Unkiss Me Read Online Free

in the distance attracts duck shooters; the hills are a haven for deer hunters. Everywhere you look, it seems, men are riding something—pursuing something. And you have to admire a place so harsh that even the slightest touch of hand to earth will produce chapped, bleeding fingers.
    Often, when you accompany the carpenter on visits to the business, you enjoy yourself in spite of your misgivings. The sky is a parade of sudden weather change: oyster-colored clouds give way to deep blue faster than you can put on a layer of sun screen. Star clusters you’ve forgotten about enchant you with their nightly show. Swimming in the mineral pool at dawn, you feel the power of these healing waters, the slick silicates and heat routing out the beginnings of arthritis; you begin to understand why folks used to ride up here on buckboard for a soak.
    You watch the carpenter as he strides along in his Red Wings and ball cap, the way he’s such an unlikely resort owner, and you get that he gets the irony. Here is a man, a self-described anti-consumer, who has bought himself the oddest piece of property in the state. Even though he ceases to call you by name when you’re out here—referring to you instead as Wife—you can’t help but be infected with his overflowing happiness. You have a tendency to throw care to the wind, out here. You drink too much, daydream too much, and tend to say, “Oh, what the heck,” every other minute. But what you don’t know now, what you don’t even suspect, is that your egg and the carpenter’s sperm have once again danced. In nine months, your family will expand to include a tiny version of the carpenter, right down to his bovine astrological sign.
    19.
    Bow Pose
    Ah, pregnancy! The distention, the disfiguration, the convexity of it all! When you had a normal life with your first husband, you wore smocks, sewed outfits, and watched the expansion with amazement and naiveté. Not this time. Maybe it isn’t your chaotic, nonlinear life so much as you are ten years older, and ten years more neurotic. You get every test, read every book, live on the internet, and have insomnia for the three weeks between amnio and results of amnio because the ultrasound technician noticed your fetus’s pinkie had a shorter than usual mid-section.
    Meanwhile, the carpenter’s need to be out at his “ranch” takes a giant step forward. As you worry yourself with the potential for any number of congenital anomalies, sudden maternal death, or even (since you were so lucky with the first two), a really ugly baby, the carpenter spends an increasing amount of time East of the Cascades. There is more of you each day, and less of him. Eventually, you develop pre-eclampsia, and receive a mandate to stay in bed. Bed rest they call it. Right! The carpenter, claiming not to be annoyed at having to forestall a trip to the ranch, yells at you because you won’t stay in bed. But does he make the kids’ lunches? Do the dishes? The laundry?
    On the designated day, you and the carpenter lumber up to labor and delivery. With your first boy, you had a long, arduous Demerol labor. With your girl you refused all intervention and medication and had a “prepared” childbirth. This time, you—like many older mothers who’ve done it and have no trust of the medical community, or a need to prove stoicism in the face of pain—feel the need to micromanage the entire experience. They can give you Pitocin, but at six centimeters or contractions two minutes apart, whichever comes first, you will have your epidural. Period.
    “Don’t I have a say?” asks the carpenter.
    You look at this man, your husband, the father of the child who is about to be propelled from your womb; you look at the question mark in his brow, the pleading in his voice, and laugh. For the first time in nine months.
    20.
    Fixed Firm Pose
    For several days after your baby is born, you are locked in place. You can’t tear your eyes from this miracle, this perfect