Even on a day when your head pounds like a salmon thrown too soon in a cooler. He sipped the glass of water he’d left on Caroline’s bedside table, took some deep breaths, focused on a distant spot. “I hate brandy,” Caroline muttered in the dark. “Agh, don’t say it.” He lay back, having no other choice given he was too dizzy to stand and too uncomfortable to sit. Caroline backed her naked body against him, and said, “Are you up?” “I’m done sleeping, if that’s what you mean.” She rolled and the silky warmth of her inner thigh was across him. “You know what I mean.” Afterward, they lay together and watched the warming sky out Caroline’s bedside window. It would be casting-light in another fifteen minutes. “Do you think Annie is having a good time?” he whispered. For a long moment Caroline said nothing, and just when he thought she might have slipped back into sleep, she whispered, “She wants you in her life.” To Caroline, that meant everything. “I don’t want to blow it.”
