Thirty-three
Nadine was back in the pagoda. She drank the wine, and she felt bad. She hadn’t felt bad when she’d left Wes and had gone to her room to pace around, upset and unable to focus. It wasn’t until she heard the front door open and close that the doubt snuck in, dragging along its friend regret to the party and eventually leading her to the bottle of wine and lying in a pagoda, hoping spiders didn’t drop on her head.
She hugged her knees into her chest. Without the heat of anger, she could map out where things had gone wrong. Wes wanted to talk to his editor. Nadine had said no because she wasn’t ready for either of them to escalate the story, and Wes had interpreted it as she wasn’t, but he was good to go. That was still weird, but she could at least see how a miscommunication could happen.
Then it had escalated when she saw that story on his laptop. Those doubts about Wes she thought she’d put to rest reared back up. If she hadn’t gone on the attack, they could have sorted it out in the moment, but her response had been almost instinctive. She was under no illusions that she could kiss her job goodbye if Daniel found out what she’d been up to, not from her but from the Spear . Wes’s response had not been reassuring and had added to her fury.
She cringed at how she’d lost control and said those things, even if deep down, she felt they were partially true. If only she could be as clearheaded in the moment as she was after the fact. She probably had to apologize.
However, Wes had been a vindictive asshole, so she wasn’t the only one who had to say sorry.
A rustle came from the bushes, and Nadine sat up, listening hard before she grabbed the wine bottle and stood, ready to take on the intruder.
“Nadine?”
Wes stood on the opposite side of the moat. She sagged in a relief that was only momentary because although it wasn’t a killer (hooray), she thought she had until morning to figure out a game plan for dealing with Wes. She was going to have to wing it.
He stepped back. “Is this a pagoda?” he asked. “With a moat?”
“There’s a bridge on the other side.” The small peace offering gave Wes a choice: come in and talk, or leave. For a sickening moment, she wasn’t sure what he would do, but then he moved around and came over the bridge.
Nadine watched him approach, heart dancing a cha-cha. She’d covered a lot of corporate apologies for work, but she didn’t have a PR person to help her craft a response here. Best not to overthink it.
Once Wes entered the pagoda as a darker shadow against the black of the night, she said, “Misunderstandings were made earlier, and I might have been an ass to you.”
“Is that your attempt at an apology?” he asked.
Her desire to be the bigger person withered. She glared at him. “I don’t know. Why don’t we see after I hear yours?”
“You were the one to jump all over me,” he said, hands flat on the bench.
“Right, and when you told me I was ridiculous and you didn’t need me?” That had hurt, and she couldn’t keep her voice from breaking. “That I was terrible at my job?”
“How about when you said I was a failure at mine?”
They both looked away. It was Nadine who spoke first. “That was wrong of me. I feel awful that I said that to you.” She did, too, filled with a sick emptiness that she could have been so nasty.
That reduced the tension between them.
“I shouldn’t have said what I did either,” said Wes. “I was angry, and it was shitty of me.”
“Yes, it was.” She looked at the wine and came out with it. “I’m sorry.”
Wes sat down. “I’m sorry too.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “For what I said and also for going to talk to the Spear . I think I might have heard what I wanted when we talked about going to the editor. I should have told you straight out that I was going to talk to Jason and pitch the story to make sure there was no misunderstanding. That’s my fault.”
“I knew it!” Nadine jumped up, feeling vindicated. “I was right about that conversation. I knew I was. It was a big deal.”
Wes’s face made it clear he was trying his best. “I’m sorry for saying that. I swear I wasn’t consciously trying to scoop you.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Who did you tell?”
“Jason wasn’t in. I talked to Tyler.” He told her the conversation, and she sat back down.
“First, what a dick. Second, no one saw the story you were writing?” she confirmed. “You only used Dot’s name and not John Wilson? Or mentioned me?”
“No one else’s name crossed my lips.”
She let her breath out in a slow exhale. “Yeah. Okay. We both made mistakes, but I’ve long known you’re not perfect.”
He sat down. “Glad we came to a positive conclusion.”
Nadine got the sense he wasn’t finished and waited.
“Did you mean what you said?” Wes finally asked in a low voice.
“Which part in particular?” she asked cautiously.
“Not trusting me.”
Her hands went cold. Wes was looking over at her, and it didn’t take a genius to see however they handled this would be the beginning or the end of what they could be. She was grateful for the night shading her, feeling skittish at the idea of having to talk about her feelings. Maybe that was part of the problem. She put walls up at work to protect herself, but she’d have to build a door that fit him. It was scary that Wes was no longer only part of her professional life. He had become personal, and not only when they started sleeping together. It had started far earlier than that, with the seeds planted before they’d begun work with Dot.
She crossed her legs and pulled the blanket tighter, wanting the comfort even if she didn’t need the warmth. “We’ve known each other a long time,” she said slowly. “After we had that talk, we didn’t stop competing. What if this is another contest for you? What if you want to win, and then when you have that, you lose interest?”
“In the story?” he asked. “Or us?”
“Us.” It was hard to say it.
***
Wes wanted to believe he was the kind of man who could put aside all his anger and negative feelings to think rationally. He was not. He was still mad at Nadine.
No, he wasn’t mad. He was hurt. What made it worse was the same mistrustful thoughts had floated through his own mind before he’d dismissed them as being unworthy of her.
Yet she didn’t feel the same.
“Do you believe that?”
“You like to win.”
“So do you,” he pointed out. “This seems more than a little hypocritical.”
“It’s not the same!” she exclaimed.
“It kind of is.” He leaned forward. “I thought we’d sorted this out and agreed to let our past go.”
“It’s not our past,” she said. “That’s the problem. It’s how we are.”
“We like to compete, but it doesn’t mean I want to hurt you or I don’t respect you. I thought we were having fun. Weren’t we?”
His eyes had adjusted to the darker interior of the pagoda, and he saw her duck her head. “We were,” she admitted. “It is fun. I love beating you.”
“Nadine.”
“I like when we compete,” she amended, “and I know it’s not spiteful. It just fed into everything I was feeling.”
“Tonight wasn’t great, but we make a good team, competition or not.”
She clasped her hands on her lap. “We still don’t know each other. Not really.”
“I disagree. I think we do know a lot.” He moved over to sit near her, careful to keep some space between them. Her head tilted down, but he could tell she was listening, so he kept going. “I know you only use salted butter despite sweet butter’s superiority.”
Her guarded expression faded a bit. “I know you like to start each morning saying hello to the cats, even though you say you don’t like them.”
“They’re growing on me. I know you like to lie down when you’re reading.”
“I know you like to sing Britney in the shower.”
Wes blanched. “You heard?”
Her smile was huge. “Your rendition of ‘Piece of Me’ is a classic.”
Humiliating.
Then she added, “I like it. When you come out, you smell like that lemony shampoo, and you’re smiling. It cheers me up.”
He moved so they were almost touching. “As for what we don’t know, we can change that. I like to go to farmers markets and buy overpriced bread and cheese to eat sitting on a bench.”
She hesitated, then pressed against him. “I like walking around the city for hours watching people.”
He grinned. “I do the same thing but on the Queen streetcar. I own two irons and a steamer.”
“I bet you have one of those little tools to defuzz sweaters.”
“I do!” Amy had bought it for him from the As Seen on TV store.
“I hate the winter.”
“I hate being cold,” he said. “So I also hate winter.”
She turned to face him. “I’m worried about work.”
“I’m also worried about work,” Wes said, matching her shift.
He could hear the depth of her next breath. “I’m worried this story will bury me if John Wilson decides that’s what he wants.”
His turn. “When Tyler questioned me earlier, it made me think part of the reason they sent me back to Lifestyle was because he’s better at big investigative stories.”
“I keep second-guessing myself,” she said. “I lost my confidence. I triple-check every fact and then worry that I have it wrong.”
Wes reached out his hand and waited for hers to cover his. Her palm was sweaty, and it should have been gross, but Wes held it tightly as they silently sympathized with each other’s concerns. There was no need to reassure each other or talk each other out of it. It was enough to hear them out loud.
Nadine said, “I have one more question left. I want to use it.”
“Okay.” He wasn’t sure what it could be, but he steeled himself for anything.
“Do you remember the night when we were at the same house party? Our last year in school. I tripped in the hallway.”
“I caught you.”
She glanced up and he went on.
“That couple was making out, and she lifted her foot right when you passed. You were wearing a green dress that tied at the side.”
“You do remember.”
“You know I have a fantastic memory,” he said and laughed when she poked him. “Here’s what else I remember. I remember you were so beautiful I couldn’t take my eyes off you. I remember your hair was parted on the side, and it fell a bit over your face, and I wanted to push it back so I could see your dimple if it came out. I remember holding you and that I’d never had a moment so perfect in my life.”
“I remember you were in a black sweater, and you were leaning against the wall,” she said. “I remember you smelled like some spicy citrus, and when I went to the store, I sniffed all the testers to figure out what it was. I remember your hands came up behind my back when you pulled me in, and I wondered what would happen if I kissed you the way I wanted.”
They were facing each other now. Wes felt his heart hammering. “I have one more question left too,” he said.
She nodded, and he took his courage in hand.
“It’s more of a comment than a question, to be honest.” He could do this. “This friends-with-benefits thing. I thought I could do it, but I don’t think I can.”
“Oh. You want to keep it as friends.”
She looked down, and Wes tightened his grip on her hand. “It’s the friends part I’m failing at.”
“What?” Nadine raised her face.
“I like you, and more than friends. Much more.”
“How much more?” Her voice trembled slightly.
“I don’t know. I don’t have a scale. Is the exact percentage necessary?”
Her eyes glittered in the night. “Yes, because I think I’m feeling about seventy percent more than friends with you.”
His breath caught. “In the spirit of keeping this noncompetitive, I’ll also be at seventy percent.”
“Finally, we agree on something.”
When he wrapped his arms around her, she laughed. He couldn’t help but stare. Nadine was lovely all the time, but with her face lit up with joy? She was breathtaking.
He didn’t kiss her at first, simply enjoying the moment. She felt right in his arms. Perfect.
“Do you think all those years of hating each other were due to repressed feelings?” he asked to the top of her hair. Her arms were around his waist.
“No, younger you was a dick,” she said thoughtfully.
“Hey!”
“Younger me was too,” she said.
“Glad older us are so much more mellow.” Wes was about to continue his thoughts on the wisdom that comes with age, but she shorted out his entire executive function by snuggling closer.
This time when he kissed Nadine, it was slow and simply for the pleasure of knowing he could. Every sensation of touching her stood out and melted together at the same time. His hand came up to stroke the soft skin behind her ear because he’d never touched her there and he wanted to. He wanted to know every part of her. She gasped, a tight sound that made his heart jump, and pressed her arms tighter around his chest, surprising him with her strength. That was new and intriguing. Another thing to explore.
There would be more talks, he was sure. Like, capital- R relationship, what-are-we talks, but that was all for the future, and he was going to stay in the now.
She smiled at him again, and this time, the kiss was lingering and gentle, with a whisper of things to come and a sense of promise, and all the world melted away.