Maid for Each Other

by Lynn Painter

“You sure I won’t get infected with anything?” I teased. “If I go to your ‘sluml...

“No,” she said with a grin. “But don’t worry. When I got an infestation, it ended up being the best...

We hadn’t planned it, but every time we visited, we hated leaving. Somehow it felt like our place, as weird as it sounded, so when she secured a teaching job at a community college in Westchester after she graduated, it seemed like fate. Especially when I’d accidentally proposed the week before.

But when she came home from Benny’s that night (she’d fucking schooled me on the realities of prescription med prices and the absurdities of health insurance when I tried convincing her to quit) and informed me that she’d seen Nana Marian at the store, it felt even more meant to be. Because apparently my grandmother had always purchased her supplements from Benny’s, which was how she’d recognized Abi the first time they’d met. So we’d been this close to being found out on our very first date, but somehow the stars had aligned and we’d made it through. I strongly suspected Nana Marian had known all along and chose to simply watch and wait.

She’d barely finished the story when I think I blabbed something like I bought this for you because you became my heart that weekend, and I couldn’t leave the store without it. I promise if you say yes, I’ll plan a romantic proposal worthy of you and we can redo this whole thing but I just couldn’t wait another minute to give you this.

So now we were engaged, though neither of us were in any hurry to get the wedding planned because we were so damn happy with our new life. Professor Abi was obsessed with her job, I’d finally gotten promoted, and the two of us were disgustingly smitten with the newest member of our household.

“Look who was asleep in the spare room,” she said as she walked out of the bedroom, looking cute as fuck in my tattered old Harvard sweatshirt, leggings, and her hair piled on top of her head. She was grinning down at the fluffy-ass cat that she adored more than anything in the world, including me. “Little Dexxie.”

“How is it that I love someone who’s such a pain in the ass?” I asked, leaning forward to kiss her forehead.

“You made a deal with the devil,” she said with a grin. “For the price of $40K.”

“No, I made a deal with a devilish maid,” I corrected, “and it cost me m...