Sweet Water(85)

“I know your dear husband bought it for you. When it wasn’t even for sale.”

Fuck. The last part is the worst. His parents weren’t intending to sell. They were intending to leave it for him. And Martin bought them out.

“I swear he didn’t know about you.” What I mean to say is—“He doesn’t know that one of the reasons that house is so special to me is because you lived there and because of the memories we shared there together.”

“You never told him?” He inches closer. “About me?” My mind is going fuzzy, and my nose is tickling with allergies. This all feels like some kind of test, but it’s hard to remain present when all my senses are gravitating to the past.

“No,” I whisper.

A slow, satisfied smile spreads across his lips, because I’m sure he hasn’t told anyone about me either. Those dog days of summer were ours and ours alone, but the temperature is escalating in this storeroom too. I feel my cheeks flush and my body respond. He’s standing so close. His belt buckle brushes the waist of my pants, making a familiar yearning creep down the front of them.

A song comes on the store radio. There’s always music playing when we’re together. It’s our song. Of course it is. The universe hates me. The universe wants me to do bad things when I’m with him.

That first night. Those lyrics. Was I with Martin because I couldn’t find a better man? Or was it because I lost the one I thought I’d found?

Josh smiles at the opening beat. “Now lift up your shirt, Sarah,” he whispers.

I take a deep breath, and it’s all Josh’s scent—a crisp, woodsy, soapy scent with a hint of patchouli. No cologne for this guy.

“Okay.” I lift up my sweater. He looks at my body, and his face softens. He’s remembering me.

“Turn around, Sarah,” he whispers again.

And nothing is as intimate as it is with Joshua. The pool. The storeroom. The pergola. How many rooms of my life can he fill?

He whisks into my life to fill one space and then disappears again, lifting a burden as he goes, leaving another in its place.

I turn around, shaking a bit as I do, but there’s something stimulating about him ordering me to turn—for him. No wire: he must see that now. I’m an Ellsworth, but not that kind. Or at least I’m taking a step in the right direction—away from them.

Have I passed his test?

“Turn to face me again,” he says, and I do, still holding my shirt up over my lacy pink bra. He takes a step forward, and now we’re a nose apart.

He takes his hands and strokes my exposed sides, and I let him. His hands are roaming the entire underside of my shirt. I close my eyes and grip his neck and pull his mouth to mine, his kiss the most wonderful feeling in the world, so nice to feel needed for being me and not the perfect wife I’ve been pretending to be for someone else.

He backs me up into an old bookcase, our bodies synching like a perfect melody. It feels good to be held, desired, but I can’t let it happen this time. I can’t escape.

The weight of a dead girl’s life is not a burden Josh can lift.

It’s not a burden anyone can lift.

My fingers dig into the flesh of Josh’s back, and all I can think about are the half-moons on Finn’s neck. Was it from a struggle with Cash or Yazmin? These are answers I need to find out. Pictures I can’t unsee.

Like my dirty fingernails the day after I found Yazmin’s body. Dirt and decay and pieces of her.

I can never wash her away. My body quakes with an awful wave of deceit.

“Stop,” I gasp.

Josh doesn’t seem to hear me, and I have to give him a little shove at his shoulders for my resistance to register, especially since my body is disagreeing with my head.

“Josh, stop,” I say.

His eyes flicker open, and I know what’s happened. He was lost too, and it would’ve been easy to stay in that place of lost comfort, our bodies entwined, but that’s not our place anymore.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He blinks again and backs away from me. “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t trying to get me in trouble.”

“I think you’re the one trying to get me in trouble,” I say breathlessly.

“I shouldn’t have done that . . . I know you’re married. I didn’t even want to come back when I heard. You married him so early . . .”

“What?” It never dawned on me that Josh had even thought about me after he took off—twice—but obviously he had. “I’m taking some space to figure things out because of all this, Josh. I’m staying at my father’s. Martin wanted to handle things a lot differently than I did.”

“Right.” He’s pulling the door open and waving me out.

“Are you going to give me the name of your guy? I promise I won’t turn him in; I just want to talk to him.” It’s not that I think Josh’s dealer has all the answers, but if he can give me even an iota of a clue as to whether Yazmin laced those drugs or if she bought them that way, it will determine whether she and Cash did something to Finn to try to get money. It sounded like it from the journal, but Yazmin also mentioned letting him in on it, so then why drug him?

I need that last page.

“J—” He stops. “My guy won’t be able to tell you anything. He received an order; he filled it.”