The Guest Bathroom

I almost turned the car around twice on the way over, sitting at the light on Hollis Ave with my blinker going and my coffee going cold in the cupholder, wondering how in the hell I'd let a man I've known for ten years talk me into pretending to buy his house. I'm Shae, I'm 28 years old, I'm a welder, I own one nice jacket, and the plan was for me to walk into an open house and say words like "charming" and "the light is just so good in here" until some realtor believed I had money I don't have. Ethan swore it wasn't weird, that open houses look better with bodies in them, that Nancy the realtor had known his family forever and would think buyers were crawling out of the woodwork, and I believed him, because I always believe him, which is probably a problem I should look at someday.

His house sat there looking like a magazine, that mid-century thing with the flat roof and the big windows and the yard full of gravel and sculpted weeds that probably cost him four grand, and I parked behind a Prius on the street and sat there a second gathering up my dignity. I'm from a family where the nicest room in the house was the one nobody was allowed in, so the whole idea of a house as a product, something you dress up and show around, sat in my chest like a pebble in a boot. But I got out, because I said I would, and Ethan doesn't ask me for much.

Nancy met me at the door before I could even knock, a tidy woman around 47 with a blazer and a lanyard and a smile that was mostly teeth, and she said, "Well hello, come on in, welcome," like we were old friends from church. She had a folder under her arm and a little battery-operated fan clipped to her collar, warm Saturday afternoon, the house smelling faintly of cookies somebody had baked for atmosphere, and she steered me into the living room with a hand on my elbow.

Ethan stood by the big window doing his best impression of a stranger, which was terrible. He's 29, built like a guy who rides a bike everywhere, and he was wearing a shirt I've seen him in a hundred times and holding a coffee he wasn't drinking, and when Nancy said, "Ethan, this is our other guest," he stuck his hand out and said, "Hi, nice place," and then looked panicked, because he does in fact own the place.

I decided to save him. I stepped past him toward the shelves and said, "God, look at these lines, I mean, the way the ceiling just floats, do you see that," and Nancy made an approving noise and started in on a speech about the neighborhood coming up, young professionals, values rising, all of it. I kept going, narrating my fake appreciation out loud because I don't do anything halfway, the clerestory windows, the terrazzo floors, the way the hallway just sort of unwinds toward the back of the house, and honestly, once I got rolling I kind of meant some of it, because it's a good house, he designed the remodel himself and it shows.

The master bath was the whole reason Nancy had glowed at me the way she did, because it's absurd, a soaking tub big enough for two of me, heated floors, a skylight pouring afternoon down onto everything like the room was built around it. "Take your time in there," Nancy said, checking her phone, "I'm going to step out to the porch and make some calls, you two just, take your time," and she said the last part with a little wink at me that I chose not to think about, and then it was just me and the tub and the quiet.

I did the responsible pretend-buyer thing first, ran my hand along the tub, tapped the tile, looked up into the skylight and said wow, out loud, to nobody. Then I got bored, because I get bored fast, and there was a vanity drawer sitting half open like it was asking, and I pulled it the rest of the way.

There was a lavender silicone vibrator sitting in there between a roll of electrical tape and a bag of bar fixtures.

Not a small one, either. Smooth, matte, a nice heft to it, the kind you can tell cost real money, and I picked it up mostly just to confirm it was what it was, turning it over in my fingers under the skylight, thinking, huh, he doesn't strike me as the electrical tape type either, when I heard the floor creak behind me and Ethan's voice saying, "Hey, sorry, do you have the, oh!"

He had come in to check on me, or to escape Nancy, and he was standing in the doorway with his coffee, and I was standing there holding his vibrator, and neither of us moved for a beat that lasted about a year.

"That's," he said.

"I didn't," I said.

We both stopped again. My face was doing something I couldn't control and I could feel it, heat crawling up my neck, and he set the coffee down on the tub deck very slowly, like the situation might spook.

"Okay," he said finally, "so that's mine."

"Is it."

"Yes. It is. God!" He dragged a hand down his face. "That is not where I thought that was."

"So you do know where it usually is," I said, and he gave me a look that said please don't, and I grinned, because one of us had to be an adult about it and it clearly wasn't going to be him. "Ethan, it's lavender."

"It's a nice color."

"It's lavender and it's in your junk drawer next to electrical tape. What happened, did a date leave it here and you've just been, what, dusting around it for a year?"

He leaned against the doorframe and blew out a breath, and I watched him decide to be honest, which took him a second. "No. It's mine. It's from back in the spring, there was a date, she stayed over, and I put it in the drawer to deal with later, and then the listing happened and I packed the bedroom up and the drawer just, stayed." He shrugged, miserable. "I forgot it existed until right now, standing here, watching you hold it."

"I can put it down."

"Please put it down!"

I set it on the counter, gently, like it was an artifact, and we both stood