I fold my arms over my chest and fully face him. “I am so sick of people asking me that. Of course I do.”
He shrugs, taking another easy sip of coffee. “He know you’re married?”
“I didn’t know I was married until three days ago,” I deflect.
“So he doesn’t know?”
“He does now,” I say, haughty. “He thought you died.”
“He what?” His eyes widen. “Why the hell did he think that?”
I study a lawn chair like it’s the most interesting thing I’ve ever seen. “Because I told him that’s what happened.”
He’s incredulous. “Why?”
“Because ...”it’s what your daughter thinks.“I panicked and?—”
“Panicked about what?”
“I didn’t know how else to explain.”
He scoffs. “Explain what, Rue? That you changed your mind about wanting to be married to me?”
When our eyes meet, his coffee stills. “That I married a man who couldn’t be what I needed him to be.”
There’s not enough time for it to fully settle before a coughing fit from Cap pulls us to the kitchen.
While the two of them strike up an easy conversation, I have a mental duel with myself over why I just said that—I couldn’t stop myself.
He came out of that summer unscathed and trotting around to dream jobs while I spent years praying I’d walk out of Old Vines and find him leaning against that stupid truck and playing his harmonica, waxing poetic about what a fool he was and how all he wanted was to stay right there forever. Of all the feelings seeing him has churned up, it’s the anger at how easy this is for him that’s the strongest. I am completely out of control while he’s all unchanged and smiley, infuriatingly unfazed by my arrival. Like what we were and what happened is just another story from one of his history books. A game of tag with hiscome and get me, Rue Conwaypostcards.
He can bet his ass I’m more serious—I have a kid whose school I can’t afford, a mother whose brain is being controlled by a four-centimeter mass, and a business going under. Everyone acts like there’s all this time to have fun, but there’s none. Some days it feels like there never will be.
Naturally, I don’t tell Nash that. I give him a cold smile and imagine lighting his house on fire—save that beautiful coffee table—as he pours hot water from a kettle over two Earl Grey teabags in a mug. And just like that, the anger brewing in me morphs into something muddied as I recognize he’s in the first steps of making a London Fog.
I want to tell him I drink black coffee now, but I can’t. My voice box is temporarily broken by the ease at which he shuffles between the familiar ingredients and steps. That he has a frother.
When he sets the drink in front of me, I stare at it.
“You just keep London Fog ingredients on hand?” I bite out. “And a frother?”
He half smiles. “Looks like it.”
I stare at it like it’s toxic waste. It would be easier to comprehend if it were. Easier to wrap my brain around the thing my fiancé convinced me not to love while this man made it without me asking after eight years of being away from me.
He and Cap continue their conversation, and I pray for it to taste awful; it’s anything but. The floral and citrus notes explode on my tongue, not too sweet nor too overpowered by the distinct flavor of the tea itself. It tastes like rainy mornings and lazy afternoons and doing something for no other reasons than wanting to and it tasting good.
“Good?” Nash asks.
“Fine.” I clear my throat. “Thanks. Maybe we should get started. Cap—the papers?”
Cap gives me a corrective look; I grind my teeth. “Dad.”
“Sure thing, kiddo.” He grins his approval then tosses an envelope on the counter.
I hate him.
Nash chuckles.
