Homewrecker

56 - 𝓽𝓪𝓵𝓴

I wasn't really that sure when I woke up, but it felt like I had been blinking up at the ceiling for a while, like somehow I had been stirred awake without even realizing it. Or maybe I never really fell asleep in the first place.

I slept on one half of the sectional couch in the entertainment room without even glancing down the hallway to the closed bedroom door where Andi had stormed off to, knowing that if I tried to turn the doorknob it would probably be locked. Indie slept on the other half, even though I tried to convince her to take the top bunk in the bedroom instead, but eventually she started ignoring me and rearranging the throw pillows on the couch and going into the closet to find the blankets Amy mentioned when she overheard we were sleeping downstairs.

She paused for a second when I told her that Andi and Natalie weren't sleeping with us, already in the midst of suggesting we rent a movie, but she didn't say anything about it. And now, hours later, Indie was still softly snoring into one of the couch cushions, her arm hanging off the edge and fingers dangling over the carpet, and I felt exhausted and wide awake at the same time.

I thought of the bag of vegan marshmallows she threw into the trash can, which prompted Kimberly to ask why she had done that a moment later and I didn't have a response to give her. Ethan was still looking at me, and I couldn't tell if he was judging my thought like Andi had or if he was giving it actual thought.

I hoped harder than I wanted to that it would be the latter, but I had this fear it wouldn't be. After all, he had known David for longer than I had, worked on his lawn every summer for years, lived beside him three months out of the year. I shouldn't have felt like I could rival that.

I tossed the blanket tangled around and underneath my bare legs onto the floor and quietly hoisted myself up from the couch, shuffling out of the entertainment room and through the hallway into the kitchen, hesitating when I caught a glimpse of David in the dinning room.

He was sitting at the head of the table, his phone held in his one hand as he scrolled down with his thumb and half of a rainbow bagel spread with cream cheese in his other. He was already dressed, but more casually than he should've been before work, adorned in a weathered t-shirt from Old Navy for the Fourth of July, still a couple weeks away.

A pitcher of orange juice was out on the table, with two blue tinted glasses set out beside it, and an opened package of blueberries beside a paper bag. Papers were scattered on the table in front of him, but still neatly arranged as he took another bite from his bagel and glanced up, noticing me in the doorframe.

"There you are," he commented, shifting in his chair to put his phone into his back pocket as I frowned down at the table, the glasses around the pitcher, the extra plate I was noticing, the fact that he seemed to be waiting for me.

I wondered, as he gestured to one of the chairs, if Andi had mentioned to him what she overheard me telling Ethan the night before. "I was wondering when you'd wake up. Bagel? I think Andi bought them yesterday for an Instagram picture or something."

I paused, still in the doorframe. "You're not at work."

He nodded, taking one of the glasses and the pitcher in his hands and pouring it. "I called the office early this morning and told them I wouldn't be coming in today. I wanted to talk to you"—I braced myself to hear that he learned about my allegations last night—"about your mother and me. Like I told you last night."

"Wait, you were actually going to do that?"

"Well, I told you I would, didn't I?"

"I thought you were trying to brush me off."