Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
“W hat the fuck, JP?” Meredith says. “You failed to mention my best friend's ex-husband was in tow.”
“We had that pickleball thing tonight, babe, I told you. You know Nick is on my team.” Nick stands behind JP, sheepish. I can’t remember the last time I saw him. Probably not since we met at the attorney’s office and signed our final divorce decree.
“A little warning would’ve been nice.” She looks to me to get a read on what I'm thinking. I shrug and give her a look—it's fine.
As they take off their coats and sit, I watch him. Nick looks good. His blond hair is shorter than it was when I last saw him. He finally got rid of his horrible facial hair and looks clean cut and much younger than I remember. He lost the quarantine weight and seems to have put some muscle back on. He looks every bit the young, cocky athlete I met in Baltimore all those years ago, but slightly more refined.
“Hi, Julia, good to see you.”
I give him an awkward wave.
Meredith flags down the server and orders a round of beers.
“You two smell terrible.” She scrunches her nose. “Do they not have showers at the New York Athletic Club? For the money you two shell out every month there, certainly you could’ve utilized the amenities.”
I can't stop looking at Nick. A flood of memories hits me: carrying a couch up the three flights to our first apartment, laughing, sweating, and cursing. Picking crabs and drinking Natty Bos in my mom's backyard. Opening a bottle of champagne and drinking it straight from the bottle in our New Jersey house. I try and fail to stop myself.
For the next forty-five minutes, I nurse my beer and listen to the three of them banter.
“You’re lucky you’re one of my best friends, because you are clearly the weakest link on our team,” JP says.
“Are you serious?” Nick laughs. “You’re the one wearing two knee braces. Your arthritis is going to force us into the geriatric league.”
“It's embarrassing for both of you. What are you guys, seventy-five? What is pickleball even? Actually, don’t tell me, I’m so sick of hearing about it,” Meredith says.
Eventually, she yawns and looks at her watch. “All right babe, let’s go.” They get up to leave, and Nick looks at me from across the booth.
“How about one last round?” he asks.
Meredith’s eyes go wide.
“Okay,” I say.
She mouths to me, “Are you okay?”
I nod.
Text me, she mimes before heading out hand in hand with JP.
“So, how have you been?” Nick asks.
"I've been great, how about you?"
"Good. Hoboken is a good scene for me. I come into the city three days a week but can work mostly from home. It's nice."
"That's great. How's your family?”
"They're good. My sister is pregnant again. Baby number three."
"Congrats to her."
"How are your mom and Ryan?"
"They're good. Everyone is good."
Silence.
“I won’t pretend I don’t know who you're dating,” he says eventually.
I stare at him, remembering his text the morning after the Grammys. The one I never responded to.
“If I didn’t know I fucked up before, I definitely know now,” he murmurs.
“What are you talking about?”
He takes a deep breath, and something in his eyes seems suddenly old and tired. Like the burden of carrying these thoughts around has aged him. “I’ve had a lot of time to think over the past two years. I didn’t see it for a long time—the part I played in the end of our marriage. I was so sure that what I was feeling at the time was permanent, that it would never change. I didn’t realize if I had tried a little bit harder, maybe it would’ve gone away. Or at least maybe I could have prevented the distance from growing to what it was.”
I'm shocked.
“I appreciate that, but I don’t think it's necessary to hash any of it out at this point. It’s all water under the bridge now, Nick.”
"I know, I just wanted to say it. Maybe for the first time out loud, certainly the first time to you. I wanted to make sure you knew. I know you blamed yourself a lot. That wasn't fair."
"Why did we even get married, Nick?" I blurt out. I can't get over how sad he looks. It's making me sad.
"What do you mean, why? I loved you."
"I know. I know we thought we loved each other. But there was clearly a disconnect somewhere."
"I think I loved you in the best way I knew how, and it felt like marriage was the next step. It was the path we were on. We dated, lived together, an engagement and marriage were the next things on the list. We were one of the last couples to get married out of all of our friends."
"You asked me to marry you because our friends were doing it?"
"No, Jules. Of course not. I'm just saying that was the progression of a relationship as we knew it. We never had major issues. We never fought. It felt easy, we were a good fit. And it just seemed like marriage was the next step."
I sigh. "You're right," I say quietly.
"And there's a lot I wish I did differently."
"Me too," I admit.
He starts peeling the label off his beer. “Are you happy?” he asks.
“I don’t think that's any of your business.” I feel my hackles rise. I would’ve given anything to hear him ask me that question three years ago.
“Okay, I don't mean to pry.” He backs off. “It's just, I know when you and Meredith come here for margarita nights, one if you is usually working through something.”
I stop at that, forgetting how much Nick knows about my life, my habits, my friends, despite the fact we have not been together in so long.
“Yes, I am happy.”
“I hope he doesn’t make the same mistakes as I did.”
“And what might those be?” I ask. I can't help myself.
For months after we split, I fantasized about the ways in which I might exact revenge on Nick for his stupidity in letting me go. Part of that included all the ways in which he'd grovel and say it was all his fault. It hasn’t crossed my mind in a long time, but now that the opportunity is in front of me, I'm dying to know.
“Taking you for granted, for one. Only caring about me and all my own shit. I stopped noticing all the things that made you you , that made me fall in love with you all those years ago. The way you hum to yourself whenever you're doing things around the house. The way you'd absentmindedly thumb through your hair on the couch when you were watching TV. The way you make everyone around you better—calmer, more understood. The way you'd look at me when I was talking to you, you'd squint your eyes a little and I'd know you were really listening. You're doing it now. You're so perceptive, you always have been, another thing I took for granted. But that intuition of yours was unnerving to me at the end, because I felt like you could see me pulling away before I even knew what I was doing."
Putting aside the last few months of our failing marriage, Nick has always known how to cut to the core of me, in the best of ways. Being able to read me so clearly, know me so deeply, was a power he’d earned over time. I'm surprised by how introspective he seems to be now. I always thought his ego would make it near impossible for him to look inside himself and admit any wrongdoing. But the man sitting in front of me seems to be a very different version of the Nick I knew. A newer, more vulnerable one. I soften and feel something like pride at his evolution. Then, almost instantly, a sadness. Grief that I'll never get to know this version of Nick.
"You know, in hindsight, I'm glad you told me you didn’t love me anymore. Don't get me wrong, it was incredibly painful, but you saying that made everything so final. We couldn't recover from that, so the next steps were clear. If you hadn't been honest with me in that moment, who knows what we would've done? Dragged out the misery a while longer? Added some kids to the mix and hoped that did the trick? Muddling through thirty-plus years together with no love isn't something I'd wish for anyone,” I say.
"I'm not going to pretend seeing you with someone else doesn't hurt a little. I know I have no right to say that. But it does," he admits.
I nod. I feel for him. It cannot help that it would be hard for him to miss me and Matt. Especially after the Grammys.
"I'm not going to pry any more than I have already. But answer one question," he says.
"Okay."
"Does he know how lucky he is?"
I'm embarrassed to find my eyes filling with tears. Here sits my ex-husband, the source of my pain for years. But he’s also somebody who I loved and who loved me for a long time prior to that.
"Yes. He does."
Nick nods, and the right side of his mouth twitches into a sad smile.
"Good. You deserve that and more, Jules."