Chapter 12
Emily couldn’t come because it was during her finals.
Julia couldn’t come because it was too hard to manage the details of leaving Veronica for Coronado twice in May.
They’d considered switching their week from the last week in May to the first, but the Ocean Boulevard house was already rented.
Nora, who had recently left the Hairspray tour and didn’t have all that much going on other than trying to figure out her next move, said she didn’t mind going out there twice.
She was used to traveling now. Besides, it was Nate!
At least one of them had to show up as the May sister representative for his wedding.
And Nate had very kindly offered that Nora could stay in his guest room so she wouldn’t have to pay for a hotel, since he and Becca would be away on their honeymoon anyway.
Still, it felt odd to get out of the taxi on Ocean Boulevard a few weeks earlier than normal, to see two children she didn’t know playing with a soccer ball out on Grandma Vera’s porch, like it belonged to them.
She supposed that for the week it did, that unfamiliar families and strange, tiny children rotated in and out all year long.
Her head had long known this information, of course.
But her heart lurched actually seeing it like this, before her.
She knocked on Nate’s front door, steeling herself for Becca. Taking a deep breath and trying to get into character the way she did before a show. Happy, supportive, longtime friend/little sister. That was right. She was here because she was thrilled for Nate and Becca. Thrilled.
When no one answered the door on her first knock, she tried again. “Nate! Becca!” she called out, making her voice higher-pitched than usual, overly cheerful. “You lovebirds home?”
There was still no response, and she sat down on a porch rocker and rifled through her backpack. She had neglected to bring either the wedding invitation or her address book, and she hadn’t called Nate enough times to have his cell phone number memorized.
She had Julia on speed dial, though, so she called her instead.
But her cell phone went straight to voicemail.
She tried her house number next, and that went straight to Ted’s voice on the answering machine.
Before she could wonder too much about where Julia could possibly be at dinnertime on a weeknight, Nate’s front door suddenly swung open.
And then she heard his gravelly voice: “Oh, shit. Nora. You’re here. ”
She stood from the rocker. “Nice to see you too, buddy.”
But in that moment she actually saw him.
He was unshaven, days-old stubble across his chin, and his usually sexy and somewhat tousled wavy hair was sticking straight up in the back.
He was wearing plaid pajama bottoms and a tattered UCLA sweatshirt.
This did not look like a man two days away from his dream beach wedding.
The last time she had seen Nate looking close to anything like this, it was the summer his mom got sick.
“What’s going on?” she asked, her voice hitching. “What’s wrong?”
“Shit,” he said again. “I emailed Jules and asked her to tell you and Em.”
“Tell me what?” She was suddenly registering it as strange that Julia had somehow both forgotten to tell them something from Nate and that she wasn’t answering her phone.
“Becca and I broke up last week. There’s no wedding,” he said flatly.
“Shit.” Now it was her turn to curse, and she focused her full attention on him. “Nate, I’m so sorry—”
He held up his hand to stop her from saying any more. “It’s fine. I’m fine,” he said.
Nora put her hands on her hips. “You don’t look fine.”
He stared at her for another moment, but he didn’t try to argue.
It probably made her a bad person that she was feeling the smallest sense of relief building up inside of her.
Nate and Becca aren’t getting married! Nate would still be here, next door each May, just the same Nate he always was.
But she swallowed this selfish feeling back.
Even thinking it made her feel like a horrible person, like she was secretly reveling in his grief.
“I can get a hotel,” she said instead. “And I’ll…
see if I can get a flight out in the morning.
” And also, she was going to kill Julia for not telling her this before she flew all the way out here. Once she finally got ahold of her.
Nate shook his head, opened the door wider, and ushered her inside. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “You’re already here. I told you that you could have my guest room. Stay until Saturday morning like you’d planned.”
She hesitated for a moment. “I’d be bothering you. You don’t look like you’re up for company right now.”
He reached up to run his hand through his hair and it caught in a tangle of knots.
He frowned, as if he suddenly realized how bad he actually looked.
Then he shook his head. “You’re not company, Nora.
You’re family. Why don’t you come in and get settled?
I’ll shower and then we can get something to eat. ”
Nate was looking more like Nate after a shower, dressed in a clean pair of jeans and a well-fitting T-shirt.
But when Nora offered to buy him a drink, he said he’d rather have sugar than alcohol.
Nora suggested ice cream, and they walked toward town in silence, heading to MooTime.
This charming old-fashioned ice cream place opened in the late nineties, so it hadn’t been here when they’d visited Grandma Vera as kids, but if it had, she imagined she would’ve begged to come every night.
As adults, they’d stopped in only a handful of times, as usually there was a long line that went out the door and down Orange Avenue a block or two.
But today it was the grayest of May days, when even late in the afternoon the sun hadn’t managed to penetrate the low cloud cover and the air felt chilly. It was the first time Nora had ever seen MooTime completely empty, and they walked inside, straight up to the ice cream counter. No line.
“Get whatever you want,” she said to Nate. “My treat.” And though it was silly and just ice cream, saying this made her feel like maybe she was finally a grown-up in his eyes. Or at least, she hoped she was.
“Maybe I should get vanilla,” Nate said to no one in particular. “Because that’s how Becca sees me. But I don’t even like vanilla. I like chocolate.”
“So get chocolate,” Nora said.
“But chocolate can be boring too,” Nate said. “It’s plain. Unoriginal. Uninspiring.” He accentuated every syllable in such a way that Nora was pretty sure Becca had said those exact words to him before dumping him the week before their wedding. What a bitch! Nate was better off without her.
Nora kept those thoughts inside her head and instead said: “I love chocolate.” Grandma Vera always used to say Emily was the chocolate of their trio because she was the perfect blend of bitter and sweet, and that always seemed more interesting than her own assigned graham crackers, which were frankly plain, and always tasted a little stale to her.
“No,” Nate said. “I want the flavor of the month. Rocky Road. Now, that sounds fitting, doesn’t it?”
“Two small Rocky Roads,” Nora said to the bewildered-looking teenager behind the counter.
“Cup or cone?” The teenager sighed.
Nora glanced at Nate, who no longer seemed to be paying attention. “Cones,” she finally said.
“I’m really sorry you came all the way out here,” Nate said as they licked their ice creams before they could melt and walked down Orange toward the Hotel del Coronado. “I feel like such an ass for not messaging you, separate from Jules.”
Nora’s annoyance over the whole thing had softened now that this trip had turned into her and Nate, like this.
Spending time together. She’d told herself she’d long outgrown her girlhood crush on him, but after being so on-again, off-again with Leo, she had started to wonder whether any man would ever live up to the perfection of Nate in her head.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” Nora said.
“I’m between jobs anyway, and you know I love it here. I’m just sorry you’re sad.”
“I’m not sad,” Nate said. “I’m more angry. And not even at her. At myself.”
“Did you… do something wrong?” Nora thought about Leo, his now one-year-old son, and the fact he still called her sometimes. But she could not imagine any universe in which Nate would act like him.
“I knew it wasn’t right between us,” Nate said. “But I kept thinking I could make it work. If I tried hard enough, I could fix everything, you know?”
“Sure,” Nora said, thinking about Leo again.
She no longer believed he would ever leave his wife, or imagined herself moving into his place on the Upper East Side.
She still met up with him occasionally, but now it had nothing to do with her thinking they had any kind of future together.
It was more that Leo still believed that she was going places, and she enjoyed this perception of herself.
It was as if, every time she was with him, she could imagine her own success through his eyes.
She inwardly cringed even thinking about this now; it felt so self-serving.
If she were to try to explain this to Nate now (which she definitely would not), she wasn’t even sure she could pin down her own logic.
“I get it,” she finally said. “But you should give yourself a break. Don’t be angry with yourself.
You fell in love. You put yourself out there. It doesn’t always work out.”
She finished off her cone with one last satisfying crunch, wiped her fingers on a napkin, and then stood up on her tiptoes and patted Nate on the shoulder.
“Little Noradora.” He used her earliest nickname and grinned at her. “When did you get to be so wise?”
Later that night, after they shared a takeout white pizza from Village Pizzeria, Nate popped popcorn on the stove, and he brought it to Nora in a giant bowl on the couch.
He had an old copy of Some Like It Hot, and he popped it into the VCR.
There was still something thrilling about watching Marilyn Monroe, right here in Coronado where it was filmed, at the Hotel del Coronado.
“I haven’t seen this in years. Not since…
” She thought about it for a moment. “God, I think it might’ve been like 1996?
” Nora distinctly remembered now that she and Grandma Vera had last watched this movie together when she was sixteen or seventeen, then talked about her mom’s acting in high school.
It was one of the few times Grandma Vera had ever said anything substantial about her mom to Nora.
“Well, I’m pretty sure it hasn’t aged well.” Nate laughed as he plopped down on the couch next to her, reaching into the popcorn bowl to take a handful.
“I always loved Marilyn’s voice though.” Grandma Vera did too. Watching this movie usually ended with Nora and Vera doing their own rendition of “I Wanna Be Loved by You.”
As the opening credits cued now, Nora teared up, missing Grandma Vera, wishing she could hold her close and sing with her again.
“You okay?” Nate asked, noticing as Nora wiped her eyes.
She nodded and sniffled a little. “I know it’s already been… six years. But sometimes it still feels like she died yesterday.”
“Vera would be so proud of you,” Nate said. “A real Broadway actress! You made it, Nora.”
She didn’t correct him; she hadn’t actually been on Broadway yet but traveling in two different national tours.
As a member of the ensemble and as an understudy.
That barely felt like it scratched the surface of her dream.
“I don’t know.” Nora sighed. “Sometimes I think if she were here, she’d agree with my father by now.
That I should go back to college and find a respectable career, and that I’m pretty much wasting my life with acting. ”
Julia had a law degree, a husband, and a kid. Emily was almost finished with grad school now and would probably soon have some fancy museum job. What did she actually have to show for herself?
“I disagree,” Nate said after a moment. “I actually think Vera would be thrilled with your career. And, that she would tell you to follow your heart.”
She warmed at the compliment from him, at the thought that maybe, just maybe, he could be right.
If her grandmother were still here, maybe she would still understand Nora completely.
Maybe she would cheer on every tiny role and tell her to keep on going, keep on trying.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, she might say.
Or, The heart wants what the heart wants.
Then she thought about what Grandma Vera had told her the last time they watched this movie—that her mom had loved to act too. It apparently had been her mother’s dream, and maybe the very least she could do was to somehow make it as an actress, for both their sakes.