"Quiet now, pumpkin," I said. "I'm having a special moment here."
"Special moment?" he repeated. He set his laptop on the counter and crossed his arms, and that pushed the hoodie farther apart and gave me a look at his belly. A pair of blue scrubs sat low on his waist, and that fuzzy path that started at his navel and pointed downward had never looked better.
"Yeah," I murmured. "I'm gonna need this when I'm trapped on a research ship for the next two months."
His shoulders slumped as my words hit him, and that teasing smile slipped. "What? When?"
"We leave port after my next session at Oxford, right before the holidays. We'll be gone until the end of February," I said, blinking away from his abs. "The research fellow who was supposed to head up that expedition broke her leg last weekend. She was hiking the Laugavegur Trek, and it didn't end well. I don't have anyone else who can go. It has to be me."
He leaned back against his refrigerator, frowning. "So that long weekend in December…?"
I shook my head slowly. "I can't," I said, "and I really wish I could."
He ran his hand through his hair as his tongue passed over his lips. "I know," he said.
I hated this. I fucking hated this, and I wanted anything other than the world where Nick was anchored in Boston and I was tethered to ice sheets for the foreseeable future. I could've emailed this turn of events to him, and saved myself the anguish of watching his disappointment, but I was on the hook for this. For him.
"What's your news?" I asked.
Nick reached across the countertop—cue bare chest close-up—and presented a typewritten letter. "This is my news," he said from behind the paper. "You're the first to know, other than the hospital."
I leaned in, squinting to read the words, but half of them were out of view. "This would be easier if you put that letter through a paper shredder, pasted it back together, and then faxed it to me," I said. "In other words, I can't—"
"I'm staying in Boston," he interrupted. He held it up again, watching the screen in the top corner to make the entire document visible. "I accepted the offer from Mass General."
"Why?" I asked as I skimmed the letter. He made a vague sound and jerked a shoulder. "What made you choose MGH over Houston or Children's of Colorado?"
He'd talked through the options on several occasions when we didn't want to end our video calls, and I knew he was leaning toward Colorado, with Texas Children's as a distant second. Right? Or was I ignoring all of his arguments in favor of Boston?
"I wasn't feeling Colorado, and I like MGH," he said, nodding toward the letter in his hand. "The offer was decent, too."
Yeah, I'd noticed that. I couldn't miss that mid-six-figure salary.
"Did you think I'd…we'd be together in Boston? That I'd go back there, andstaythere?" I asked, growing increasingly mortified. Talk about things beyond the realm of possibility.
"That wasn't the deciding factor, no," he said, waving away my suggestion. "But even before you came along and put me under your spell, I had reasons to stay. Matt and Riley and everyone else…they're family to me. Matt's like the brother I never had."
That gave me—and my expanding panic—pause. "Is this—I mean, you and me—has this been hard?"
Nick drew his fingertip down his jaw as he offered a small shrug in response. "I don't know, maybe," he said. "I don't like withholding this from him."
"I'm sorry," I murmured.
"It's good, in a perverse way, that Riley's avoiding Matt right now, too," he said, laughing. "I'm not the only one. Matt's making it easy on us, though. I think he has a meniscal tear that he refuses to get checked. He hasn't been running much, and seems to be enjoying the hell out of newlywed life. I haven't had to lie to his face too often."
Newlywed life. Therealnewlywed life. What was that like? It definitely wasn't arguing over video chat. "I'm sorry," I repeated. "Nick, maybe it's time for us to end—"
"Nope," he interrupted before I could revisit this marriage experiment. "No, darlin'. I don't want to hear it. But you need to get real with yourself about why you won't even consider coming back here."
I sighed, shaking off the anger I'd accumulated. "My research is not in North America," I said flatly, as if there wasn't plenty of earth to study on the other side of the Atlantic.
Nick circled his hand in front of him, asking for my next reason.
I rolled my eyes. "America's political capital isn't engaged in climate change," I snapped.
"Just fuckin' go there," he said, dropping his hands to his hips. "Just admit that being in the same city as Shannon scares the shit out of you. Admit that you don't know how to make things right, and instead of figuring it out, you'd rather put an ocean between you."
A loose thread on the sleeve of my sweater was suddenly captivating, and I didn't respond.
