usual pre-flight text telling me he loves me and will be shutting off his phone, I can’t be sure.

My stomach growls interrupt my thoughts, so I head for the stairs, noticing how loud the squeaky parts of the floor are when the rest of the house is silent. Hopefully, that’s just my new bat-like hearing. The lights are off, but rays of moonlight shine through the windows, illuminating enough of the house that I can tell the rooms are pretty immaculate, considering it’s been Lord of Flies here for the last day. My children have impressed me.

But of course, they are impressive. Their mama is a full-fledged superhero! I pull a quart of ice cream out of the freezer, a spoon from the drawer, and sit at the table to go through my missed emails (and, of course, missed social media). So much junk email. I pause on an email with a comedy and tragedy mask at the top. A local theater is holding auditions. It makes me nostalgic for my adolescent days when I would try out for all the plays. I rarely got an actual role, but just getting to be in the background or the chorus and pretend to not be me for a couple hours was a nice break. To have a place to go outside of my house. Outside of myself. Outside of his reach.

Soon, I’m mindlessly scrolling without absorbing anything. My eyes give up on trying to focus, and my ice cream melts. Quickly healed or not, my body wants more sleep. I clean up and go back to my bed. At least Jake will be home in a few hours, and I’ll be able to lean on him a little for emotional support as well as help with the kids.

***

I’m running around an affluent California suburb with my favorite teenagers, getting a crash course in hunting monsters, when I feel something tickling my side. I think it’s a spider, swat it away, and go back to my lesson on stabbing with the pointy end. I am mid smart ass retort when I feel the sensation again, only this time it is along the inside of my thigh. And there’s a wet sensation on my neck? As the graveyard fades around me, I open my eyes to find Jake lying in bed beside me, his fingers tracing around my body while his tongue swirls along my neck, eliciting a moan from my barely awake lips.

The kids are still asleep. It would have been wiser for him to let me sleep, but apparently he’s not feeling wise…or patient…or calm. He’s feeling something though. And I’m feeling the proof pressing into me through the covers. I gently push him away so I can breathe and look at him.

“Umm, hi. How was your flight?”

He has a look on his face that tells me he has zero interest in talking. “It was fine. Now I want to lay with my wife.” He kisses me again. Again, I push him back.

Where did he learn that line? “Lay with your wife? Okay, but your wife is still mad at you for how you spoke to her the other day.”

His brow furrows for a split second, and I wonder if he even remembers the disagreement. Maybe it was nothing to him at all.

“Don’t you remember? You were at some loud club? You could barely spare a moment to talk to me about the job opportunity I was offered and then insulted my abilities to do anything but housework?”

He smiles at me, well, at my lips. He can’t seem to stop watching my mouth.

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