Don’t Make Me Turn This Life Around Pagán, Camille (best novels for teenagers .txt) 📖

as I had when we’d been zipping over New Jersey in a deathmobile. Because as handsome as my husband was as he lounged in his shorts and T-shirt and two-day scruff, I realized that the sparkling wine was not the liquid courage I’d been hoping for. In fact, I was afraid to suggest that we head to the bedroom, lest he confirm that our chemistry really had gone missing. Then there was the issue of his idea of a hot date, which was a hundred and eighty degrees away from what actually would have made me feel better.

You’re making melanoma out of a mosquito bite, I told myself.

But was I? Or was the doom and gloom I’d mistaken for a cancer recurrence actually my intuition trying to tell me that my marriage, like my brother’s, was in the midst of unraveling?

SEVEN

“Hey—I’m sorry about last night.”

I’d just started cooking dinner when Shiloh joined me in the kitchen. He’d returned from a bike ride and was still dressed in the ratty T-shirt and athletic shorts he’d worn out; his skin was coated in the thinnest sheen of sweat, and his cheeks were pink. At any other time I would have thought he looked edible. Now I was afraid to even let myself get the tiniest bit tingly, knowing that I’d only be setting myself up for disappointment.

I glanced down at the pan I’d been using to sauté spinach before addressing him. “You can stop apologizing, you know. I’m not traumatized from the flight or anything.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t mean flying. I meant—you know.”

I glanced over my shoulder to make sure the girls weren’t nearby. “The non-bonking?” I said, resisting the urge to throw in the word again. This time, we hadn’t even tried—just crawled into bed beside each other and quickly kissed goodnight.

His face twisted up. “Yeah.”

I’d already decided not to ask him if he wasn’t attracted to me anymore, but the question kept inching its way toward my lips. Stop it, I commanded myself. Do not make him feel worse than he already does.

After a moment, he said, “I think that because things didn’t go well the last time we tried, I was feeling kind of . . . pressured.”

“Whoa,” I said, holding up my spatula in protest. “I deliberately didn’t bring this up so you wouldn’t feel pressured.”

“No, I get that,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean you did anything. It’s just . . . a guy thing, I guess.”

This seemed like a cop-out answer to me. “We don’t have to have sex, you know,” I said quietly. I thought of the couple I’d spotted outside the restaurant where I’d had lunch with Paul. “But I have to ask—when was the last time you had to kiss me?”

He frowned. “I kiss you all the time.”

Technically, this was true. But I wanted . . .

Well, I wanted us to go at it like we were the last two survivors of the apocalypse and it was up to us to repopulate the planet (never mind that given our ages, we were now statistically more likely to get hit by an asteroid than to have another child). But if I couldn’t have that, some super passionate kissing—the kind that’s so good that when you finally stop, your lips look like they’ve had a close encounter with a swarm of yellow jackets and your face is half-coated in saliva and you don’t even care—would be just the thing.

“I don’t want to argue,” I said. “I’m not upset about—you know. So we don’t have to talk about it again.”

He looked at me like he was trying to figure out what to say. After a moment, he sighed and said, “Fine.”

“What are you guys fighting about?” said Isa. She’d just wandered into the kitchen with a book in front of her face.

“Sweetie, I’ve asked you a hundred times not to walk and read at the same time,” I said. “You’re going to trip and hurt yourself.”

“Agreed, and your mother and I aren’t fighting,” said Shiloh. “We’re having a discussion. A private one.”

“If it quacks like a duck . . . but yeah, okay,” said Charlotte, who’d appeared behind Isa. “Mom, I’m starving. When’s dinner?”

“In ten,” I said. “Didn’t you have a protein bar an hour ago?”

“Those things are disgusting,” she said, making a face.

“Then you didn’t eat it?” I said with alarm.

“Relax, Mom.”

“Here we go again. ‘Let’s see your food log, Charlotte! Let’s check your sugar! Let’s watch another episode of the Charlotte show!’” said Isa, who was still behind her paperback.

“Isa,” warned Shiloh.

“You think I like this?” said Charlotte, glaring at her. When Isa didn’t respond, she knocked the book out of her hands.

“Hey!” yelled Isa as the book hit the tile with a thud. “You just made me lose my place!”

“That is enough,” I said, so sharply that I startled myself as much as I had the girls. “Your father and I were in the middle of discussing something.”

“How you’re divorcing?” said Isa, bending down to grab her novel.

She might as well have just kneed me in the gut. “Isabel Milagros Ross-Velasquez, what on earth would make you say something terrible like that?” I hissed.

She stood and shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Shiloh’s eyes flashed with anger. “If you don’t know then don’t say it.”

“You don’t have to hide it from us,” said Isa. “Everyone gets divorced nowadays. Like, look at Uncle Paul and Uncle Charlie.”

“Excuse me?” I said, staring at her. “How did you know that?”

Isa shrugged again and opened her book.

“Toby told us they were probably going to when we were over there for dinner,” said Charlotte, peering into the cupboard.

Now Isa piped up. “And probably means wait for it. Anyways, I just read, like, three books where the main characters’ parents divorce. It happens.” She looked back and forth at me and Shiloh.

“Yes, it does,” I said. “But not to me and your father.”

“Oh, I can tell,” said Isa.

“That’s enough,” said Shiloh.

“Let’s talk about something else, okay?” I said, eager to keep this from turning