Deflated, I sit on my heels, brushing my hands on my pants. I abruptly feel the ridiculousness of rummaging through a lumpy patch of dirt crusted with last year’s leaves while barefoot and sporting an almost-new white shirt. “Why’d you lean back so far?”
“Just following the rules.”
“The rules?”
“Your rules. No sex. Look away.” Diving one hand beneath his costume, which blazes like a disco ball under the direct sun, he readjusts himself with a sigh. “Ah. Better. The third-leg look is damn uncomfortable anywhere beyond a semi.”
I can’t help sneaking a peek as he rolls to his feet. His third leg is going strong, by the looks of it.
And his tail is ripped from ass to ankle, showing a heart-stopping length of heavily muscled leg leading to a devastating curve of cheek.
A cheek that is completely exposed, because he’s gone commando.
I slap a hand over my eyes. “We should go in. Get you washed off. Find you something… less comfortable.” I wave in the general direction of his assets.
“That sucks,” Tobin remarks, like he’s pulled a thread instead of tearing open an interdimensional space portal. “I was hoping to get more wear out of this.” One at a time, he slides his feet out of the fin, then swishes past me, footsteps reassuringly limp-free.
I follow him up the back stairs, eyes on the ground and only the ground.
“We can start over. Hang on while I…” The back doorknob rattles under his hand, at first softly, then much harder. “Um. Did you happen to leave the front door unlocked? By chance?”
I pull my hand away from where it’s massaging my forehead. “You said lock it.”
“I did. Thing is, we’re locked out. Can you handle it if I boost you through the window?”
His mom has a key. We gave her a copy last December, when we visited my parents in Arizona. But to get it, somebody has to knock on her door in full costume. Or, in Tobin’s case, what remains of half a costume.
It’s nothing but bad luck that I’m the one with intact clothing. Still, it feels like another back-of-house chore that naturally falls to me.
“I’ll go over to your mom’s,” I snap, stomping down the stairs. “Just… stand with your wardrobe malfunction against the house.”
“You might not want to go, considering.” He nods at my top.
A huge chunk of my shirt is gone. Right over my left boob. I follow Tobin’s gaze to where the missing fabric dangles from the locked door.
I tug the ragged edges; they’re nowhere close to meeting. Mybra is the sexy kind that doesn’t hide anything, and why did I choose that one again?
This feeling inside me isn’t good. I like things to run smoothly. I don’t like having to explain myself when screwups happen, so I don’t let them happen.
And maybe that’s part of why Tobin hasn’t stepped up around here—because I don’t step down. I haven’t left any room for him, like he didn’t leave room for me in the magic department. I remember pushing him out of the kitchen at our parties, saying, “This is my thing. You go do your thing.” Our guests needed someone captivating, and if I couldn’t be that, then I’d better take care of everything else.
But now that I’m gone, the door doesn’t squeak and the lock doesn’t stick and he single-handedly turned the living room into a fantasy suite.
We can solve this together. Weneedto solve this together. The scene, this disaster, our house, our marriage. All of it, together.
Climbing down from my high horse, I say, “How do we do the boost?”
The window didn’t look this high from inside.
Tobin follows me to the lawn. “Well, we—”
“Tobin?Liz?!”
I swivel my head in slow-motion horror.
Marijke peers over the diagonal wooden latticework adorning the top of our good-neighbor fence. “I heard a strange sound.”
“Mrs. Renner!” I croak. Tobin leaps to shield me with his body, his coconut-scented chest an inch from my face.
