He cleared his throat. “Yes. Parts of it were amazing. You fell asleep first, you know. And I watched you sleeping. You were so beautiful.”
I swallowed hard. “So then why did you leave me?” My voice shook. It was the question I had to ask. I’d been afraid of the answer for seven years, but I steadied my nerves and turned to face him. “Tell me now. How could you leave me that way?”
Nick held up both hands. “Before I tell you, let me say that I know now that no reason was good enough. But at the time, it made sense to me.”
“Just tell me.”
“OK. I was watching you sleep and I started thinking about everything I wanted to do for you. Everything you deserved in life. And what you deserved far outweighed what I could offer. I’d just maxed out my one credit card on the ring and the room. I was up to my ears in debt.”
“I cared about you, not your bank account,” I said through my teeth. He wasn’t really going to blame money, was he? What an insult.
“You would have. You had no idea what it’s like to live without money. You still don’t.”
I threw my hands in the air. “How dare you say to me? I married you, didn’t I? And I’m not the one who changed my mind! You did.” I poked his chest. “So don’t pretend I didn’t think you were rich enough for me or whatever. That was all in your head.”
“It wasn’t only the money, Coco. I was lying there thinking about that program, and how much I wanted it for you. About how, if you were my daughter, or if we had a daughter some day, I’d want her to have things like that.” He put a hand to his chest. “I understood what your parents felt. When you love someone, you want what’s best for them, even if it means sacrifice.”
I glared at him. “So it was because of my parents? You dumped me because you understood them, all of a sudden? Well, I hope they fucking appreciate it,” I said bitterly. “No wonder they were so helpful with our divorce.”
Nick shook his head. “It wasn’t just them—it was me. I started to think that you’d wake up one day and regret that you hadn’t gone. And it would be my fault. And even if you said you didn’t resent me, you should—because I had done a selfish thing. I had robbed you of this incredible opportunity. Deep down, I knew if you married me you wouldn’t go. Somehow leaving seemed the unselfish move.”
Mouth agape, I looked at him for five full seconds. “You asshole!” I was tempted to slap his face, but I settled for shoving a wall of water at him. “Leaving seemed the unselfish move, are you fucking kidding me?” My eyes felt as if they would bug out of my head. “You broke me! You shattered me! I was…” I shook my head, unable to come up with a word that adequately captured my emotional state. “Devastated!”
Nick wiped the water from his face. “I’m sorry. It was the wrong move, I see that now. But I panicked, Coco. And then when I tried to apologize, you wouldn’t speak to me. Wouldn’t return my texts, take my calls, wouldn’t stop the divorce proceedings.”
“I was hurt, Nick. I loved you, and you left me.” This couldn’t be real. He’d abandoned me for my own good? No. No. He was not the hero here. He was not the good guy. For years I’d nursed this anger, and he wasn’t going to evade it now just because he’d had good fucking intentions. “Do you know what it felt like, waking up that next morning and finding you gone? Seeing that goddamn note on the nightstand?
Your wedding band beside it?” The hurt and humiliation of that morning returned to me tenfold, stabbing me repeatedly in the gut. “It didn’t click right away, you know, what you’d done. There was no light bulb that went on, no immediate understanding of what the note really meant. I even thought it might be a joke.”
Nick looked miserable, but he nodded. “Go on. I deserve this.”
“You do, but I don’t even know what words to use to describe what that day was like.”
How could I convey the slow, sickening dread that started with a few erratic heartbeats as I checked the bathroom? How could I make him feel the way it dropped into my stomach like a bowling ball when I saw that his suitcase was gone? How could I tell him what I felt when I turned on my phone and saw those two words from him, like two bullets to the heart?
I’m sorry.
“Do you know how long I lay in that bed, sobbing? Hoping you’d change your mind? Hours went by, and the longer I lay there, the clearer it became—you weren’t coming back. You weren’t sorry you’d done it; you were just sorry I got hurt. And yet I stayed there. All day. All night. Desperately praying for you to return. Smelling the sheets where you’d slept. Crying so hard I made myself sick. Finally I had to face it—you were gone. And you didn’t love me enough to come back.” The violent anger I’d felt moments ago was replaced with a sadness that threatened to pull me under. My vision went silver at the edges, and I swayed in the water. Nick gripped my shoulders.
“Believe me, Coco, I did. I loved you more than I thought it was possible to love someone, and leaving was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I was sick too. Physically ill. I forced myself to get on that plane. I didn’t talk to anyone for two days. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you? Because I don’t.”
Nick dropped his hands into the water and exhaled. “No. I don’t deserve your sympathy. I don’t even know why I’m even telling you this—I know it doesn’t make up for what I did.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Hit me,” he said suddenly.
“What? Are you nuts?”
“No. I’m serious. Hit me. I deserve it.” He closed his eyes and put his hands behind his back. “As hard as you want. As many times as you want.”
He looked ridiculous. “Shut up.”
“Come on, do it. You know you want to. You’ve wanted to do it for years. Now’s your chance. Come on, hit me.”
I stared at him in disbelief. In all honesty, part of me did want to hit him. How dare he lay all this out for me now, years later, when he’d had so many chances to be honest before but kept lying and manipulating me and fucking everything up? And what about his seven-year silence after the divorce?
Another part of me wanted to kiss him, tell him it would be OK, we would be OK. (But that was a very, very small part. Mostly I wanted to hit him.)
He opened one eye. “Are you gonna do it?”
I glared at him. “No, asshole. I’m not going to do it. I hit you once and it didn’t make me feel better.”
“The night we broke up.”
“Yes.” I looked at the palm of my right hand. “It probably hurt my hand more than your face.”
“Probably. Remind me to teach you how to throw a punch.”
I curled my fingers into a fist. “I’m ready for a lesson.”
He couldn’t keep the smile off his face, the bastard. “That’s your fist? Coco, you can’t throw a punch with your hand like that. You’ll break your thumb.” He unfurled my fist and tucked my thumb alongside my fingers, leaving his big hands wrapped around my smaller one. “There. Like that.”
“Thanks.” I stared at our hands. “I guess if an unsatisfied bride ever comes at me, I’ll be better prepared.”
Nick smiled slightly and took his hands off mine. “Can I ask you a question?”
I shrugged, miserable and cold.
“Did you even come back to campus after Vegas?”
“Just to pack up my clothes. Exams were done, and I had no reason to be there. Plus everything reminded me of you. It was too painful.”
“I know. I left too.”
That surprised me. “You did?”
He nodded. “I applied to the Culinary Institute and got in. I went in the fall. But Coco, you have to believe I wanted you back. I called, I wrote. I even drove to your parents house, but you were gone.”
“My mother and I took a vacation.”
“Did your grandmother tell you I came?”
“Yes. She did.” And I’d gone into the bathroom of our hotel room in Rome and cried my eyes out in the
shower. If my mother noticed my puffy eyes that night, she didn’t mention it. “Sitty always liked you because you were Catholic. And because you cooked and were interested in her recipes. But it wasn’t enough to change my mind. I still didn’t want to hear your damn apologies.”
“I know. It was clear the divorce was what you really wanted. Eventually I figured I should just leave you in peace.”
My eyes went wide. “Peace? I didn’t have any peace where you were concerned. Not for years Maybe not ever!” I put a hand to my chest. “I never got over it, Nick. I never got over you.” Admitting it to him now was like cutting out my own heart. I burst into tears, and Nick gathered me into his arms. Maybe it was stupid but I went, crying into my hands against his shoulder. This was all so fucking sad. It wasn’t that I was sorry I’d gone to Paris—it was a wonderful experience, one that I’d want my own children to have—Nick was right about that. But still…
“You gave up on me. You gave up,” I wept. “You left, so I left. And you gave up. You could have fought harder, longer. I was back from Paris the following summer, and not once did I ever hear from you.”
“I didn’t give up on you, Coco, but I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t have the guts to show up on your doorstep after everything that had happened. I thought about it a million times.”
I took a few slow, calming breaths and backed away from him. “It’s better you didn’t. I don’t think there was anything you could have said to make me listen. I was too angry to forgive you.”
“And now?”
We stared at each other a long moment, during which we both realized that a second chance might be impossible. “I don’t know.”
Nick took a deep breath. “Coco, not a day goes by that I don’t regret what happened between us. I thought I was doing the right thing, but I made a mistake. And it cost me the love of my life.”
My lips fell open.
Argue with him. Say it didn’t. Say what you planned to say before you jumped in the lake. Tell him you love him again and maybe you always have. Tell him you accept his apology. Admit that you made mistakes too, that you know what it’s like to act on impulse, that, in fact, part of what thrilled you about his spur-of-the-moment proposal was that it was much more like you than like him. Say that you knew it was a bad idea, that you knew your parents and friends should be a part of your wedding day, that a Vegas quickie was not what you’d had in mind as a young girl dreaming of her wedding day. Own up to the fact that you booked those tickets to Nevada within minutes of accepting his proposal, putting them on your own credit card, because you were scared that he’d change his mind. Tell him that you saw getting married as a way to hold on to him, a way to ensure he’d never sleep with anyone else ever again. Tell him you saw it as a way to show your parents they couldn’t control you.
Tell him your wedding bands are still in your jewelry box.
Tell him how you cried the day your tattoo was altered.
Tell him you’d put his name on your body again.
Tell him you might be crazy enough to run away with him again.
Tell him he makes you feel alive.
Tell him he makes you feel everything.
The words were all right there in my mind. But uttering them would’ve meant peeling back every layer of protection over my heart, an open wound.
I wanted to say them, but I didn’t.
I was afraid of bleeding to death.
Nick sighed, rubbing his face with his hands. “Maybe you were right. This talking about the past stuff kind of sucks.”
I nodded. Swallowed the lump in my throat.
“Ready to go back?” Nick asked. “I should get dinner started.”
“Yes.” But the thought of running back made my limbs feel heavy in the water. Rehashing the past had exhausted me. I dragged myself to the ladder on the dock, and Nick motioned for me to climb up first.
“I wish I had a big warm towel to wrap you in,” he said as I emerged, my running clothes dripping. I was shivering, but it wasn’t because of the water.
“I’m OK.” Squeezing the water from my ponytail, I walked toward my shoes on the grass, my legs shaky and my footsteps squishy. “Guess I should have stopped to take my socks off too.” I looked down at them, wrinkling my nose.
“Yeah, but then you wouldn’t have beaten me into the lake.”
“True.” I pulled my shoes on and leaned over to lace them up, tempted to make a joke but not quite up for it.
Nick sat on the grass to tug his socks and running shoes on. “You up for running back? Or would you rather just walk?”
I straightened up, pulled out my ponytail elastic, and shook out my wet hair. “I think I’ll walk, but you go ahead. I know you have to get dinner going.”
He got to his feet. “No, that’s OK. I can walk with you.”
“Actually, Nick, I could use the alone time.”
He nodded. “You know the way back?”
“Left when the path reaches the road, right?”
“Yes.” He put his hands on his hips, glanced at the path through the trees and then back at me. “You sure you’re all right?”
I took a deep breath, concentrated on slipping the ponytail elastic around my wrist. “I’ll be fine, really. That conversation was hard on me. It brought back a lot of feelings I’ve done my best to forget. But I’m a big girl.” Managing a shaky smile, I looked up and waved him off. “Go on. I’ll see you back there.”
“OK.” He began jogging through the trees, looking back once over his shoulder. I waited until I couldn’t see him anymore to start walking.
Wrinkling my nose at the first few waterlogged steps, I wrapped my arms around myself and started through the trees at a slow pace. I’d told Nick I wanted to be alone so I could think, but I was unable to draw any conclusions about what had just happened. There were so many feelings battling inside me. Was I more sad than anything? Hurt? Scared? Angry? And who was I most mad at? Nick? My parents? Myself?
I turned left at the dirt road, and admitted the truth. I still loved him. If I didn’t, none of this would matter. Revisiting our history wouldn’t hurt so much. But love hadn’t been enough to make things work between us before. How could I know this time would be different? What if I never learned to trust him? What if he was the kind of person who felt lying was OK if you had good intentions? (Oh, God. I had to call Mia and come clean about Angelina, didn’t I?) What if he was still as big a flirt as he’d always been…could I deal with that? Especially now that he was a celebrity? He’d be away from me a lot, traveling, working, celebrity schmoozing. I’d have to put up with all kinds of Internet gossip and selfies taken with pretty girls and paparazzi pics of him with women famous and beautiful and wealthy.
At least we wouldn’t argue over money anymore. I’d happily let him pay the bill at dinner whenever he wanted to.
But what about this resentment I felt? Why couldn’t I get past it? I wanted to believe I could, wanted to believe the day would come where I would look at him and not think about that fucking goodbye note. The ring on the nightstand. The text message. I wanted to forgive and forget and move forward. So why couldn’t I do it? When he called me the love of his life, all those things I wanted to say to him were racing around in my brain, but I couldn’t bring myself to say even one of them.
Oh God, that was a bad sign, right? What if the universe was trying to warn me against being taken in by him again? Nick had burned me once. Why should I give him the chance to do it again? What kind of fool takes a second bite of a bad apple?
Approaching the house, I vowed to stick to the original plan. No relationship, no promises, no more love-of-my-life conversations. No second bites. We were friends, nothing more.
Just at that moment, a monarch butterfly floated in front of me, and I nearly smiled. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? A good sign that I’d made the right decision and the universe supported me.
It should have been, but right after that I looked up at Nick’s bedr
oom window just in time to see him toweling off after a shower.
Then I tripped over a tree root and went down on my hands and knees, cursing softly.
Fuck. Why did the bad apple have to look so good?
#
I managed to sneak up the stairs without being seen by anyone, although I heard voices coming from the kitchen, and more cars were parked in the driveway. Nick had originally put my suitcase in a bedroom with his bag, but I’d moved it to the room I used to stay in, still too embarrassed to share a bed with Nick at his grandmother’s house. And maybe it was better that way. Plans were good and all, but I didn’t entirely trust myself to behave, which was why I had to talk to Mia. I needed to hear someone tell me I was right in refusing to give Nick another chance. Mia couldn’t stand Nick, so she was a safe bet.
Inside my room, I shut the door and pulled down the shade. After peeling off my wet running clothes, I draped them over a white wicker chair in the corner. Hopefully they’d dry before I had to pack them up again.
Someone, probably Nick, had thoughtfully placed two large sage green towels on the bed, and I wrapped one around me, dug my phone out of my purse, and lowered myself onto the bed.
Creak.
Noisy as ever. Good.
I had a few more text messages from Angelina, which I ignored, and one from Mia asking me to call her. Wrinkling my nose, I faced the fact that I had to tell her what I was doing if I wanted her advice.
“Hello?”
“Hi, it’s me.”
“Thank God. I’ve had the weirdest feeling all day that something is not right with you. Is everything OK?”
I sighed. Mia and I had such a great connection. I should have been honest with her from the start.
“Everything’s fine. But I have to confess something.”
“You took that party.”
“I took that party.”
She sighed. “I knew it. Look, I’m going to be very Zen about this. Lucas says I have to let this go because I’m leaving and you’re here and I trust you. So I’m going to breathe and relax and say, you’ve got this, Coco. Because you better fucking have this.”
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