The Plan (Off-Limits Romance, #4)(49)

This morning when I wake up with it in my head, I sit up, pull my phone off the bedside table, and Google it.

I rub my eyes, yawning as I peer down at my phone.

Christopher Moltisanti: “You ever felt like nothin’ good was ever gonna happen to you?”

Paulie ‘Walnuts’ Gualtieri: “Yeah. And nothin’ did. So what?”

Christopher Moltisanti: “That’s it. I don’t wanna just survive. It says in these movie-writing books that every character has an arc. Understand?”

Paulie ‘Walnuts’ Gualtieri: [Shakes head]

Christopher Moltisanti: “Like everybody starts out somewhere. And they do something, something gets done to them, and it changes their life. That’s called an arc. Where’s my arc?”

I can’t stop laughing as I listen to Marley get ready for work. Fucking Dave. Why the hell did he cut the bit off where he did? What kind of nihilism from the son of lawyers, raised on a fucking farm in Kansas?

I chuckle all morning and think of emailing him. Instead, I end up thinking about the Sopranos, which prompts an idea…and suddenly I’ve got 6,000 words on something new. I work until I hear Mar getting home for lunch, and then I walk upstairs, bearing another jug of cider for her fridge. Marley answers naked, and I fuck her on the couch, pulling her ponytail, and then I walk her down to her car.

In the afternoon, I write some more, and go for a long run.

The next two days are much the same. I realized how to make her smile. I do that when I can, and other times, I try to keep things casual. In the evening of the second day, I bring her legal papers, which she signs.

I fuck her good and hard, and when she asks me to stay for a beer, I tell her that I’m writing. Mar seems happy for me.

When I go downstairs, though, I don’t write. I jerk off twice and wait for it to be morning, and then at lunch I fuck her, and then in the evening.

Being inside her is incredible. I start to get hard at the first whiff of cinnamon—because she has a cinnamon broom hanging near her front door.

One night, I tell her, “You’re getting me hard in the fucking grocery store with this.” (They have those brooms there, near the registers).

Marley thinks that’s really funny.

When I’m not with her, I’m either jerking off or listening to her walk around. If I can stay in Marley mode, I almost never feel the yawn of darkness. After a night of the A.I. dream on repeat, I gather all my pictures of Geneva and stash them in a drawer. Just for a few days. She wouldn’t mind that, would she? I tell myself “no.”

The next day, I decide she would, so I pull them back out. I only look at them when Marley’s home, though. It feels less lonely that way.

I don’t feel like running anymore, for some reason, so I stop that. I try to take Cora on a walk in the morning, and that feels like enough.

It’s so cold outside. So gray. That night, I can’t sleep, even when I leave my windows open and jerk off until my eyelids sag.

I start trying to avoid my thoughts of Gen, and even take her pictures down again. Still, my stomach aches, and I feel weird and weighted. Restless.

So I live for fucking Marley.

One, two, three more days of fucking Marley. On a Saturday night, after we finish, I lie there for a few minutes on my back, Mar lying beside me with her cheek propped in her hand.

“Tell me something,” she says softly.

I look over at her. “What?”

“I don’t know. Just anything. We’ve got the fuck, I guess I kinda want the buddy part.”

That makes me smile. Which makes her smile.

“You tell me something.”

“Okay,” she murmurs.

I shut my eyes, sifting through the dozens of questions I have for her. I pick one, then shift onto my side so I can see her when I ask.

“Do you still believe in the irony factor?”

I watch her face transform from blank to amused to rueful. “No,” she shakes her head. “What was that?”

“A blight on my mental health,” I laugh. “You used to say that the most ironic time for something to happen was the time it was most likely to happen. I’ve been scared of dying on my birthday ever since. I paid a car off once and didn’t drive it all that week.”

She laughs. “A wreck… Ha. I remember that, the irony factor.”

I jut my eyebrows up accusingly, and Marley giggles. “That’s not a real thing, obviously. It’s a news phenomenon.”

“What do you mean?”

She twirls a strand of her dark hair between her fingers. “Well, ironic things seem common because we hear about them. The story of the man who crashed his car on his birthday is going to make the news, where the story of the man who crashed his car on a boring Tuesday on his regular commute isn’t.”

I smile, shaking my head to needle her.

“Do you still spread the dirty plates and glasses all over the counter instead of piling them up in the sink?” She shoots me her own pointed look.

I smile at that, and shake my head.

“You thought if you put them in the sink, they’d get moldy.”

“I was a stupid kid.” I shrug the shoulder I’m not propped up on.

Marley’s face is bright and curious, as if we’re reminiscing good old times and not our failed marriage. “Do you still have to have the lights just right when you work?” she asks.