Chapter 21 #2
But that wasn’t entirely what Emily meant.
In May, Nora left a few days early and flew to LA first to spend time with Dev.
He picked her up at LAX in his BMW convertible and put the top down as they drove out of the city, onto the windy highway and into the hills of Malibu.
Nora breathed in the salty Pacific air, Dev reached for her hand and squeezed it, and suddenly she exhaled, feeling lighter than she had in months.
“This bicoastal thing is hard,” Dev said as they got out of his car. He grabbed her suitcase from the trunk and wheeled it inside his house.
Nora nodded in agreement. They’d seen each other only twice all spring.
Once when Dev had met her in Chicago to visit Dad just after he’d started treatment.
And another time when Dev had come to New York and they’d spent Easter weekend at the Plaza.
Phone calls, emails, texts, and a weekly Sunday Skype were not the same thing.
Dev put her suitcase down inside his neat, contemporary-styled living room, and then he grabbed her in a hug.
Nora clung to him, inhaling the strong, woodsy scent of his aftershave.
A smell that always reminded her of Christmas.
“I know you need to go see your sisters on Sunday,” he said softly into her hair.
“But what if you come back here after that and stay for a while?”
Was he asking her to move in with him? Nora froze for a moment, unsure what to say, how to react. Her body wanted to lean into him more. Her mind sounded with alarm bells. She needed to be in New York to keep auditioning.
But what if she didn’t? Stella had been fielding movie and TV offers for her all spring.
“At least stay until the premiere,” Dev added. Their movie was out in the middle of August, and Nora already had plans to fly back out here then, for the premiere. “What if we tried this for real, Nora? For the summer.”
Nora didn’t answer right away, and Dev tilted her chin up toward his with his forefinger, then leaned down and gently kissed her. “I’m tired of missing you,” he said.
Nora felt his words, his kiss, deep in her chest. It was a feeling she never had before she’d met him, a warmth, like she was glowing from the inside out.
She couldn’t give up her career for a man.
She wouldn’t. But maybe she owed it to herself, to him, to give them the summer and see what might happen.
“Okay, let’s do it. I’m tired of missing you too,” she finally answered.
On Wednesday in Coronado, Julia woke up when it was dark still. She checked the clock: 4:30 a.m. It was seven thirty at home. Close enough, she thought. She had too much on her mind to try to go back to sleep, so instead she crept out of bed, went quietly down the steps, and brewed a pot of coffee.
She grabbed a blanket and went and sat out on the front porch, sipping slowly from the warm mug, trying to calm herself down by listening to the waves lapping the shore, just across the street.
The moon was full and bright, and hung low enough over the water that it illuminated everything.
The beach looked long and lovely and almost blue, the water both black and pearlescent.
She heard the front door creak open next door, and she turned—there was Nate, tiptoeing out onto his porch.
She was expecting him to be in a wet suit.
But no, he wore plaid pajama bottoms and an oversized Penn sweatshirt, and had his own steaming mug of coffee in his hand.
Of course. Mallory was asleep inside. He wasn’t about to leave her all alone to go jump into the ocean like he had in his former life, even if he wanted to.
Wasn’t that part of what being a parent was?
Leaving the old pieces of who you once were behind, embracing who you were now, a keeper and nurturer of this entirely other being.
He noticed her watching and motioned for her to sit with him.
She hesitated—her mind was clouded with so many thoughts, worries, she wasn’t really in the mood for conversation.
Her father. And, also, what were Ted and Veronica doing right now in the Hamptons?
She wanted the ocean air, her coffee, the predawn quiet to steady herself, alone.
But Nate kept on staring at her, so she finally wrapped herself in the blanket and walked over to his porch.
He reached out to hug her, but then the blanket made it difficult, and he patted her awkwardly on both her shoulders instead. “You look tired, Jules,” he said. “You should go back to sleep.”
“So should you,” she said pointedly.
He shook his head. “Nah, I’ve needed this early-morning time to study and get stuff done. And now my body just naturally gets up at this hour.”
“How’s school going?” she asked him.
“Good, I’m student-teaching in the fall. Mal will be in preschool. Hopefully next year when she goes to kindergarten, I can get a full-time teaching job. Good, steady hours with a kid at home, you know?”
She nodded. Like she did know. But the truth was, she didn’t know at all.
Part-time law was never as part-time as she wanted, and Julia often felt like a full-time failure as both a lawyer and a mother.
It didn’t help that Veronica, at not quite eleven, had already begun acting like a full-blown ungrateful teenager.
At first, she just hated camp, tennis, a girl from school who’d been her friend since the pre-K years.
But now that was blossoming into what seemed like a permanent chip on her shoulder directed squarely and specifically at her mother.
Julia had kissed V goodbye Sunday morning before she’d left for the airport, told her to enjoy her week in the Hamptons with Ted and her grandparents, and Veronica had rolled over from a half-sleep to tell Julia that she hated her for leaving every May.
All the parenting books decried this mom-hate as normal, but still, it was hard to hear.
It felt unfair that exactly none of V’s wrath ever seemed directed at Ted. The two of them were thick as thieves.
“But you’re on vacation.” Nate was still talking, and Julia tried to shake away the thoughts of Veronica’s new preadolescent mean streak. “Why are you up?”
She shrugged and paused to take a sip of her coffee. “Time change,” she lied. Nate gave her a look like he could see right through her. She sighed. “My dad has a big doctor’s appointment today. To find out if the chemo worked.”
She had made the schedule for this week extra busy, every moment packed, hoping to keep all of their minds off what felt like impending doom. But that still hadn’t stopped her from waking up early, from tossing and turning all night. From worry running through her veins, hot and thick.
“I’m sure it worked,” Nate said.
But of course, he couldn’t know that. And Julia suddenly remembered the way his face had looked when they were sitting out here the summer his mom had gotten diagnosed.
And how he had insisted that she couldn’t help him and that he couldn’t love her anymore.
As she thought about it all these years later, it still stung a little.
“It had to have worked,” Nate added.
“I hope so,” she said, and for the first time she really felt in her bones how hard it must’ve been for Nate to go through this at twenty-one. At the time, she knew, theoretically, that it was difficult. But now she really understood it, viscerally, in a way that momentarily took her breath away.
Nate reached out and gently patted her thigh, and the warmth of his hand made her slowly breathe again. “I definitely didn’t handle it well when my mom was going through it,” Nate said. “I thought pushing everyone away was the only way to survive. Stop feeling altogether.”
She nodded, understanding now the way she hadn’t back then. Nate had been desperately trying to protect his heart.
“But if you need anything, Jules… even if you just need to talk. I’m here for you,” Nate added softly now.
One week a year, she thought, remembering how he’d said that to her when she’d offered him the same solace.
They both noticed headlights at the same time—a car driving slowly down Ocean Boulevard.
Nate quickly moved his hand back from her thigh, like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have.
Julia didn’t dare look at him and peered out toward the street instead.
One lone BMW rolled toward them. It stopped right in front of Nate’s, parked by the curb.
“You expecting company?” Julia asked. It occurred to her that Nate could be dating someone again. That if he was, he probably wouldn’t have mentioned it to her in the emails and texts they shared throughout the year. But Nate shook his head.
The driver door opened, and then a man in a black baseball cap hopped out. She didn’t have her contacts in yet, and the glasses she’d traveled with were an old prescription. She squinted, trying to get a better look in the low light. “Is that… is that Devlin St. Claire?” Julia whispered to Nate.
“Who?” Nate asked.
It was almost unbelievable that Nate didn’t know who Devlin was, until she remembered Mallory wasn’t old enough yet for The Wizards of Central Park.
So she didn’t explain about him being a celebrity, the momentary feeling of being starstruck herself.
Instead, she simply answered him: “Nora’s boyfriend. ”