Chapter Fourteen

LARA

I turn off the burner on the stove and step back, looking over everything. Riley is in her playpen in the living room, babbling to herself as she plays with some new toys we bought at the store during my break earlier in the day.

“Okay, he should be here any time now,” I mutter to myself, looking around the kitchen. I’ve thrown together a quick meal. Once again Ethan has to work late, and it’ll be easier to keep Riley on the right schedule for him to eat at my place, along with his daughter, before going home.

It’s weird to me how, in the span of four weeks, this has become normal. On Monday I go into the office and go to meetings, and set my schedule for the rest of the week, cramming as much work as I possibly can into the day. Tuesday, I pick Riley up from Ethan’s house and bring her back to my apartment, and the day flies by between playing and caring for her and getting as much of my work done as possible while she’s napping or occupied. Then, by mutual agreement, I drop her back off at home with Ethan that evening. Wednesday, this morning, Ethan drops Riley off with me on his way out to the work-site, and then picks her up at the end of the day on his way home. Tomorrow, I’ll go to Ethan’s place in the morning, pick Riley up, and keep her until Friday morning, when Ethan will pick her up and I’ll get ready for work.

There’s a knock at the door and Riley calls out from her playpen. Even she knows that it’s her dad, even though we’ve only done this for two weeks. She’s ceased even asking about her mother. I’m sure either Ethan or I will have to deal with the subject eventually, but I’m sure it’s a relief for him not to have to answer her questions about when she’ll see Alexis again. It’s questions he can’t even really answer, because at nineteen months old there’s no way for Riley to understand her mother being dead, or even that she’s just not coming back.

I open the door and Ethan comes in. It’s obviously been a tough day at work, and it’s seven-thirty at night, so he’s been working for the better part of almost twelve hours. He’s in a pair of jeans and a plaid work shirt with a denim jacket on over it, and his hair is plastered against his head from sweat. He still looks like a defeated man and I can’t blame him.

“Hey,” I say, letting him into the apartment and closing the door behind him.

“How’s my best girl?” He goes directly into the living room where Riley has abandoned her playing to hold up her arms and cry out that she wants “up” in her chirpiest voice.

“She’s been very good today,” I say, locking the apartment door. I step over to the stove and check on dinner.

I’d figured that it would be a long day for Ethan, and it was a pretty long day for me too, even though Riley was on her best behavior. She went down for her nap like a good girl in the morning and the afternoon, so I’d made a casserole, and some green beans, and a salad. I don’t even know what kind of food Ethan eats, but I figure there has to be something he’ll manage in the whole deal.

“Whatever you’re cooking smells amazing,” Ethan tells me from the living room.

“It should be pretty good,” I say, bringing the pot from the stove to a trivet on the table.

“What’s she had to eat so far today?”

I look at the notepad on the refrigerator door where I keep track of all the stuff that Ethan will need to know from the times I take care of his daughter.

“We had eggs and toast for breakfast, a morning snack of apples and peanut butter. For lunch, she had tuna salad, and some pretzels about two hours ago,” I reply.

“Thanks, you seem to be getting the hang of this co-parent thing quickly,” Ethan tells me as he settles Riley in her high chair.

I roll my eyes. “I’m obsessive about doing it right,” I counter.

“This looks good,” Ethan says, sitting down at the table next to my niece. I open the fridge and get the half-empty bottle of white wine out, along with some milk for Riley.

“What do you want to drink?” It feels weird to have Ethan sitting at my table, to be serving him dinner, but we agreed that in addition to the fact that it would be better to keep Riley on a schedule for meals, it would be good to try to keep things as normal for her as possible, and that meant sitting for meals together when we can.

“Water, please,” Ethan says.

“Watah, peas,” Riley copies.

I chuckle. “You’re going to have milk, my little turtle-dove,” I tell her. “The yummy strawberry milk you like.”

I mix her strawberry milk and put it in her sippy cup, and get Ethan a glass of water and pour myself a glass of wine. I won’t be minding her, and I managed to get most of my work done, so I feel like I’ve earned it.

“Thanks,” Ethan says as I finally sit down at the table. He serves Riley little portions of everything.

“I don’t know if she’ll like the salad,” I say.

“It’s good for her to try it, though,” Ethan points out, and I nod.

I’ve found — to my surprise, since Alexis was always kind of a picky eater — that Riley’s willing to eat just about anything I put in front of her.

We settle in to eat and while Ethan chatters with Riley and I occasionally fill in the details he needs to know, I think about how bizarre my life has become. I’m taking care of my sister’s daughter three days a week, talking to a man who I swore I would never ever even say more than “hello” to in my life. I still haven’t forgiven him for what he and Alexis did, but it’s as obvious now as it was the week of my sister’s death how tough this has been on him. I can’t help but feel a little bad for him, even if there’s a part of me that I’m pretty sure will always hate him a little bit.

By the time Ethan has Riley in her car seat, and they’re heading out to go home, she’s almost ready to go to sleep for the night, and I’m not all that far behind her. I never realized when I was entertaining my niece during my two visits back home, and then the week around Easter, what it would be like to constantly be responsible for a child for hours at a time, especially while I’m trying to work.

“Thank you, Lara,” Ethan says at the door. I shrug.

“I’m just doing what I need to do,” I say, giving him a tired smile. I think better of smiling at him, but I’m too exhausted to stop myself.

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” Ethan suggests.

“You will indeed,” I tell him.

He looks for a second like he’s going to say something else, but then he shakes his head and tells a drowsy Riley that they’re going for a ride.

They leave, and I put away the leftovers. Ethan actually ate more of the salad than I thought he would, and I have just enough of dinner left to have on Friday night, when I definitely won’t want to cook anything from scratch. I clean the kitchen a bit and make sure to spray down the tray from Riley’s high chair, leaving it to dry on the dish rack. It’s weird, it really is, how normal this has become, and I still don’t know how to feel about how much I now have to interact with the last man on the planet I want to even speak to.

After I have cleaned and had a second glass of wine I decide to take a shower as I need to relax. Looking after a child is no easy task and a shower is the perfect way to chill.

The apartment is quiet without Riley and Ethan and although I like the silence, I miss the company.

Once in the shower, I start going over the day I’ve had. It was nice chatting to someone and the fact it was Ethan was strangely all right. He is a caring and loving father and although he broke my heart, I have to accept that he will be a part of my life for the rest of my life.

Absently, I find myself no longer soaping and scrubbing my body but fondling myself. I haven’t had any kind of relief ever since I got the call about the car accident, and while I’m not exactly sexually voracious, I was used to getting myself off at least a few times a week. I let my mind drift as I tease my nipples and then reach down between my legs to stroke and rub myself, trying to think of an appropriate fantasy.

I imagine the shower curtain pulling aside, and then feeling the presence of someone stepping into the shower behind me, his hands replacing mine invisibly. I close my eyes and find my clit with my fingertips, pretending it’s a man’s fingertips instead, pretending it’s some phantom lover.

But all at once, instead of an imaginary, non-existent guy, I’m picturing Ethan, and I nearly stop myself, but I’m already too turned on, too wound up, to make myself give up on getting off. I try to replace the mental image of Ethan with someone — anyone — else, but my brain stubbornly insists on remembering him, and imagining him as the man in the shower with me.

I imagine him sliding one finger, and then two, inside of me slowly, and do it to myself, swaying on my feet as the hot water tickles me on its way down my body. I use my other hand to cup and tease my breast, rolling the nipple between my fingers, sending little tingling jolts of sensation straight to my already-soaking pussy. I moan as I think about Ethan fingering me, working my clit with my thumb while I push my two fingers deeper inside of myself, curling them to brush up against my inner walls.

I have to admit that of all the things I ever took issue with on Ethan’s end, there was never any problem between us in the sex department when we were together. From the first time we had sex onward, everything was so hot. He had a real, natural talent, something I didn’t realize until my first time with someone else. Ethan had seemed really, truly interested in finding out what I liked, and instinctively good at making it happen.

I remember one of the last times we had sex. It had been at the cabin by the beach right before we left, and Ethan had whispered to me about something he’d wanted to try for weeks, something that he had been scared to ask me for, but everything had seemed possible in that little cabin. He’d grabbed one of my scarves from my suitcase and tied my hands over my head, and then, starting at my lips, slowly made his way down my body with his mouth.

I imagine him kissing a path down from my lips to my chest, and then stopping there for a while, fingering me steadily as he worships my breasts with his mouth. The water makes it easier to imagine as I tease myself with my fingers, and I try to keep just enough of me under the showerhead to keep from getting cold or dry as my imagination takes over.

I can feel the tension building between my hips, and as I’m working myself with my fingers I think of Ethan sinking down onto his knees and spreading my legs, burying his face against my pussy, not even caring about the water pouring down over his head. I shiver at the thought of him devouring me, sucking and licking my pleasure center and dipping down to where my fingers slide in and out of me faster and faster.

Almost before I know it, I’m crying out, the tension between my hips breaking all at once, and wave after wave of pleasure wash through my body, blotting out all thought of whether it’s even appropriate to think of my brother-in-law the way I am. I tremble a bit as I withdraw my fingers from my slippery body and rinse them off, and make myself finish the shower before the water has a chance to go cold.

By the time I tumble into bed, I can’t help thinking that it’s going to be even more complicated than I thought, the situation between me and Ethan, raising Riley together.