2. Adrian #2
Nina comes downstairs in jeans and a sweater, her hair pulled back, her face pale and tired.
“I can’t do today.” She says it without preamble, without the usual softening. “Something came up.”
I set down my coffee cup. Very carefully. Very precisely.
“What do you mean, you can’t do today?”
“Cole has an appointment. He asked me to go with him.”
“An appointment.”
“For the family stuff. It’s important.”
“More important than-” I stop myself. Try to breathe. “We haven’t missed an Ocean Avenue drive in ten years, Nina. Ten years. Through everything. And now you’re canceling for an ‘appointment’?”
“I know.” Her voice is small. “I know, and I’m sorry, but he doesn’t have anyone else. His family is scattered, and he’s dealing with-” She cuts herself off, like she almost said too much. “He needs me.”
And here is the conversation I have next. The whole thing, word for word, in the half second before I open my mouth:
“I need you.” Raw and desperate, nothing like the careful control I’ve been maintaining.
Her face crumpling. Adrian, please. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.
Just this once. Me, pressing, finally pressing: You said that last week when you missed dinner.
And the week before, when you disappeared for five hours.
So when does it end? When do I get my wife back?
When does Cole’s crisis stop being more important than our marriage?
Crossing the kitchen. Cupping her face in my hands, forcing her to look at me while she cries against my palms and whispers soon, I promise, soon - and then, in the version that lives in my head, she finally tells me what’s actually happening, and it’s something I can fight, and I fight it, and we win.
That’s how it goes behind my eyes. All of it, complete, in less time than it takes my coffee to cool one degree.
What I actually say is:
“Go. Cole needs you. I understand.”
“Adrian-”
“I said go.”
She doesn’t go. Not right away. She crosses the kitchen and takes my face in both hands and kisses me - hard, fierce, a whole argument’s worth of things she isn’t saying pressed into ten seconds - and when she pulls back, her eyes are wet.
“I know how this looks,” she whispers. “I know what it’s costing you. It isn’t what you think. You’re the only-” She stops herself. Presses her thumb once against my jaw, gentle as punctuation. “I’ll be back for dinner. I’ll make the pasta you like. Just... don’t give up on me yet. Okay?”
I don’t answer. I can’t.
Then she grabs her keys and her purse and she’s gone, the door closing behind her with a sound like a period at the end of a sentence neither of us finished.
I stand in the empty kitchen and count to ten.
Then I pour my coffee down the drain and go upstairs and lie on our bed - on her side, the one that smells like jasmine - and stare at the ceiling and try to remember the last time I felt like I knew my own wife.
***
I drive Ocean Avenue alone.
The roads are empty this early - just me and the ocean and ten miles of memories.
I pass the spot where we pulled over on our honeymoon, so desperate for each other we couldn’t wait to get home.
I pass the overlook where I proposed, where she said yes before I finished the question, where we laughed and cried and held each other while the sunset turned everything gold.
I pass all the places where we were happy, and they feel like crime scenes now. Evidence of something that used to exist. Something I’m losing and can’t figure out how to save.
I stop at our favorite spot and sit on the hood of my car and watch the waves crash against the rocks below.
She’s choosing him, the worst part of my brain whispers. Over and over, she’s choosing him over you.
I want to argue with that voice. I want to list all the reasons why Nina loves me, all the evidence of ten years of devotion.
But the evidence has been shrinking lately. And Cole’s name keeps getting bigger in its place.
***
She’s not home when I get back.
I don’t know why I’m surprised. She’s never home anymore, not really. Even when her body is here, her mind is somewhere else - with Cole, presumably, at whatever appointment was more important than a decade of tradition.
I pour a drink. Then another. By the third, I’ve stopped counting, and the edges of everything have gone soft and manageable.
Late, long after the dinner has gone cold, headlights sweep across the windows. I hear her key in the lock, her footsteps in the foyer, her quiet voice calling my name.
“Adrian? Are you awake?”
I should answer. I should go to her, talk to her, try one more time to bridge this distance between us.
Instead, I stay in the guest room with the door closed and the lights off and pretend I’m already asleep.
Let her wonder where I am for once.
Let her feel what it’s like to be the one left waiting.
***
Sunday Morning
We’re having breakfast - actual breakfast, together, at the table, like people who still know how to do this - when her phone buzzes.
She glances at the screen. Her face does something complicated.
“I have to take this,” she says, already pushing back from the table.
“Nina-”
But she’s gone, French doors swinging behind her, the veranda swallowing her voice the way it always does now.
I eat my eggs. They taste like sawdust.
She comes back ten minutes later with red-rimmed eyes and a smile that’s trying too hard.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
Don’t ask. Don’t ask. You know what happens when you ask.
“Fine.” She sits down, picks up her fork, doesn’t eat. “Just... Cole stuff. You know.”
“What kind of Cole stuff?”
She looks at me - really looks, for the first time in days - and I see something in her expression I can’t identify. Panic, maybe. Or guilt. Or the desperate hope that I won’t push.
“Family things,” she says finally. “He’s dealing with a lot right now.”
“What kind of family things?”
The question hangs in the air between us. I watch her weigh it, watch her decide how much to give.
“I can’t really...” She trails off. Tries again. “He asked me not to talk about it. It’s private.”
“Private from me?”
“Private from everyone.” She reaches across the table, takes my hand. Her fingers are cold. “I’m sorry. I know this is weird. I know I’ve been... distracted. But I promised him I wouldn’t, and you know how I am about promises.”
I do know. It’s one of the things I love most about her - the way her word, once given, becomes something inviolable. She promised to love me once, in a church full of flowers and family, and I’ve never doubted it.
Until now.
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay?”
“If you can’t tell me, you can’t tell me.”
The relief that floods her face is almost painful to watch. She squeezes my hand, leans across the table, kisses my cheek.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “I love you. You know that, right?”
“I know.”
But later, when she’s on the veranda again with the wind stealing her words, I make myself list what’s still true.
She still says it. She still means it - I’d stake my life on that much.
She still reaches for me in the dark, her hand finding my arm in her sleep like a compass finding north.
Just this morning she stood behind my chair and pressed a kiss to the top of my head for no reason at all, and her hand stayed on my shoulder one beat longer than habit requires.
The love isn’t the question.
The question is what she’s protecting with it - and why protecting it looks so much like leaving.
Just errands, she’d said last week.
I know every shop she loves on Bellevue Avenue, and “just errands” fits into exactly none of them.
I open my mouth to ask.
I close it again.
The old rule holds, and the silence grows another inch between us.