Jordan’s ten years with Colette had been a cacophony of ‘no’s’.
“No, don’t come to bed after ten. It wakes me up and I can’t fall back asleep. Don’t get in my bed without a shower. Don’t get in my bed wet. No naps, either. You know what? The couch is fine for you, isn’t it?”
“No more tattoos. They’re trashy.”
“No, we’re not getting a bigger truck because no, you’re not getting a camper. I don’t want a camper outside my house. That’s trashy.”
“No, I hate that music. I hate that music, too. I just hate music. All music.”
“No, we’re not getting a dog. No, not a cat, either. A chicken? Are you fucking kidding me? Where the hell are we gonna put a goddamn chicken?!?”
“No work clothes in the house. No tools, either. I hate your clothes—you dress like a homeless man.”
“No campfires. Ew, I can smell it on you for days.”
“No kippers in the house. Ew, no kippers at work either. No kippers ever. I can smell them before you even eat them, and it makes me want to vomit.”
So when he came to her with this idea, he had little faith that she would say yes.
The boys were in the living room with a cartoon, and Colette was at the dining room table with her laptop. Jordan sat down.
She looked up from her work with a sneer. “What?”
“I want to take the boys on a backpacking trip,” Jordan said. “Banff, it’s in Canada. It’s a two-day drive.”
Go big or go home.
He held his breath.
“So you’re not working?” Colette asked. “Is she paying you for all this time off?”
“She is, actually.”
“Huh.” Then he saw the wheels of her brain turning, doing the math. An ask this big would cost him. Did he want to pay the price? After some consideration, Colette let out a patronizing chuckle, “Well, good luck with that.”
She didn’t say no. He was surprised, but also not.
Maybe she didn’t believe he would actually do it. Or maybe she’d hold it against him as ammunition. She did this sometimes. When she knew her razor sharp attitude had run away from her for too long, she offered a little peace treaty, as if to say, Remember that time I let you take the boys backpacking in Canada? Remember that? And she would remind him of that small grace for the rest of his life.
But he intended to take this grace, and he would run with it.
———
The boys needed no convincing. They minded their father, fetching this and that from whatever corner of the house, making a monstrous pile by the door. Then, before she could complain about it, both the pile and the boys were gone in a blitz, leaving only the movie they hadn’t been watching with its credits rolling.
With the boys out of her hair for two weeks, Colette felt adrift. Since they were on their own vacation, she thought she should treat herself to a few days off as well.
The first few hours, the first whole day, she reveled in the novelty of having only herself to worry about. She day-drank a whole bottle of rosé while watching HGTV in her bathrobe.
He was mad. He’d been mad for months. Why? She didn’t know, she didn’t ask, and she wasn’t sure she really cared. Mad was what they did with each other. But what Colette knew was that they never really broke up because they were never exactly together, which meant they never needed to make up because they never broke up in the first place. He would get over it, eventually. And maybe this time away would help.
Maybe she even owed him this little favor because he always wanted to be a scout dad. “No, that’s stupid. They don’t need that,” she’d said. She wanted the boys in academic triathlon instead. What good is learning to make a campfire as opposed to world diplomacy? High school was coming for them faster than they realized. You get on the wrong track, and your prospects were sunk. Colette knew better than anyone how one wrong choice in your youth could destroy all your hopes and dreams.
But sure, go light campfires in the wilderness for a couple of weeks, if you must.
You have to throw the dog a bone sometimes.
Colette stayed up late, binging crime dramas. With no chance of little boys barging into her room, she slept naked in her bed long into the morning. Then she took herself out for lunch at the kind of place you couldn’t bring nine-year-olds.
Not that she didn’t worry. She questioned Jordan’s parenting skills. She sent them off with a notebook of rules and phone numbers, and she was sure they’d already tucked it under the front seat of the truck where it would stay until the day they returned. Would the boys come back bruised and burnt and eaten alive by who knows what creatures? Would they catch rashes and intestinal parasites from drinking river water? The hiking, the falls, the wildfires, the hot springs full of boiling acid that dumb souls have ventured too close to and took their last bath. She doubted whether Jordan had ever even seen those news stories.
“I’m not an idiot,” Jordan promised. But, huh, she’d be the judge of that when he brought those boys back in one piece.
To be honest, she hated taking time off. She was bored and irritated and could never really relax. So she went back to work.
———
Lakefront real estate. Colette didn’t particularly love the water, but any home with prestige around here was situated on the deep blue shimmer of Lake Michigan.
Colette showed her clients around the most beautiful homes. She envied them. Nothing unrealistic even, but solid upper middle class, attached garages and granite counters and three and a half bathrooms. A home office with windows, and a desk that wasn’t also a dining room table…
Her heart broke a little every time she closed on one, thinking of the life she would never have and selling it to other people instead.
A kitchen with wide views, countertop to the ceiling. Not that Colette ever cooked, but she knew buyers liked the idea of gazing out at a spectacular landscape while washing their hands.
“Eh,” her client said. “There’s no formal dining room? We’re supposed to eat in the kitchen?”
“But wouldn’t you die for this bathroom?”
Her client smirked. “The window is so small, you can hardly see the view.”
“A walk-out balcony off the master bedroom? Out here, you can definitely see the view.”
“I don’t much care for being outside,” her client said.
Well, no, I don’t, either, Colette though, but that’s not the point. It’s the prestige. It’s the idea of luxury.
“I would have preferred a walk-in closet instead.”
“Okay, but just wait.” Colette led her downstairs. “This is the best room in the house. A two-story sunroom. Designer furnishings, and the seller is willing to part with them if you want to negotiate.”
“Huh, it’s a little small,” the woman scoffed. “And you can only see the lake in one direction?”
A room Colette would have died for, anyone would have died for!
“Well, for this budget, it’s the best on the market,” Colette said.
“Budget?” The woman laughed, offended. “You don’t know how much money I have.”
Colette was mortified inside. Not that she would ever show it, only revealing her bristly exterior. “I wasn’t implying anything,” she said. Even if, honestly, she had been assuming a lot based on the soccer-mom look and the ten-year-old minivan she drove in on.
“Huh,” the client scoffed. “It’s a no from me.” She took out her phone, tap-tapping some things she didn’t disclose. “I’ll call you,” she said, but Colette knew there would be no call. This woman would seek out another agent and she’d lost her commission.
Damn. She should have held her tongue, but her tongue had a zesty way of jumping straight out of her mouth sometimes.
Colette stayed to do a once-over one more time. She ran her fingers over the granite counter tops and designer fabrics and polished expansive windows. In the living room, she scanned the room for cameras—people had cameras everywhere these days—and seeing none, she took off her heels and lay down on the white plush rug, staring up at a vaulted ceiling, wooden beams, two skylights overhead with an ornate hand-carved wooden fan hung between them. The rug was so thick, its length tickled her neck, her ears, her bare naked feet.
God, to be fucked senseless on this rug, in this room, in this life.
No, she was not about to rub out a quickie. She thought about it, mindful that another agent might walk in at any time, which wasn’t entirely a turn-off, but it also wasn’t worth losing her license over.
She thought about it, but she didn’t. Besides, the orgasm wouldn’t even be worth it if the rug wasn’t hers to keep.
She could wear the clothes and talk the talk, but at the end of the day, she still came home in her own ten-year-old SUV to her modest two bedroom townhouse on the side of town she billed “affordable, charming, the schools aren’t that bad…”
It could have been their life if Jordan wanted to play along.
She did so much for him, taking care of his problems over the years. She’d do even more if he would let her. They could really make something out of this family, if he wanted to cooperate. If he wasn’t so dead set on disagreeing with everything she wanted. He was just a handyman, but she wasn’t a total snob. She knew contractors could make big cash if they hustled right. They could have been a power couple, if he wanted it. They really could have made something together. A real estate business, flipping houses maybe. She’d wrangle the sale and he’d manage the contracting.
“I help,” he might say.
She picked out a wallpaper and he put it on the wall. He installed the oil rubbed bronze touchless smart faucet she envied and finally bought for herself, but he gave her the side eye while he did it. “Why does it have a handle if you never have to touch it?”
So he helped? Sure, he helped. But could he stop working for that stupid hotel and get a salary gig with a construction firm and make twice as much money a year, which couldn’t be hard to do making hardly above minimum wage?
“I don’t want more money,” he’d say.
“If you say, ‘money can’t buy happiness,’ I’m gonna kick you in the nuts,” was her answer.
Then he would laugh at her like she was joking, but she was not a humorous woman.
For all his talk about chasing dreams, he never cared about helping her chase hers either.
So she drove home from work in her ten-year-old SUV to her two-bedroom townhome in the suburbs, and she stopped to buy a strip of scratch tickets on the way.
She knew it was financially stupid, but part of her always wondered, what if?
——— ——— ———
author’s note: bonus points for actually asking her for a chicken though, right? 😂🤣😂
Sorry for the delay getting posts up here on Blogger, if anyone is still reading this thing. I've still been writing this story over on Tumblr, and it seems I've amassed a giant backlog to cross-post over here. Oops! I hope to catch it all up soon! 😬
lot credits: “Modern Family Home” by LacyLena on the gallery — gorgeous! I wonder if Colette will ever get to own a home like this someday???
gameplay notes:
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