Sin With Me

36

I wonder if this is what Neil Armstrong felt like when he first stepped onto the moon. I feel slaphappy. I feel invincible. I feel like doing a crazy dance around the room, all because I helped, in some small way, to make her feel better.

I grab the water bottle on the nightstand and hand it to her. After she drinks half of it down, I ask, “How do you feel? You tied one on pretty good last night.”

She thinks for a moment, squinting her eyes. “You’re only a little bit fuzzy around the edges.”

“Are you hungry? I could make eggs.”

Her face turns faintly green.

“Right. No eggs. Drink more water.”

She obeys without hesitation, something that makes me feel like pounding my chest again.

I’ve seen sexy Grace, and fierce Grace, and confident, sophisticated Grace, but I’ve never seen obedient Grace.

I could get used to obedient Grace.

A startlingly vivid image of her, naked, bound at her wrists and ankles on my bed, pops into my mind. I achieve an instant erection.

Even when distraught, this woman makes me produce testosterone by the gallon. Think of something else, dickhead! Baseball. Baseball. Base—

I’m hit with inspiration. “You know what we need?”

“What?”

“We need to go to church.”

Grace stares at me as if I’ve just told her she has terminal cancer. “No. We definitely don’t.”

I arch a brow. “Not a big churchgoer, huh?”

She says emphatically, “No. Are you?”

I shrug. “Used to be when I was a kid. My parents went every Sunday, dragged me along. But not anymore. God and me . . . we have our differences.”

She c***s her head and considers me. “You can’t dangle such a juicy morsel out there like that and expect me not to bite.”

Our fingers are threaded together. I don’t know when that happened. “I . . . I was in an accident once, a long time ago. It pretty much changed the way I looked at everything else afterward.”

Grace falls still. “An accident?”

I nod.

“Was it bad?”

After a moment of letting my stomach settle from the onslaught of memories, I say quietly, “The worst kind of bad there is.”

We stare at each other. Finally she whispers, “I was in an accident, too.”

I’m not sure if I should tell her I already know, but decide to keep it to myself. “Was it bad?”

“The worst kind of bad there is.”

I stroke a stray lock of hair off her cheek. “Is that what the memory problems are from?”

She nods.

“And the nightmares?”

Her eyes briefly close. Then she nods again.

“I had them for years, too.”

Her eyes widen. “Really? Do you still have them?”

“Hardly ever anymore. I found something that really helps.”

Astonished, she blinks. “What is it?”

When I say, “Church,” she visibly deflates.

I reassuringly squeeze her hands. “No, Grace. This isn’t like any kind of church you’ve ever been to before. This is the kind of church where you really can see God.”

She says sarcastically, “Yeah, I’m sure that’s what Jim Jones told everyone before they moved to Jonestown. Next you’ll be asking me to drink poisoned Kool-Aid.”

I stand, gently pulling her up with me. When she’s on her feet I ask, “Do you know how to swim?”

She stares at me for a long time. “You’re a very strange person.”

I grin. “But super hot, right? I can tell you’re totally trying not to jump my bones because I’m so unbearably hot.”

“Oh, totally.” She looks at the ceiling and shakes her head.

Then I tuck her arm under mine and lead her toward salvation.

I’m digging through boxes in the garage, muttering to myself in frustration, when from behind me Grace says, “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

“I can’t find it!” I tear through yet another cardboard box of clothes. Still not finding what I want, I lift my head and shout at the top of my lungs, “Magda!”

“The plot thickens,” muses Grace with a chuckle. “Is Magda your imaginary friend?”

“Ugh!” I throw down an armful of clothes in disgust. Why do I have so many still-packed clothes? More to the point, why do I have so many clothes in the first place?

Oh right. Because I’m a clothes w***e. Hoarding clothes is what we do.

I stalk across the garage to the intercom on the wall next to the door that leads inside. I stab my finger on the round black button. “Magda! I need you in the garage!”

A loud crackle of static answers back.

“Magda! Magda!”

The crackle clears. A rough female voice answers with a flat “Si.”

Because I know her so well, I know the interpretation of those two letters is basically “What the f**k do you want now, you spoiled, annoying, helpless child.”

I adore Magda, but I swear the woman makes the Grinch look like Mother Teresa.

I say into the intercom, “Where’s the box with the extra wetsuits?”

Grace says in surprise, “Wetsuits?”

Magda’s sigh sounds like she’s been waiting for a thousand years for the mother ship to come back to earth and rescue her from all the morons on this planet. Then there’s nothing but more static. She disconnected.

“Fuck.” I turn to Grace. “Well, I guess you can just wear mine and I’ll wear the spring suit—”

The garage door swings open with an ominous creak of metal hinges.