"No, really."
He faces her again. "Really. I'm a police officer."
Her eyes widen. "Does that mean I'm busted?"
"Depends. Did you break any laws?"
Xenia's gaze travels the length of his body. "Not yet." Dipping a finger in her drink-something pink and frothy-she touches her shirt, and then his. "Wanna go to my place and get out of these wet clothes?"
He blushes, then tries to pretend it didn't happen. "Don't think so."
She props her chin on her fist. "Guess you better just buy me a drink."
He starts to turn her down again, then hesitates. "All right. What are you having?"
"An Orgasm."
"Of course," Patrick says, hiding a smile. It would be so easy-to go home with this girl, waste a condom and a few hours' sleep, get the itch out of his blood. Chances are, he could fuck her without ever telling her his name. And in return, for just a few hours, he would feel like someone wanted him.
He would be, for a night, someone's first choice.
Except this particular someone would not be his first choice.
Xenia trails her nails along the nape of Patrick's neck. "I'm just going to carve our initials in the door of the ladies' room," she murmurs, backing away.
"You don't know my initials."
"I'll make them up." She gives a little wave, then disappears into the crowd.
Patrick calls over Stuyvesant and pays for Xenia's second drink. He leaves it sweating on a cocktail napkin for her. Then he walks out of Tequila Mockingbird stone sober, facing the fact that Nina has ruined him for anyone else.
Nathaniel lies on the lower bunk while I read him a book before bedtime. Suddenly, he jackknifes upright and fairly flies across the room, to the doorway where Caleb stands. "You're home," I say, the obvious, but he doesn't hear. He is lost in this moment.
Seeing them together, I want to kick myself again. How could I ever have believed that Caleb was at fault?
The room is suddenly too small to hold all three of us. I back out of it, closing the door behind me.
Downstairs, I wash the silverware that sits on the drying rack, already clean. I pick Nathaniel's toys up from the floor. I sit down on the living room couch; then, restless, stand up and arrange the cushions.
"He's asleep."
Caleb's voice cuts to the quick. I turn, my arms crossed over my chest. Does that look too defensive? I settle them at my sides, instead. "I'm . . . I'm glad you're home."
"Are you?"
His face gives nothing away. Coming out of the shadows, Caleb walks toward me. He stops two feet away, but there might as well be a universe between us.
I know every line of his face. The one that was carved the first year of our marriage, by laughing so often. The one that was born of worries the year he left the contracting company to go into business for himself. The one that developed from focusing hard on Nathaniel as he took his first steps, said his first word. My throat closes tight as a vise, and all the apologies sit bitter in my stomach. We had been naive enough to believe that we were invincible; that we could run blind through the hairpin turns of life at treacherous speeds and never crash. "Oh, Caleb," I say finally, through the tears, "these things, they weren't supposed to happen to us."
Then he is crying too, and we cling to each other, fitting our pain into each other's hollows and breaks.
"He did this. He did this to our baby."
Caleb holds my face in his hands. "We're going to get through it. We're going to make Nathaniel get better." But his sentences turn up at the ends, like small animals begging. "There are three of us in this, Nina," he whispers. "And we're all in it together."
"Together," I repeat, and press my open mouth against his neck. "Caleb, I'm so sorry."
"Shh."
