Page 1 of The Reason I Married Him
Prologue
WYATT
“You smell.”
I glance up from the couch where I’ve left a permanent imprint of myself after claiming squatter’s rights in my best friend’s house for the past three weeks. Yup, three weeks, I have no shame. “No, I don’t.”
“Yes . . . you do.” Laurel immaturely holds her shirt over her nose. “Really bad.”
“Fuck off. I smell fine.”
“Do you?” she asks. “You’re nose blind, completely oblivious to the smell surrounding you.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“Yes, it is,” she says as she holds her phone out to me, flashing the screen of a recent Google search. “It’s also known as olfactory fatigue, where you get used to your own odor. It decreases the perception of scents around you, leading to you being perfectly peachy in your musk while the people allowing you to stay on their couch choke to death.”
I lift up on my elbow and stare at my one true best friend I’ve known since grade school. “You’re being rude during my time of sorrow.”
“For God’s sake,” she says, tossing her arms up in defeat. “Wyatt, you know I feel bad for you. Cadance leaving you the night before your wedding will leave a permanent scar on your heart, and I’ve told you time and time again to please stay with me as long as you want. But, dude, you have to fucking shower. You have to scrub the armpits.” She mimics scrubbing her underarms. “And all the important hot spot crevices.”
“Those crevices aren’t in use at the moment,” I say.
“Exactly my point. Which means they’re festering.”
I wince in disgust. “Don’t say my crevices are festering. They’re not festering.”
“You have not bathed in a week. The festering has reached new levels of fester. Levels of mold growth and, once the mold can’t fester anymore, it festers into new mold growth, which then starts to fester. It’s a vicious cycle.” She motions over my body. “There’s so much festering that I’m truly afraid critters from the streets will think your crevices are holes they can start burrowing into as homes for winter.”
My eyes narrow. “That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?”
“Not one bit, not when I saw a raccoon sniffing around here the other day. What you think is dramatic will be a reality pretty soon if you don’t shower. Now get up so I can remove your couch sheets, burn them, and add new ones while you shower. And you need to wash, rinse, and repeat at least three times to get the skunk off you.”
“It’s not fucking skunk,” I say as I stand from the couch, feeling slightly weak from lack of nutrients and fresh air. Huh, maybe Laurel has a minor point. I won’t tell her that, though.
“Dear God, the couch has an imprint,” she says as she slips on a mask and rubber gloves.
“Is that necessary?” I ask her.
She nods. “If I had a hazmat suit, I’d be putting that on as well, but I’ll work with what I have.” She motions for me to go shower. “Everything is set up for you in the bathroom, even fresh clothes and a warm towel. Now go.”
Grumbling, I move through her bungalow-style house made for one lady—and not her annoyingly heartbroken best friend—into the vintage bathroom with the salmon and powder-blue tiles. She claims the tiles are a part of history. I say they could easily be removed and replaced with a fresher design that doesn’t make her seem like she’s a grandma hanging on to her youth.
I push back the frilly white shower curtain and turn on the water since it takes at least two minutes to warm. Then I turn around and look at myself in the mirror.
Whoa. Yikes.
Grown-out beard. Dark circles under my eyes. And is that . . .
I lean closer to get a better look.
Yup.
That is a melted chocolate chip on my face. I rub my index finger over the mark and bring it to my nose for a sniff. Yep. A melted chocolate chip. After all the festering and mold talk, I was nervous there for a moment that I’d sprouted something of the fungal descent.
I reach behind my head and pull my shirt up and over, only to drop the fabric to the mini-square-tiled floor. When I look at my chest in the mirror, I cringe. Sure, I’ve been here for three weeks, but that’s after spending three weeks alone in my apartment doing nothing but the bare minimum for my job—i.e., answering emails and casually making my way through some edits of a manuscript releasing next year. But the fact that I can already see my hard-earned workouts fading is an indication that maybe Laurel is right . . .
I lift my arm, and just for the hell of it, I give my armpit a sniff, only to be slapped in the face by a bag of moldy onions.
