Page 178 of What We Brave
My hands know what to do even when my brain doesn't. That's thething about routine — it holds you together when everything else is trying to shake you apart.
Some of Reid's shirts are mixed in with mine. I separate them by instinct. His are the ones with stupid graphics and stains he claims are "character." Mine are plain. Dark. Boring.
Boring. Yeah. That's the word.
Laine's purple sweater is in the load.
I stop. Hold it up.
It's her favorite. She wears it at least twice a week — I've noticed because I notice everything about her, which is either romantic or creepy depending on your perspective. It wasn't in my laundry by accident. I threw it in there yesterday while she was in the shower.
I wanted something of hers in my load.
You're a fucking mental case, Moore.
I fold the sweater carefully. Sleeves tucked, hem aligned. Set it on top of the pile like it belongs there.
Because it does. She belongs here.
If she comes back.
My phone sits face-up on the coffee table. No messages. I've checked four times in ten minutes, which is pathetic. I'm a thirty-seven-year-old man who has survived combat and I'm staring at a phone like a teenager waiting for prom.
Text her. Tell her — what? That you're losing your mind? That the house feels wrong without her in it? That you can still feel where her head rested on your chest and the absence of it is making you insane?
Real fucking smooth, Moore. That'll definitely bring her back.
I think about what Laine needs. Not what I need — what she needs. She needs space to think. She needs to know she's not trapped. She needs to know that whatever's waiting for her here isn't pressure or expectations or a man who'll fall apart if she takes a few hours.
Even though that man is exactly what you are right now.
I pick up the phone. Type and delete three messages. Finally settle on something that doesn't sound desperate.
Take the time you need. We're here.
Send.
I stare at the screen for another thirty seconds. Then I force myself to put the phone down and go back to the laundry.
Fold. Stack. Repeat.
She's fine. She's having breakfast. She's talking to Jamila. That's healthy. That's what people do.
People who are planning to come back.
Shut the fuck up.
I fold one of Reid's work shirts. Then another. Stack them the way he never bothers to — sleeves tucked, collar straight. He’ll shove everything in a drawer like a feral animal but I fold them anyway because that's what I do. I take care of the people I love in the small ways they never notice.
And the big ways they probably wish I wouldn't.
The thought lands wrong. Heavy. I push it away and reach for another shirt.
Two hours of Reid rattling around in the kitchen doing fuck knows what. The last load of folding's staring at me from the coffee table, but I'm just staring at the fucking wall.
I look at my phone.
Nothing.
