14. Nick
Chapter 14
Nick
I pull Melanie closer in increments every day. She’s comfortable in my space already, so I keep inviting her over for dinner. After training, she goes back to her place to shower and change before coming back. It’s an absurd charade, because dinners always become sleepovers. A few days before her third competition, I suggest she pack her bags early and stay with me the rest of the week to save herself the trips back and forth. She doesn’t need to pack for the competition since it’s practically local, and not overnight—a few hours south in Pueblo—but she agrees anyway. After she dumps her suitcases on the floor of my closet, we spend the rest of the night testing the spring force of my mattress. Melanie calls it “important stamina building.” I call it bliss.
She places third in Pueblo. Not only does that ease my anxieties about our relationship splitting her attention, but it also shoots her confidence into the stratosphere. Her focus is better in training the following week. She listens to me more, talks back less, and rides cleaner as a result. The day after Pueblo, she floats the idea of staying at my place for the rest of the season. She claims it’s so she has more time for training. I lay her on the living room couch, pull down her leggings, and edge her with my tongue until she admits it’s to spend more time with me.
The real magic happens two days later after a particularly good training session. Melanie is grooming GT while I get his dinner ready when Edwin comes into the stable to unload a hay delivery. He stops short, staring at us.
“Okay, I’ve been very patient,” he says. “But Melanie, your car hasn’t moved in three days, and Nick, you’re whistling . I have to know what’s going on here.”
“Is it a crime to be happy?” I ask, embarrassed because I didn’t realize I was whistling.
Edwin cocks his head to one side like he’s giving his answer serious consideration. “For you? Maybe. Melanie, blink twice if he’s holding you hostage.”
“She’s my girlfriend, not a hostage,” I grumble .
Edwin’s jaw drops, and I realize a little too late that Melanie and I haven’t actually discussed labels yet. To my immense relief, when Edwin looks to her for confirmation, she grins.
“If anyone’s the hostage here, it’s Nick,” she says.
“Way to go, broncobuster!” Edwin shouts, startling four of the horses.
I’m too happy about the girlfriend thing to worry about whatever the hell he means. As long as Melanie’s happy, I don’t really give a shit about anyone else’s opinions anyway.
The only fly in the ointment of my new life is Paul. He sends me regular updates on the situation with my father: the process server tried to deliver the notice of the lawsuit; my father ran from the process server; Paul hired a private investigator to find my father; the P.I. served my father with the lawsuit; my father tried to fist-fight the P.I. in a bar and got his ass handed to him, then got hauled off to jail on assault charges; Paul paid my father’s bail; my father reluctantly agreed to take responsibility for his debts; Paul paid the fucking debts so now my father owes Paul; Paul’s putting all the payments my dad makes toward supporting a gambling addict recovery program in California, which Paul also somehow got my father to agree to participate in; Paul’s the fucking savior of the universe. Et cetera.
Paul’s last email is both a relief and a headache:
I’ve spoken to Annette at Rockies Bank any friend of Diana’s is a friend of mine. I’ll bring a copy of everything to you after Thanksgiving so you’ve got it all for your files. It’s been a pleasure.
From any other person, the message would be a miracle. But it’s Paul—the man who broke Melanie’s heart. I suppose I should be grateful to him for that, since Melanie wouldn’t be mine if he hadn’t let her go. It’d be easier to be grateful if I were confident she’d let him go, too, though. Since I’m too much of a yellow-bellied coward to bring him up in front of her, I can’t do much more than guess at her feelings.
My plan, as much as anyone could call it a plan, is to avoid talking about Paul indefinitely. Once he drops off the copy of my dad’s file, there’s no reason we’ll have to interact with each other again, possibly for the rest of our lives. Realistically, I don’t think my dad’s going to change his life just because Paul asked, but I know better now. I’ll keep a closer eye on my affairs, and I won’t let myself land in another situation where Saint Walters has to bail me out, and Melanie never needs to know about this latest feather in his cap.
She’s got enough to worry about as it is. Her fourth competition of the season—and second to last—is the weekend of Thanksgiving, which means she has to decline her mother’s invitation to their annual catered dinner. I’m horrified by the idea of anyone needing an invitation to go over to their parents’ house for a holiday, but Melanie informs me this is normal for her. She’s received an embossed invitation on heavy cream card stock for every Thanksgiving since she turned eighteen.
“Are you upset about missing the holiday?” I ask as we drive out toward North Platte, Nebraska on Thursday morning.
“Am I upset about missing a stuffy, formal meal where my parents will sling thinly veiled insults at me under the guise of listing the things they’re grateful for this year? Hardly,” she says.
Her eyes are sad, though. There’s a heaviness in her shoulders and she’s fidgety.
“I guess what I’m upset about is missing out on the kind of family I’d want to spend the holidays with,” she says finally.
“You can always make that kind of family,” I say.
Instantly, I wish I said something else because what I really mean is, You can always make that kind of family with me , and I’m terrified it’s obvious. Nudging her into moving in with me two weeks into a relationship is already a bold move; I don’t need to follow it up with declaring that I want to have kids with her, even though it’s true.
“I could. With the right person,” she says. “He’d have to love horses. I don’t care if the kids do dressage, or steeple chase, or—heaven help me—rodeos, but I strongly suspect my kids are going to be horse people, so their dad has to be one, too.”
“Obviously. I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
The look in her eyes when I glance at her nearly stops my heart. It’s hope. Unvarnished, unfiltered hope.
“We’d have to find a way to do Thanksgiving on the road if the kids are serious about competing,” she says slowly. Cautiously.
The we rings in my ears like fucking wedding bells. It takes everything in me not to turn the horse trailer around and head for the nearest courthouse for a marriage license.
“Or we could reschedule it,” I offer, my pulse going a million miles an hour. “It’s a mess of a holiday anyway. Who says we can’t have a big, ludicrous meal together a week after everyone else in the country?”
“Good point. Our family, our rules,” she says.
The warm, buoyant sensation in my chest is unfamiliar, but context clues suggest this what it feels like to be happy—really, truly happy—and in love.
“Our family,” I repeat quietly.
She gets second place in North Platte. Not only is it the highest she’s placed since her return, it’s also the most relaxed I’ve ever seen Melanie during a competition. She manages to watch the entire thing, two days in a row, while inflicting minimal nerve damage to my hands. She only tells me she needs to vomit three times, which is down from the eight times she said it in Pueblo.
We find a bar with turkey sandwiches on the menu for a two-day delayed Thanksgiving. It’s a sticky-floor, loud music, low-lighting type of place, but Melanie doesn’t seem to mind. She sits next to me in a booth in the back of the bar, her thigh pressed to mine while we pick over a basket of fries and our turkey sandwiches. This isn’t like any Thanksgiving I’ve ever had—it’s infinitely better.
Halfway through our meal, people start dancing in the middle of the bar. There doesn’t seem to be an official dance floor, but none of the employees bat an eye. Melanie’s gaze flits over to the dancing more than once. She doesn’t ask if I want to dance, but I know her well enough at this point to fill in the blanks.
“What d’you say, Miss Manners—should we dance?” I ask.
“Oh, we don’t have to. ”
I fix her with a challenging stare and her cheeks flush.
“Okay, fine, I want to,” she says.
I stand up and offer her my hand. “I’ll give you anything you want, Melanie, so long as I know you want it.”
“Careful, or you’ll wind up with a few more horses in those stables of yours,” she warns.
Her tone is light and playful, but I see that hope in her eyes again as she takes my hand. I pull her to the dance floor right as the song changes from a bland, unmemorable pop tune to a slow country ballad. It’s a little heavy on the drum machine and light on the guitar for my taste, but I’ll take any excuse to slow dance with Melanie. She winds her arms around my neck while I wrap mine around her waist. I can feel the warmth of her skin through her sweater as we sway together. Her exhales are soft against my collarbone, hitting just above where my heart is pounding. We could be anywhere—the stables, her parents’ living room, the top of an active volcano—and I’d still be happy, simply because she’s holding me, and looking at me like she’s as thrilled about our present circumstances as I am.
I don’t care if it’s too soon, or too risky. I’d rather lay everything out now and lose her than wait a few months and lose her when I’m even deeper in this feeling.
“Melanie—”
“Don’t say it,” she whispers. “If you don’t mean it, don’t you dare say it. If it’s just the music, or the win, don’t even think it. Please.”
“Melanie.” I wait a moment, to make sure she knows I’m serious. “I love you.”
Her eyes swim.
“You don’t have to say it back,” I whisper. “But I mean it, more than I’ve ever meant anything in my whole sorry life. I know it’s fast, but—”
“I love you, too.”
Her words suck all the air out of my lungs.
“Don’t look so shocked,” she says through a giggle. “After I talked about what horse-related extra-curricular our kids are going to do, I figured you knew.”
“Hoped,” I answer. “Hoped, but didn’t know.”
She pulls my head down towards her and kisses me. For the first time since I met her, I stop worrying. I don’t worry about Paul coming to his senses and realizing he walked away from the greatest woman on earth, or about her parents stomping all over her dreams, or about GT realizing mid-race that he has free will and doesn’t have to keep jumping over all those poles if he doesn’t want to, or even about whether or not my dad is going to quit his gambling addict program and try to ruin my life again. None of that seems possible anymore, because I’m living in a world where Melanie Archer loves me.
We kiss long enough for the song to change, and only break so she can catch her breath. I rest my forehead against hers, enjoying the way she’s pressed against me. But I’m beyond ready to get out of this bar, then get her out of her sweater, and into our bed in our mid-tier Nebraska hotel.
“Hey Nick,” she whispers. “Take me back to the hotel. I’ve got more plans for our future, and none of them involve pants.”
I kiss her again, my heart light. “Whatever you want, Miss Manners.”