Chapter 26
On Saturday night, Nick took Jackson to see Moulin Rouge.
He didn’t expect much. He’d simply Googled Broadway singing and dancing, then bought tickets to the first show available, even though the price had made him choke. Thank god Jackson was paying,
because when they walked into the theater, he’d resigned himself to spending the next three hours taking the most expensive
nap of his life. But when the lights went down and the glitz and glamor flowered onstage, his spine straightened.
Then everyone started singing.
Within minutes, Nick realized he’d chosen a love story. And not just any love story. One that sucker-punched him right in
the gut.
Up onstage, Satine and Christian fell hopelessly in love. The two couldn’t live without each other, yet circumstances kept
tearing them apart, and it was like watching his own life play out in song.
Well, not quite—Aubrey could definitely live without him. But holy shit, did he know how Christian felt, especially at the
end, when Satine succumbed to her illness and left him heartbroken and alone, forever longing for something he could never
have again.
When the lights went up, Nick cleared his throat a half dozen times. He fiddled with the zipper on his jacket. Scrubbed at his hair. Sniffed hard enough to suck his eyeballs dry. Only then did he risk a look at Jackson.
And promptly breathed a mile-long sigh of relief.
Tears streaked Jackson’s dark cheeks. He’d locked his fingers around his armrests and stared at the now-quiet stage. All around,
women in evening dresses and men in suit coats filtered out of the theater.
Nick gave his friend a shoulder bump. “Hey. You okay?”
“Yeah, man. That was just . . . Wow. That was something.”
“Yeah.” Nick wished he didn’t sound so hoarse. “It really was.”
“What I wouldn’t give to find my Satine.” Jackson peeled his hands from the seat and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. He blew, loud and unrepentant.
“Hey, what do you mean? Aren’t you dating that woman from the bakery? The one who gives you those orange-cranberry muffins
every morning? Giselle?”
“Nah,” Jackson said thickly. “She ghosted me. After five really good dates. I even went into the bakery last week, asked why she’d stopped answering the phone. She said she’d gotten back
with her ex-boyfriend. She made it awkward, too. Like she thought it was weird I was even in there. I guess I have to find
a new breakfast place now.”
“Shit, that sucks.” Nick slumped in his seat. “Those muffins were fucking amazing.”
Jackson gave a wet laugh. “That’s all you’ve got?”
“Well. What do you want me to say? The muffins sound like a bigger loss than the girl.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Jackson sighed. He continued to study the drawn curtains, like maybe Satine would come bursting back through and throw herself into his arms. “I just wish I knew what it felt like to be that sure of someone, you know? Even if my girl left me at the end, it’d have to be better than all these .
. . dead ends. I mean, what’s that thing people say?
It’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all? Who was that, Shakespeare?”
“Alfred Lord Tennyson.” Nick took a long breath. “But he didn’t know what he was talking about, trust me. It’s hard enough
to find someone who gets you. But to find her and then lose her? It’s some next-level, you-aren’t-coming-back-from-this kinda shit. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. It’d be better
not to know. Not to understand what’s missing.”
Jackson swiveled. The overhead light careened off the tear-tracks on his cheeks. “That was you and Aubrey, then? Like those
two up there?”
“Uh . . . yeah.” Nick wished he hadn’t invited the question. But whatever. No point in lying. “Pretty much exactly that. At
least for me.”
Jackson shook his head. He opened his mouth, then closed it, but apparently couldn’t hold back. “You ever wonder if you should
move out? Move here?”
Nick tugged at the hem of his jacket. “Trick question. I’ve got Paige.”
“She’d understand.”
“No, man. She’s sixteen. It’s not an option. I promised her I wasn’t going anywhere, and I’m not a liar. I’m not my dad.”
Jackson heaved another sigh. “Yeah, okay. I guess I don’t know how that works, really.”
Nick squashed down the urge to sit here matching his buddy tear for tear. “Look, all I’m saying is you’re in a better situation
than you realize. Because people also say ignorance is bliss. And there’s a reason for that.”
Jackson made a pass over his face with the hankie, then wadded it up and pocketed it. “Yeah,” he grunted. “Maybe.”
Neither of them made any move to get up. Muted chatter drifted through the open doors, but the theater yawned around them, cavernous. Nick’s mind offered up an image of one of those Russian nesting dolls. An empty shell inside an empty shell.
Jackson broke the quiet with a loud sniff. “Hey, I think our hotel has a gym. What do you say we go beat the crap out of each
other?”
Nick stood up, rolling his shoulders so hard his neck cracked. “Yep. Good idea. Let’s definitely go do that.”
On Sunday morning, Jackson insisted on driving, since he hadn’t on the way up. Nick didn’t argue. He just settled on the passenger
side, wishing for a warmer jacket. Maybe he’d finally fix the heater once he got home.
Not that he wanted to spend all night working on the truck. But he had a burning desire to avoid Tansy, who probably thought
he’d spent the past two days having another imaginary sex marathon and would have no qualms about asking.
For whatever reason, Nick didn’t want to tell her what he’d really done. Aubrey would never know, either, but in his mind,
it linked him to her in some intimate way, and he wanted to keep that for himself. He wanted just one damn piece of her that
would belong to him alone.
He hunkered in his seat. Stupid, pointless thoughts. It was done, now. Time to go home and get on with life. It might take
a week or two before David’s confession worked its way through the proper channels and resulted in an offer of reinstatement,
but Aubrey would probably hear from Osos before Thanksgiving.
Miles passed. Jackson started humming some riff from last night, and Nick envied the guy for somehow being a morning person, despite never drinking a drop of coffee.
Not to mention the fact that no matter how low Jackson’s mood dipped, which didn’t happen often, he always bounced back.
He was like the pop-up mole from that arcade game with the squeaky plastic hammers.
“I guess someone’s feeling better this morning,” he grumbled.
“Yeah.” Jackson grinned. “It’s a brand-new day. I feel great. You?”
“The usual.”
“Which means . . . what? Heart’s all smashed to bits? You got a rabbit hole in your mind deep enough to spit you out in China?”
Nick rasped a flat laugh. “How’d you know?”
“Come on. How many years have we known each other? It’s always the same with you. But I still have hope for you, man. There’s
always hope.”
Nick watched the window. New Jersey rolled by, flat and drab and colorless, which somehow gave him the impression of looking
in a mirror.
Hope. Ha. He’d packed up all his hope, bought it a one-way ticket to Antarctica, and shipped it off himself with one click
of David’s email. He’d do it again, too. “Easy for you to say. You still have a shot of finding your Satine.”
“I don’t mean there’s hope with Aubrey. I just mean that someday, you’re going to stop holding back and actually go out and
do something for yourself.”
“What’re you talking about? I do stuff for myself all the time.”
Jackson ejected a breath that edged on laughter. “Oh yeah? Like what?”
“Like . . . I don’t know. Going to the gym. Like . . .” Writing letters, Nick almost said, then swerved before he could partake in that particular car crash of repressed feeling. “. . . doing this
volunteer thing with Paige. Providing for my family. All kinds of stuff.”
“I hate to break it to you, man, but those aren’t things you do for yourself. And I know you think you’ve been fighting all your life, but the truth is, you’ve been surviving. Reacting. Making do with what you got, which wasn’t much more than a crap dad and an even crappier hand to play.”
Nick grunted. “What’re you, my therapist?”
“I’m your friend. All I’m saying is, you’ve never really fought for anything, not really. For your own sake, I mean.”
“Bullshit.”
Jackson slid him a come-on glance. “Name one thing. One thing you’ve actually gone to war for, just because you wanted it.”
Nick pulled his brows low. “I don’t know. What’ve you gone to war for?”
“Nice.” Jackson nodded. “Deflection. But you know what? I’ll bite, if only to prove a point. So here it is: I’m going to war
for my Satine. The minute we get home, I’m signing up for Tinder, and Bumble, and whatever that other one is where they put
you through an algorithm and match you up using math. I’m going to find my queen or die trying.”
Nick’s heart squeezed at the word algorithm. Then again at the word math. Jesus, could he be any more pathetic? “I don’t think your Satine’s on Tinder.”
Jackson shook his head. “Your attitude sucks.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Come on. Look at all this.” Jackson swept a hand to indicate the rising sun, which spilled light across the frosty landscape.
“It’s a new day. Another chance to go out and seize life by the horns.”
“You sound like a fortune cookie.” Really, Jackson sounded like a young Aubrey, but Nick couldn’t bear to say so.
“Insulting me doesn’t get you out of answering the question.”
His shoulders tightened. “What question?”
“What have you ever fought for, my man?”
Well, fuck. Put so baldly, the question stared Nick in the face. But there had to be an answer. Otherwise, how had he ended up this way?
No, he’d fought, he decided. Sometimes with his fists, sometimes with everything else. He’d had no choice, because life had
started him with little, then given him the world and taken it all away again, and he’d battled and bled and come back empty-handed,