Chapter 17: 17

“It was nothing.”

“Sit, she won’t be long, and you know what she’s like. She prefers serving us rather than us helping ourselves.” He frowns towards her in the kitchen, a hint of disapproval. Her back is turned, and she’s happily clattering cookware and humming to herself like a content little cat. Blissfully happy in her self-

made role.

I mean, it’s not like he is all she has, and this is the life he even wants for her. Half of me wonders if it’s why he still hasn’t asked her to move in with him here. So he can still have his own space, his own man cave and do things like cook when he wants or play Xbox and leave his dishes in the sink overnight, without her interference.

Natasha is anal about neatness and things having proper places. She also has ideas on how he should behave, with him being so well-known and carrying responsibility. She’s the reason his Xbox moved to the study, and he had to buy an extra couch so we could play it in there. It doesn’t fit the picture of mature she has in her head for them as a couple. It doesn’t fit the picture she has of how he should be, and I wish she would just leave him alone to be himself. Arrick has layers, like anyone, and he’s happiest if you let him be to do his thing.

I watch her too, as I walk around the table to where Arrick pulls a chair out for me so that I’m facing her.

This is where I always sit, it’s like it has an invisible ‘reserved for Sophie’ on this seat and here I get to stare painfully at that little curly brown head and ponder it for a moment.

Natasha has possibilities in life; she’s not exactly ugly or stupid. She’s a nurse for God’s sake. She works in a hospital, so that must have at least been hard to become one. The sad thing is I really do see her being happy with just this; a domestic role in his life, being the little wife and popping out a ton of kids. I know it’s a life Emma is happy with, but at least she has her work too.

Emma kept her career in the children’s charity she runs, even with motherhood. She still coaches sessions for damaged kids and counsels so many when she’s not being a domestic goddess. And Emma at least likes when Jake cooks or helps or even just lets the housekeepers do it.

My sister Leila runs her own little ladies club, a cocktail bar in the Hamptons and can sashay and sway her ass around like businesswoman of the year. Her husband Daniel fully supports it because she loves it. Swanky ladies club for all the women who want to be more than just moms and has her finger in so many small business pots in the area.

Sylvana, Arry’s mom, oversees a massive child abuse charity and my own mom is a respected private doctor. She has never given up work, even when raising her kids. All of them are happy being more than the expected.

I watch Natasha and know that she wouldn’t. She isn’t like us, growing up with wealth and help and the norm of having staff who can free up your life so you can do more. I can’t imagine her being happy having any sort of house help or expectancy to keep working when she settles down with kids. I can’t imagine Arrick really being able to deal with a wife who wants him home all the time and expects to let her stay there to just be his little woman. He still has his own life, his fight career, friends, and his role in Carrero Corp.

Arrick likes his weekends of spontaneous wildness too. The trips we sometimes take to do fun stuff, like Jet skiing at his dad’s yacht in the Caribbean, skiing in the mountains or snorkeling in Barbados. I know it’s no coincidence that the trips became less frequent after he met her; she has her job, her responsibilities at the hospital, and drags him back to a boringly normal life of work and future planning.

Natasha isn’t as fearless as him, she doesn’t like sports, she prefers to be here, a real homebody.

The only good thing I can see about her, to be honest, is that she isn’t a gold digger. She could have been, I suppose, with his money. But she isn’t and has never asked him for anything in way of money or expensive gifts. She likes him to pay when they go out on dates, not that she would have a choice, but she keeps her own shared apartment with friends and pays her own bills. I know they had a fight last year because he wanted to pay off her school loans from becoming a nurse, and she wouldn’t let him. Sometimes I wonder what the point in that was really. If she marries him, he will do it anyway, and she’s only leaving herself to work harder to meet all her bills. I know it pisses him off that she won’t let him help in that way, but I guess in a sense he likes that she’s not with him for that reason. God knows he dated a lot of gold diggers in the past. Not that he cared; back then he was all about casual sex and fun. Can’t say I prefer this over that though, at least with casual women I didn’t have to suffer any of them, because he kept us very far apart.

Arrick has moved to his own seat so his back is to her and he can get a beautiful view from here of outside and that stunning skyline in the morning light. It’s a gray day but it still looks gorgeous. He gazes out for a moment, deep in thought, before turning eyes back to me with a sudden sigh of contentment. That calm little boy look of happiness that used to be common but is now a lot rarer. He always seems stressed out nowadays, which is totally ridiculous. Arrick has so little to stress over.