“Of course, Stone. I’m happy to help if it’ll make you feel a little better. I can tell how stressed you are about everything. So anything I can do, I’m more than willing.” He looks around the garage. “Where should we start?”

I grab us each a beer out of the mini fridge, turn on some music, and we get started. We each take a corner, going through shit, item by item. We make a donate pile, a dump run pile, and a keep pile. He finds some pictures of me from when I was a kid, so we spend time looking through those, and I tell him stories about some of them.

It’s after one in the morning by the time we call it quits. We’ve gone through I’d say about three quarters of everything in here, but I can easily finish it another day. We’ve spent the last hour shamelessly teasing and flirting with each other, getting riled up to the point of combustion. We haven’t touched one another at all since he first arrived, but the flirting and the eye contact has been tumultuous.

When he came over, I had zero intention of inviting him inside, because in theory, it’s a terrible fucking idea. Who brings their boyfriend into their house when their wife is asleep? That’s asking for trouble. Also, that’s the first time I’ve ever referred to him as my boyfriend, in my own head or not, and I like the sound of it way more than I should. I’m smiling like a fucking idiot before I can catch myself and he sees me.

“What’s got you smiling like that, teach?” He saunters over to me, stopping when he’s at arm’s length.

“You,” I admit unabashedly. “Come on. I want to show you something.”

I walk toward the door that leads inside the house and notice he isn’t following me. Glancing over my shoulder, he’s giving me a perturbed look. “Uh, you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Yes, it’s fine. She’s fast asleep. She took a sleeping pill before bed. Plus, where I’m showing you, she never goes.”

Still looking wary, he follows me into the house. We leave our shoes in the garage, right by the door. The garage door opens into our kitchen, so I take him through that and down the hall until we get to a door at the end on the left-hand side. We had the in-home gym built about five years ago for me. I use it almost daily. But when we originally drew up the idea, Aida wanted a yoga studio built into the gym because she was insistent on learning yoga.