Nicholas is home, goddamn it.
Standing on the porch with today’s mail and a leather satchel tucked under his arm, unlocking the front door. The one time I need him to dote on his mother after work, and he comes straight home instead like a jackass. I check out my car and wheeze; the tire is so flat, the whole thing is lopsided. It’ll be a miracle if Nicholas hasn’t noticed. The Saturn looks pitiful next to Nicholas’s flashy car, so out of place in Morris that everyone knows who it belongs to whenever it whizzes through the stoplight just as it turns red.
Conversely, Leon’s vehicle is a Frankenstein’s monster of Japanese parts. Most of it’s a dull gray-blue, except for the driver’s-side door, which is red and eroded from rust, and the trunk, which is white and doesn’t close properly. It’s been bumping the whole ride, which probably accounts for my visions of somebody bound and gagged back there. Poor Leon. I know they say it’s the quiet ones you’ve got to watch out for, but he’s never been anything but nice to me and doesn’t deserve the side-eye. He isprobablynot Jack the Ripper.
“See you tonight,” he says.
Brandy hosts a game night most Friday evenings. She invites Zach, Melissa, Leon, and me, with a standing invitation for our significant others. Nicholas has never gone to one of Brandy’s game nights, Zach’s barbecues, or Melissa’s mini golf outings, which is just fine by me. He can go do his own thing with his own friends, whom he doesn’t even like but hangs out with anyway because it’s hard to make new friends when you’re thirty-two.
I’m halfway across the yard when Leon unexpectedly yells, “Hey, Nicholas!”
Nicholas gives him a confused wave. My coworkers tend toignore him whenever they come into contact, and vice versa. “Hey?”
“You coming to game night?” Leon asks him.
A laugh that sounds like “Bagh” escapes me, because of course Nicholas isn’t coming. Nobody there likes him and he’d just be defensive and sulky the whole time, which would suck all the fun out of it for me. If he went, my friends (I am still counting Melissa as a friend even if she’d rather I didn’t, because I’m holding out hope she’ll be nice to me again someday) might catch on that we’re not the yin-and-yang lovebirds I’ve been pretending we are in my Instagram stories. In a way, it’s convenient that Nicholas avoids my friends and doesn’t stray close enough for them to inspect. Knowing that our relationship looks enviable from the outside is the only thing we’ve got going for us, since in reality what we have isn’t enviable at all.
“What’s that laugh for?” Nicholas asks, looking offended.
“You never go to game night. Why’d he even ask?” To Leon, I call, “No, he’s busy.”
“That’s too bad,” Leon replies. “You know you’re welcome to swing by if your schedule opens up, Nicholas.”
Nicholas’s narrowed eyes never leave mine as he responds, “You know what? I think I’ll go.”
Leon waves cheerfully, which is at total odds with the shock I hasten to cover up. “Cool! See you, Naomi.” Then he drives off.
Someone has said the simplest thing,See you, Naomi, and I have a strange thought.
It’s been a long time since anyone has seen me, since I keep so much about myself hidden.Me, who I am really, an individual who has been alive for twenty-eight years, twenty-six of those not knowing Nicholas Rose existed. I’ve been slowlybleeding out the Westfield parts of myself to become pre–Naomi Rose. Almost Mrs. Rose. I’ve been one half of a whole for nearly two years and lately, I don’t know if I’d even count as a half.
But when someone calls me Naomi with kindness in their voice, I feel like that girl I was before. During the brief time it takes for Leon’s car to disappear down the street, I am Naomi Westfield again.
“You don’t want me to come,” Nicholas says accusingly.
“What? Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I do.”
I give him my biggest smile. To be convincing, I need to make the smile travel to my eyes. A true smile. Whenever I do this, I like to imagine that I’m looking at him in my rearview mirror, peeling out of Morris, never to see himagain.
CHAPTER TWO
I’m on the sofa watching something that will rot my brain, half listening to Nicholas complain about a friend of a friend who joins his soccer games at the park a few times a month. It’s the one who thinks he’s a better player than Nicholas, the one who thinks he knows more about the game than Nicholas, and Nicholas is going to give him a piece of his mind one of these days. He’s been saying that the whole time I’ve known him. At least he bought my story for why I walked to work: I’m taking steps to lead a healthier lifestyle and walking is my newest passion. Nicholas should follow my example and walk to work, too, instead of destroying our planet with greenhouse gases. Honestly, he could learn a thing or two from me.
I let him blow off steam. I nod and agree like the good little fiancée I am, but I am not a good fiancée at all because I feel like I might fall apart at any moment.
I’m a good actress. It’s a point of pride. Nicholas’s point ofpride is that he thinks he knows every little thing there is to know about me. He tells people all the time that I can’t hide anything from him. I’m transparent as air and intellectually just as substantial. The fact that he can look into my eyes and believe I am totally in love with him is proof that I’m a fantastic actress and he does not know everything about me, or even most things.
Ratio-wise, I would say that I’m forty percent in love with Nicholas. Maybe I shouldn’t say I’minlove. There’s a difference. Beinginlove is frantic. Fluttery. Falling. It’s nervous sweats and pounding heartbeats and a feeling of tremendous rightness, or so I hear. I don’t have that. I love him forty percent.
It’s not as bad as it sounds, if you think about the couples you know. If they’re being honest, a lot of them would list a lower number than the one they’d declare out loud. The truth is that I don’t think any two people both feel one hundred percent in love with each other at the same exact time, all the time. They might take turns being seventy-five, their personal high, while the other clocks in at sixty.
I’m a miserable cynic (a newer development) and a dreamy romantic (always have been), and it’s such a terrible combination that I don’t know how to tolerate myself. If I were only one of those things, perhaps I would be nodding and agreeing with Nicholas, smiling brightly, rather than drumming up one of my favorite daydreams to focus on when I don’t want to live in reality. In this dream, it’s my wedding day and I’m standing at the altar next to Nicholas. The priest asks if anyone objects to this union and someone in the audience stands up, boldly proclaiming, “I do.” Everyone gasps. It’s Jake Pavelka, controversial season 14 star ofThe Bachelor.
In real life, Jake Pavelka isn’t going to interrupt my vows,and Nicholas and I will be stuck with each other. I revisit my mental calendar and feel sick at how little time I have left. Right now, the thought of sayingI domakes my pulse gallop like a runaway train.
I am falling apart and Nicholas doesn’t even notice.
This is happening with snowballing regularity. Just when I think the odd feeling’s gone and I’m complacent again, all feelings of dissatisfaction suppressed, the pendulum swings back at me. Sometimes the feeling hits me when I’m about to fall asleep. It happens when I’m driving home from work and when I’m eating dinner, which means I lose my appetite immediately and have to make up an acceptable explanation as to why.
