“You should see if they can take extra out and make the whole thing last longer.” I give Nash a tight smile. “Reese will agree, I’m sure.”
Finally, she drops it. “Reese is driving me nuts. She’s worse than you and won’t stop working.”
I laugh, genuinely—that’s Reese. Nash and I stop at a bench on the edge of a slime-covered swamp surrounded by tall trees and cypress knees.
“Always great talking to you, Mom. Go drink some water.”
She’s mid-mutter as I end the call.
I don’t look at Nash, but I can feel him mirror my position. Elbows on our knees, staring at the scene ahead of us, we’re quiet. I give up on fighting the bugs, I just let them eat me alive as I swim in my sludge of thoughts. She forgets names, I know that. I’ve seen it for a while now, but it was easier when I didn’t know why. Easier when it made me feel frustrated instead of helpless. Easier when we could’ve cut a check if something was wrong.
Ignorance is the sweetest bliss until it’s gone.
And Nash doesn’t know, not really, but he knows something. I saw it the second it registered with a flash of worry. It shouldn’t matter, but it does. Like him knowing makes it a bit lighter on my own back.
Once again, Nash breaks the silence. “Remember the time your mom came into the store wearing that 1920s flapper dress and carrying a little CD player?” he asks. “And then she cranked it and started dancing a very period-specific dance? What was it?”
I laugh—loud. I absolutely do. I can see those silver tassels swishing as she moved. “The Charleston.”
“That’s right,” he says. “The Charleston. She was practicing for something, right?”
“Her audition for some rendition ofThe Great Gatsby.” I remember instantly. “That was her community theater phase.”
“I remember.” He chuckles. “And she didn’t get a part because instead of studying lines, she only practiced the dancing.”
He’s right. I told her she needed to read the script; she told me Daisy Buchanan was an idiot.
Nash and I face each other, eyes bouncing like we’re reading the new rules of how to handle each other. Of what to say and not say. A silent testing of the waters. Despite the fact we’re legally married, we aren’t man and wife, not anymore, but simply being in his presence and breathing the same oxygen as him is so ... familiar. Like it was just yesterday he rearviewed Fontain and not nearly eight years ago.
And it’s telling that neither of us adds the rest of that story—that while my mom danced like a fool in a costume for a part in a play she’d never get, we danced right along with her, the way we always did.
Whether we were so angry we wanted to tear each other to shreds or so happy we couldn’t keep our hands off each other, it didn’t make a difference. We’d wrap our arms around each other and sway to real or make-believe music. Grocery store aisles to outdated songs, dive bars to the sound of pool balls clanking, the dark closet of a courthouse to the tune of muffled conversations on the other side of the door.
“Dancing has been part of every good moment of history,”he once whispered in my ear amid an especially intense argument.
I was ready to snap when he pulled me close, swaying our hips without a note of music playing. We were in the tiny storage-room-turned-apartment, littered with his laundry and history books haphazardly strewn about. I’d tripped over one and fallen into the other. He was clueless; I was fuming.
“That’s not true,”I snapped, softening into him. Letting him lead me with his hips and hands.“And I’m still mad at you. You’re like living with a damn teenager.”
He ignored my grievances.
“You don’t think the Soviets danced after the Battle of Berlin, Rue Conway?”He quirked a brow.“Or Washington himself didn’t do a little jig after Yorktown?”
I said nothing, biting my cheek.
“If they didn’t, they should have.”The amused way he said it infuriated me, as did his tightening grip.“And you won’t be mad at me forever.”
It worked. Every damn time.
Thirty more seconds of us swaying to silence led to lips on lips and skin on skin, right in the middle of his frustrating clutter.
The only argument we ever had that didn’t end with a dance was the last one. I wasn’t letting him touch me, much less dance with me and whisper his perfect words into my ear that would have inevitably changed my mind and led to a colossal mistake.
“Damn bugs!” a voice barks, making me jump. “Like the goddamned jungle out here.”
A round man with red cheeks next to the bench blasts bug spray, sending a cloud of DEET our way. Nash and I stand, choking through it.
“Okay.” I brush my bangs out of my face, refocusing on the pond and remembering the whole point of us being here. “What are we looking at?”
