Fix You Read Online Free Page B

“Why do you need a lawyer?” he repeated his earlier question against the top of her head, her hair ruffling, the smell of his cologne overwhelming and semi-geriatric.
                  “To sue you for smelling like Grandpa’s medicine cabinet,” she said with a grimace and ducked from beneath his arm. “What the hell are you wearing?”
                  He sighed as she stepped away from him and put her back to the long, high-gloss table. Sunlight fell in through the windows as warm panels swimming with dust motes, picking up all the smudges on the wallpaper and the places where buttons and belt-buckles had scarred the front of the buffet. Beth had left a neat stack of folded clothes that needed mending in the chair nestled in the corner between the front wall and the china cabinet. Plastic zoo animals gave proof that Willa had been relocating her toys.
                  “Why do you need a lawyer?” Walt persisted, arms folding, mouth getting stuck at a stubborn angle on his big square face.
                  “You’re obnoxious,” she said and the way his brows plucked together told her he knew it.
                  “And you’re acting strange.”
                  Strange didn’t begin to cover what had happened in the past twenty-four hours. “Last time I checked,” she heard the bite to her voice and couldn’t seem to check it, “you specialize in drive-by life advice when it comes to your sisters. So let’s skip the heart-to-heart and you can give me your guy’s number.”
                  His expression went blank with shock. “Jesus. Who pissed all over your day?”
                  “I…” she sighed and her fingers went to her temple unbidden, a headache building behind her eyes. “Sorry. I’m just…”
                  Her eyes swept out through the windows and across the lawn to the silver Infiniti coupe that was pulling up at the curb.
                  Her hand fell away from her face and curled into a fist at her side. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
                  “What?” Walt’s head swiveled toward the window. “Jess - ”
                  But she was already moving, heels clipping as she hit the old scraped pine of the foyer. The only thing that soured her stomach worse than the sight of Dylan was the thought of him coming into the house. With her family. To think that he had the gall to bring their fight here, in front of her parents and siblings…
                  Or, even worse, the thought that he expected her not to fight with him in front of her parents and siblings…
                  Jess felt a white, hot, throbbing bolt of anger streak through her – the kind that made anger too small and too meaningless a word. Her fingers curled into claws as she let herself out the front door and started across the lawn at a march. Dylan was still disentangled his long legs from the floorboards of his penile-replacement car, the midafternoon breeze catching the short lengths of his dark hair, his black sport coat pulling away from the lean frame his white oxford showcased so well.
                  “Jess,” Walt said behind her.
                  And then Tyler’s call of “Daddy!” caught her breath for one horrifying second.
                  No , she thought, and even as she turned, Tyler dashed past her and toward his father.
                  Father .
                  She remembered the night they’d made him: the frost on the windowpane; the smell of sandalwood soap and the taste of too-expensive wine on his tongue; the way everything had clicked and the world had melted away for a few perfect, preserved minutes that still reminded her of the brush of silk sheets against her naked skin even now. That memory, all the memories like it, were tainted. She