Maid for Each Other

by Lynn Painter

I was fine with being by myself—good with it, actually—but I hated when the realization that no one in the world knew where I was or cared grabbed onto me at random moments.

You’re always worrying about the future, but sometimes you need to take a chance and enjoy the now.”

What was the point in talking through possibilities with anyone other than Abi?

“So,” she said, blinking up at me like she’d been lost, too. “Do you feel like a winner?”

I knew I was hiding nothing when a dipshit smile took over my face and I said around a laugh, “Hell fucking yes. Let’s go check in.”

“Your towel,” he said, lowering his face to taste my neck, my shoulder, the hollow underneath my ear, “is about to go, Mariano. You good with that?”

“Kill me, Mariano,” I said, raising my head to look into her eyes. “You fucking kill me, honey.”

“Well, I’m never buying you anything again if it makes you cry,” he said, looking a little uncomfortable. “I bought it because I wanted it to make you happy.”

“I am happy,” I said, sniffling and wiping at my eyes. “Can’t you tell?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. His eyes were all I could see when he took out the bracelet, carefully put it on my wrist, and said, “I don’t want to steal lines from your movie Darcy, but my brain can’t help but plagiarize when I look a...

“Okay, but you can’t get pissed because I didn’t have time to think it out. Like, it was a spur-of-the-moment idea, and I really thought she was in it for the money, no strings attached.” Shit, shit, shit. “I’m going to hate this, aren’t I?” “I think maybe yes.” He sighed, dragged a hand through his hair, then proceeded to tell me a story that made me want to hit my very best friend.

“Roman told me he saw you at Benny’s.”

“Oh.” I wasn’t sure what to say to that. “Yeah. He was buying supplements.”

“I know,” h...

I waited for more, but he gave me nothing. He didn’t say a word, so finally I said, “We get wholesaler prices, so we’re able to...

“I don’t care about Benny’s supplemental price points,” he said, throwing his hands up in frustration. “I care that my friend stupidly suggested something th...

“He—” I stopped myself from saying more, because I didn’t know what to say to that. He’d just explained exactly how Roman had made me feel. “You didn’t know he was going to do that?”

“I would’ve fucking destroyed him for the proposition,” he growled, looking straight up pissed now. “And if you’d said yes, it would’ve destroyed me.”

“It, uh, it would’ve?” I asked, my voice coming out sort of husky. “Why, exactly?”

“You’re going to make me say it?” he asked, stepping closer, closing the space between us.

“What if I’m not good?” His words hung there, in the air between us. He swallowed and I saw his jaw flex before he said, “I’m the opposite of good. I’m fucking miserable without you, Abi.”

“That’s only temporary,” I said, a weird part of me feeling bad for him. “You’ll find someone shiny who makes you forget all about the one that you thought you wanted.”

His eyebrows screwed together. “What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means,” I said, trying to keep my thoughts in order when his presence was messing with my emotions and making it hard to process anything, “that you live in a world where you get every single thing you’re ever remotely interested in. You might enjoy it for a while, but eventually you end up ...

“Careless?” he said, and we both knew he was referring to what I’d written. He stared down at me, his eyes everywhere on my face, and I had to force myself not to fidget. Then he said, “Tell me why you think that.”

“I mean, you did offer me your car multiple times, you didn’t blink over my demand for a small fortune, you didn’t care about the diamond necklace—you have so much that nothing retains its value. You buy things that you ultimately just walk away from because you’re done with them.”

His eyes narrowed and he said, “Those are things, Abi, possessions with actual price tags. You ca...

“I think I can, actually...

“No, you can’t,” he growled, dragging a hand through his hair. “Because I’m not Connor. I don’t give a shit about possessions—I’m happy to give them away because it’s just stuff. Material bullshit. I work my ass off so I can give things away. But you aren’t a possession.” I sucked in a breath when he re...

I wanted, so badly, to close my eyes and rub my cheek against his big hand. But instead I ...

“I won’t. I can’t.” As if reading my mind, he stroked his fingers against my cheekbone and said, “Because ...

It wasn’t a genuine laugh, but she gave me a sarcastic little cough-laugh as she stepped back from me and said, “No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am.”

“No, you’re not!” she said loudly, her voice filled with agitation. “You don’t even really know me or my life. You know the version we curated for our show, the version who wore the right clothes and held your hand while you gave speeches and played with you in SoHo as if ...

“I know that,” I snapped, terrified that I wasn’t going to be abl...

“Do you?” she asked, her fiery brown ...

“Yes,” I said to Abi, ignoring Roman and wondering how it was that we were yelling at each other when I was trying to convince her I was in love with her. “I liked that version of you, but that’s not who I’m in love with. I’m in love with the girl who buys stupid T-shirts because they’re a good deal, whose hair sticks straight up in the morning when she runs around in pajamas with her own face on them, and the idiot who risks her fucking life to run in a 5K because she made a commitment.”

“I’m in love with the girl who would rather enjoy her job than make a fortune in finance. I’m in love with the girl who only cooks noodles and worries about a scorpion stinging me through my shoe. I’m in love with the girl who creates backstories that have me falling off a treadmill for her, for God’s sake.”

“Oh,” she said, her perfect mouth forming a perfect O.

“Oh is right. I’m in love with you, damn it, and it’s really pissing me off that you refuse to accept that.” I hadn’t meant to yell at her, but I couldn’t get her to hear me. To understand how badly I wanted her in my life. “I don’t know ...

“He bought you all this,” Roman said, kneeling down beside the mess of boxes he’d just dropped on the ...

“Shut up, Roman,” I ...

“Yeah, no offense,” she said sarcastically, sounding exactly like the Abi I’d met in Benny’s the first time, “but Dex spending money actually proves my point.” She gave him a ...

“But on these?” Roman asked, holding up one of the small boxes. “He spent a fortune on inhalers, which I was supposed to help him weave into the bouquets in his office, but I was too slow and you showed up e...

I sighed, wondering how he was so good at so many things when he could be such a bumbling jackass...

“What, um…,” she said, her eyebrows crinkled together in that way that...

Oh, God, please let that be interest...

“No, I mean holy shit—Lauren Smearhaven has been an investment. I think she was July, maybe.” What? “Are you sure?” I asked. “Think about it—Smearhaven? Not a name I’d forget.” I looked at Roman and shook my head, wondering what in the hell else could be thrown into this scene that was supposed to be ending with Abi in my arms. Lauren fucking Smearhaven. “Ho-ly shit.”

If this were true, he wasn’t a rich guy who gave things away because he didn’t care about them. If this were true, he was a rich guy who cared enough to give them all away.

“Can you two leave?” Abi said, those brown eyes on me as she said it. Her face was impossible to read, but that gorgeous amber gaze held me in place like a vise grip.