I said, I forgot to change the filters on the air conditioner.

I forgot to change the filters on the air conditioner. My eyelids flutter closed, his touch stirring up a tingling that says I’ll likely be late for work. The seven-year itch, my girlfriends call it, and I can barely imagine such a thing, because today-seven years and a day-Will’s hand glides across my skin, and the only itch I feel is for him. I will stain my cheeks and gloss my lips for nameless, faceless strangers who are not my husband, and I will imagine them touching me in places only a husband should have access to. Any day now, they tell me, familiarity will fizzle my fire, and I will suddenly start noticing other men. My girlfriends assure me this won’t last forever, this connection I feel with my own husband. Every time they roll off his tongue they hit me like a promise. These are the words we’ve chosen instead of the more standard I love you, and to me they mean so much more. You are my very favorite person on the planet, he murmurs in my ear, and I smile. These are the moments that I cherish the most, moments when our hearts and breaths are in sync. Will is sticky and damp from sleep, but I don’t care. We lie here for a while in comfortable silence, his arm snug around my middle, his chin in the crook of my shoulder. His fingers glide up my side, his hand pulling me even closer. I think all my extremities have frostbite.Ĭome here. It’s because you insist on sleeping in an igloo. His internal thermostat is always set to blazing. Meteorologists predict at least another week of this shivering, and Will is the only soul in Atlanta who welcomes the cold by throwing the windows wide. For the past three days, leaden skies have been dumping rain, and a frigid wind has plummeted temperatures far below average. It’s barely April, and March hasn’t quite loosened its icy hold.

Were they hanging off the side of the bed or something? On the other side of our bedroom curtains it’s not quite morning, that violet-tinged moment between night and day, still a good half hour or so before the alarm. His voice rumbles in the darkened room, the sounds vibrating through me. This morning it’s my feet, and I wedge them between two warm calves. Will is a furnace when he sleeps, and I’ve always got some place on me that’s cold. I sigh and settle into my husband’s familiar form, fitting my backside into his front, soaking in his warmth. I awaken when a hand winds around my waist, pulling me head to heel against skin heated from sleep.

The marriage lie novel