“Is it their anniversary?” Niko asked.
“Oh.” Her eyes widened. “Yes, I thought that’s why you…”
“No, they just…reminded me of…” Niko didn’t know how to say they reminded him of what he wanted to have in the future without sounding creepy. “…someone. My grandparents.”
“Aww,” the server placed her hand to her chest. “That’s so sweet. Well, it’s their sixtieth wedding anniversary. Their grandkids saved up and are sending them to Hawaii, first class. They wanted to go for their honeymoon, but he got drafted andhad to go to basic training. Then life happened, and they’ve never gone.”
“Did they order champagne?” Niko asked.
“They did.” She nodded. “Two glasses ofKorbel.”
He knew why she was telling him that, because that was the most inexpensive champagne. “Give them a bottle of Dom Perignon.”
“They were also eyeing the lobster medallions and brie tarts, but they went with the cheese board and stuffed mushrooms.”
“Order it all, and throw in some desserts. Seriously, if they want the entire menu, give it to them.”
Keily grinned. “Will do.”
She put the revised order in, and Niko turned and faced the large mirror behind the bar so he could witness their reactions to the champagne being delivered without being obvious.
As Keily approached the table, the gentleman’s face was filled with confusion. He lifted his hand, refusing the champagne, clearly letting her know there’d been a mistake.
Despite Keily’s back facing Niko, he guessed she was conveying his message that their tab had been picked up by someone. Both the man and woman appeared truly flabbergasted. They scanned the room of about twenty people scattered in roughly eight groupings.
The man asked Keily something, but the server shook her head, most likely refusing to reveal Niko’s identity. As Keily was popping the champagne and pouring the glasses, a runner came out from the kitchen with their lobster medallions, brie tarts, stuffed mushrooms, and cheese board. The woman gasped and covered her mouth. The man appeared uneasy and continued to look around the room.
Once Keily and the food runner returned to their duties, leaving the couple alone, the woman leaned across the table and cupped the man’s cheeks in her hands, forcing him to look ather. Niko couldn’t hear what she was saying, but the smile on her face gave him a warm, soothing, comforting, yet firm and resolute feeling.
After a few seconds of a stare-off, the man sighed, pulled her palm from his cheek, then kissed her knuckles before the couple went on to enjoy the meal thoroughly, laughing and talking nonstop.
Sixty years married, and Niko could tell that they werebestfriends. That was all he ever wanted. A wife. A family. A best friend who he was madly in love with and wanted to rip her clothes off every time he saw her, to grow old beside, raise kids, and then spoil the hell out of grandbabies.
Did his behavior reflect his deepest desire? No. In fact, his behavior did everything to sabotage any chance of that ever happening. He chose to spend time with women who he knew he would never have any sort of a future with. His only serious relationship to date was the textbook definition of a toxic cycle.
He and Gianna would get together and be amazing for three to six months, then one of them would light a match and burn the shit down, every single time. Neither was innocent, they both did wrong. She was the only woman he’d ever cared about.
Besides G, everyone else was just a distraction to fill lonely nights. He never connected with people on an emotional level. How could he? You’d have to invest time and be vulnerable and real with someone. That didn’t happen when you bounced from one city to the next, hopping in a different bed in each one. Logically, he knew that. He just didn’t know why it was happening or how to stop it.
But if there was ever a time to figure it the fuck out, now was it.
For the next five weeks, he would be in Hope Falls, where his baby sister now lived, and his twin brother, AJ, had rented an Airbnb until after the new year. It was the first time since theywere teenagers that the siblings would be together for more than a weekend.
This couldn’t have come at a better time. Part of why he’d been so fucked in the head was how disconnected he’d felt. Maybe it was because Niko was born a twin, but ever since college, ever since he’d stopped living with his family, he’d felt so un-anchored. Untethered. Not himself. His team was amazing. They were like his brothers, but family was family. It was different.
During the next five weeks, Niko planned on getting real with himself, reconnecting with his family, and maybe, just maybe, figuring out how he could become a man worth the love he’d always wanted but knew he never deserved.
2
“Breathe in through your nose,exhale out through your mouth.”
Tiana paused, letting the cadence of her voice slow as the gentle heat of the studio, heavy with the musky tang of rolled-out mats and bodies, soaked into her bare arms. Every class, she wondered if her students heard the straining optimism behind her voice, if the tightness in her chest bled through the vowel sounds. But inevitably they just gazed at her with relaxed, trusting faces, limbs melting into the rubber beneath them. She found a strange comfort in that gaze.
She scanned the room, counting each head. It was her fourth consecutive sold-out class of the morning. She should have been proud, shewasproud, she just wished hustle and heart translated to a healthier ledger. Her hand drifted unconsciously to her sternum, as if she could press away the worry.
“Arms relaxed. Everything heavy, everything soft, as if your bones are made of honey,” she intoned, letting her voice skate along the edges of her own exhaustion.
She caught the eye of Margo Hightower, a regular with a stoic patch of silver hair and an unhurried, almost regal wayof moving. Margo had once told her that this hour, these sixty minutes of sweat and surrender, were what kept her from driving to her ex-husband’s house and keying his BMW. Tiana had laughed, but she’d kept the words in her pocket, something to hold onto when her own self-control began to fray.
