“Would you be okay staying in here for a minute?” he asks. “I want to talk to Jessie alone.”
“Yeah,” Nelle says. “I’ll come out when you’re ready.”
James strides down the hall.
Jessie and Lena are in the kitchen, standing at the island, pouring three glasses of wine.
“You’re home!” Jessie squeals, grabbing another glass from the cabinet beneath the island. “Want some?”
“Please.” James slides onto a stool. Outside the sweaty bedroom, his mind clears, and the reality of the past day slams into him.Nelle is here. After months away, she’s actually here.Suddenly half his anger collapses like a pillar of sand, but on principle, he tries his best to sound angry. “I have some questions.”
He chugs half the glass of wine, gagging on the dry bitterness. Lena drifts across the kitchen and leans against the fridge. She glances between the two cousins as if waiting for an explosion. Even Jessie looks like she is bracing for something.
But suddenly, James can’t even fake anger.
Nelle is back, which is all he has ever wanted. She is in New York, and although he hasn’t asked, he doesn’t think she wants to leave. Before her return that morning, he was on a personal quest to find happiness, and he was beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Now that she’s back, it’s like he’s skipped to the end, and he’s basking in the sun.
“Thank you for not telling me,” James says. “I love you.”
“You’re not mad?” Lena asks.
Jessie blinks at him. “James, are you high?”
“If I’d known Nelle was here, I would have been stressing the whole time I was in Lincoln. Walking in and being surprised forced me to listen to my gut.”
Jessie peers at him warily. “And what did your gut tell you to do?”
“She’s in my bed.” He fights a grin, visualizing her in his sheets.
“Well ...” Jessie tops his glass off. “I wish I could say I kept it from you because I planned for the two of you to reunite, but honestly, I just didn’t know how to bring it up.”
James laughs. Jessie and Nelle—his two favorite people—are both in his life again. In his favorite city, no less. What could be better than this?
“Is this for Nelle?” He picks up the empty glass.
Jessie leans against the island. “I thought she’d want to join us.”
“Is she asleep?” Lena asks, alight with curiosity.
He grins. “Nelle, come out!”
She pads down the hall in her baggy maroon sweater, legs bare, running her fingers through her bedraggled hair.
“Nice to see you again.” Lena flashes the fakest of smiles. Of course James’s friends and family would hold grudges against Nelle. Whetheror not he spun their breakup in his favor didn’t matter. He came home heartbroken, and they needed someone to point fingers at.
Nelle looks down. “I usually have pants on.”
Lena and Jessie laugh, and just like that, the ice breaks.
Over the next hour, the four of them finish off two bottles of wine and order pizza as James tells the story of his visit to Lincoln. Halfway through his week in Georgia, he sat his parents down and announced that he would be attending NYU. Like he expected, they didn’t understand why he wanted to leave. Why waste money on a useless degree? Why throw away thousands of dollars a month on rent? Why live in such a filthy, overcrowded, dangerous place?
Nelle’s eyebrows jump up behind her wineglass. “What did you say?”
“I didn’t have muchtosay,” he says, catching his own sadness on the subject. Maybe his parents’ lack of support cuts deeper than he thought. “I tried to explain how much I love this city, how much I like my life here, but they’ll never understand. They’ll nevertryto understand. So I said my piece, and then we went out for dinner. My sister was at a friend’s house. It was fine.”
At some point they migrate into the living room, Jessie cranks up the space heater, and they huddle around it, swapping stories about childhood, their dreams, their fascinations.
The clock slips past midnight before Jessie asks Nelle, “Are you staying in New York?”
