It was a woman. And at her hip was a young boy, maybe two years old.
She was about my age. The first rays of morning sunlight were coming over the plains, illuminating one side of her face and her freshly-straightened hair. She was beautiful, like she belonged on a TV show. And she was staring right at me.
I was wearing no clothes whatsoever. Neither was Bryce. Morning sunlight was falling on his bare, gym-toned butt.
The woman screamed.
"You have got to be kidding me!" she yelled through the window. "Are you kidding me?"
She stomped across the porch and threw open the front door, oblivious that anyone was asleep in the house. Or she just didn't care.
Bryce looked at her, groaned, then let his face fall onto the sofa pillow.
The woman stormed toward us.
"Seriously?!" she screamed, even louder than before.
The boy in her arms looked like he was on the verge of crying, but his face was frozen.
I scrambled to wrap the sheet around my shoulders, which left Bryce uncovered.
He tugged on his pants, taking his time to zip them. He left his belt unfastened.
"Lindsay," was all he said.
The woman was wearing a wedding band and a huge engagement ring.
Now it was my turn to yell at Bryce. "Are you kidding me?" I screamed.
Everyone in the house had to be up by now anyway.
Bryce looked at me, defeated. He shrugged.
"Yeah," the woman yelled at me. "I'm his wife. He's frigging married. With—" she gestured silently at the boy in her arms, who was obviously Bryce's son. She smiled acerbically. "Surprised? I bet."
"Lindsay," Bryce repeated.
It was like he was capable only of repeating his wife's name. He just sat back in the couch, shirtless, with a surprisingly unapologetic expression.
"I came all the way out here looking for you," Lindsay screamed, nodding indignantly. "And then the cops tell me I can't leave town? I spend a week in a crappy motel, finally track you down, thinking these frigging Nazi robocops are after you, and here you are with—" she shook her head, finally whispering as she pointed at me, "her?"
"The phones were down." Bryce stared at his wife with a strange confidence. "I tried to call. I couldn't."
Lindsay just stared at him, speechless, shocked at this response. Finally his son started to cry.
Bryce looked slowly from Lindsay to me. Again, he just shrugged.
I slapped him. I slapped him really hard. I cuffed him across the jaw with the full weight of my arm. I couldn't believe how he was acting. I didn't even recognize him as the Bryce I'd known.
For a brief moment he looked at me with an expression of shame and contrition.
"I just—" he began, but he couldn't complete his sentence.
Suddenly, I understood what was happening. . .
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