Everything is not okay with Nash, though. I can feel it in my bones.
The festival office is quiet as I walk in from the elevator. Nash’s door is closed, but the meeting room is also empty.
“Is he in there?” I ask Patrick, who is still sitting at the long table in the middle of the room.
“Who?” He pushes his glasses up on his nose, looking nervous.
“Nash. Is he in his office?”
“Yes, but—”
I’m not here to listen to his objections. Nash has been cold-shouldering me for a week, and I am done waiting. Whatever the problem is, he can tell me to my face, and we will find a solution or we will part ways, but I am not going to spend the rest of my life wondering what the hell went wrong.
He’s frowning at his computer when I shove the door open like I’m leading the SWAT team, and his head pops up, eyes wide.
“Brady, what—”
“IT service. Something’s wrong with your phone. I’m here to fix it.” I slam the door shut so hard it rattles in the frame.
“What? Nothing’s wrong with my phone.”
“Well, there must be, Nash, because you haven’t been able to use it properly in a week.”
I was grumpy before, but now that I’m in his office, I’m flat-out pissed. He looks the same as he always does. I’d expected him to look rumpled. Tired. Like something so dire happened that he hasn’t slept in days.
Instead, his hair is neat, shining silver at his temples. Shirt freshly ironed. Tie in place. Cufflinks winking at his wrists.
“Where the fuck have you been?” I ask, hands on my hips.
“I told you, Jacob had some appointments.”
“No.” I shake my head. “An appointment. You mentioned one. Have there been more? Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. He’s having trouble reading.”
“And?” I say.
“And what?” Nash looks genuinely confused.
“Well, I can’t do math for shit, but that’s why phones have calculators now. When we abandoned hope on my career as a mathematician, my dad didn’t go AWOL for a week.”
“It’s a bit more involved than that. Dominic wants to get him into a private school before the year starts. We had to tour the school, and there were interviews for Dominic and me and Jacob.”
I didn’t think I was jealous. Nash has never been anything but up-front about his marital status and history, but the way he keeps referring to Dominic so casually and using “we”—when he’s kept his identity separate from Dominic’s on every other occasion—grates at the thing that’s been festering inside me for a week now, spreading the rot even further.
“And you couldn’t have called me and told me all of this?” I ask.
He runs a hand over his face, and finally I can see the fatigue at the corners of his eyes and the way his tie isn’t totally snug at his throat. He says, “It’s a lot. It’s going to be a lot for a while, I think. Brady, I—”
“I can handle a lot. What do you need?”
“Space. I—”
“What?” I want to scratch at my skin, like somehow I can let the agitation out.
“They need me. Dominic. The boys. Every trip to the school, every conversation about why things would be different devolved into bargaining and tears. Jacob knows something’s up. And Karter’s freaking out because he and Jacob won’t be at the same school anymore. He bit Dominic one day last week so hard he nearly needed stitches. I don’t know, I...” His hand trembles as he goes to his phone, then stops halfway there.
I rush to the desk. “I can help! Tell me what you need. My dad’s a teacher. He got me tutors when we figured out numbers and my brain didn’t mix. They had someone to work with me in class. He must know people who can—”
