Chapter 2
This isn’t a step backward, Nick’s therapist told him during their most recent session. You’re moving forward. Getting closer to the life you’re meant to have.
As he hauls his last box into Lexi’s guesthouse, already missing the weight of his old key in his pocket, he tries to believe that the life he’s meant to have isn’t the one he just left behind.
Nick Navarro never expected to be divorced at thirty-six and moving in with his sister.
He is someone who lives for silver linings, the type of optimist who asserts his beloved Clippers still have a chance at bringing home a title despite the fact that they have never won a single championship and are, tragically, considered one of the worst teams in the NBA.
He firmly believes that even the students who don’t turn in their homework can still pull it together before the final buzzer and pass his class.
He never writes someone off. Always makes himself available for extra help.
That optimism is why it took him so long to realize his marriage was over, that Kathryn had fallen for someone else—an emotional affair that she confessed to her husband before it became physical.
And still, he suggested a separation over a clean break at first. Because he thought the space would give them a moment to breathe. Regroup. Repair.
The truth of it is that they probably got married too young. Twenty-three, a year out of college, and in the middle of Nick’s PhD program. Of course they’d grow and change during their twenties, and that would be part of the magic.
Nick just assumed they’d be doing that growing together. Twin stems of the same plant, bending toward the same sun.
Now the papers are signed and he is officially, legally single for the first time since he was eighteen years old. Hacked off at the roots.
Someone knocks on the guesthouse’s open door.
“Home sweet home?” Lexi asks gently. She’s in her gardening gloves, balancing a basket of weeds on her hip. “We may not have all those persimmon or fig trees, but there’s a pool.”
Nick fights a wince of homesickness. He loved those trees.
The first year they lived there, they plucked a bowlful of persimmons and tried to make a pie, far too confident in their limited domestic abilities.
The filling was too watery and the crust cracked in the oven, but they ate every single bite straight from the tin.
“I can’t thank you enough, Lex. Seriously. ”
“My doors are always open for heartbroken brothers. You know you can stay here as long as you need.”
Her tone is kind, but he wishes he had a precise measure of time for as long as you need. He likes Los Feliz, the neighborhood Lexi’s lived in for the past decade—but he’s not sure what it would take for it to feel like home.
He and Kathryn made the decision to sell the house together, and even now, he can’t feel anything but empathy for his ex-wife, along with a heaping bucket of guilt.
Had she wanted something he couldn’t provide?
Was he emotionally unavailable? Was that why she’d started spending all that time with her male colleague who looked like a discount Glen Powell, or would it have been inevitable even if he’d been the most doting husband of all time?
Ex-wife. A word he’s still getting used to—because that makes him an ex-husband, someone who used to know exactly where he belonged but now exists in this murky state of after.
“Come inside once you finish up,” Lexi says, drumming her knuckles on the door and dragging him from the ten minutes of self-pity he allows himself per day. “I’ve got a bit of work to wrap up first, but Audrey insisted on cooking you a welcome meal.”
If anything could lift his spirits, it’s this. He adores his niece.
So he allows his features to soften into something that could, in certain circumstances and good lighting, resemble contentedness.
Rakes a hand through deep auburn hair and assesses the guesthouse.
With a kitchenette, small bathroom, and bedroom–living room combo, it’s more than enough space for him and his limited ration of wallowing.
And it’s only temporary, because the LA real estate market is hell on earth and he doesn’t want to rush into anything.
He unpacks the essentials, clothes and toiletries and the materials he’ll need when fall quarter starts next week, then swaps his Bruins T-shirt for one he hasn’t been sweating in all afternoon. That’ll do for now.
In Lexi’s kitchen, Audrey is busy at the stove, glasses steamed up and bright red curls piled on top of her head. A pop song is playing from the speakers, something with raw female vocals that he knows he’s heard before but doesn’t instantly recognize.
Audrey started getting interested in cooking last year and Lexi’s done her best to encourage it, enrolling her in a course on kitchen safety while keeping some of the knives off-limits.
His sister was always certain she wanted kids, less so about marriage, and had Audrey via sperm donor thirteen years ago.
She’s a serious, intense kid, one who gravitates toward conversations with adults at parties as opposed to playing with anyone her age, and Nick hopes middle school hasn’t been torture for her.
The rest of their family is so easygoing that sometimes they wonder how it happened—but then she’ll light up when she hears her favorite song or someone tastes one of her stir-fries, which makes it all the more special.
In a way, his divorce was timed perfectly: Lexi, an environmental lawyer who just started work on a big case, could use some extra help around the house, and he’s promised to be there for Audrey as much as he can.
“Need a sous chef?” he asks.
She brightens as soon as she sees him, then immediately turns her attention back to a pan of sizzling onions, adding chopped garlic and ginger. “Do you mind peeling those potatoes for me? Mom hates doing it.”
“I don’t!” Lexi calls from the kitchen table, eyes on her laptop.
“Then why do you always have a very important call to make when you see a pile of potatoes on the counter?”
“You mean you don’t find it…a-peeling?” Nick asks, and both Audrey and his sister groan. “What? It’s crucial if you want a really spud-tacular meal!”
“If this is what having Uncle Nick here is going to be like,” Audrey says, completely straight-faced as she pushes up her glasses with her wrist, “then I’m going to get really fed up, sooner or tater.”
Nick breaks before she does, the grin taking over his face. He loves that she isn’t too old yet for his corny jokes.
He gets to work peeling the potatoes, losing himself in the routine of it, and then Audrey asks him to handle the rice while she adds spices to her pan, turning the kitchen fragrant.
As Lexi finishes up work and sets the table, Nick tries not to think about how many times he and Kathryn cooked together while they listened to one of her true crime podcasts, and he’d tease her about how she could happily stir herbs into pasta sauce no matter how many gory details the hosts shared.
It isn’t that he’s still in love with his ex-wife—he’s had a year to come to terms with the fact that their marriage is over.
It’s that his entire adult life has been wrapped up in another person, and as much as he hates to admit it, he’s really fucking scared that he may not be able to function on his own.
He’s probably exceeded his ten minutes of wallowing for today, but the move was always going to be rough. Tomorrow he’ll only take five minutes to make up for it.
“I should have moved in earlier,” he says after taking the first bite of Audrey’s aloo chana, a potato chickpea curry. “Michelin-quality meals like this every night?”
Audrey digs her fork into the basmati rice and beams at the compliment. “Well, not every night. I can’t create magic like this on demand.”
Nick gives her a solemn nod. “Fair. I respect your craft.”
“But we’ll both be grateful for all the free babysitting,” Lexi says.
“Does she really still need a babysitter?”
Audrey presses her lips together, sharing a look with her mother. With Lexi’s red hair in a similar high bun, both of them wearing glasses—all three of them, actually, because evidently nearsightedness runs in the Navarro family—the resemblance is impossible to miss.
“Mom wanted me…to babysit you, kind of,” Audrey admits. “To make sure you have some company and don’t get too lonely.”
Nick’s eyes flick back and forth between them.
“How could I be lonely when my two favorite people live right across the yard?” When they only crack halfhearted smiles at that, he takes a deep breath.
“It’s obviously going to be a transition.
But I promise, I’m fine. You aren’t going to hear ‘Everybody Hurts’ blasting from the guesthouse every night. ”
“I can make you a much better breakup playlist,” Audrey says, and he has no doubt she can.
“If you really are going to babysit me,” he says, “can you at least take me out for ice cream if I finish everything on my plate?” He reaches into his pocket for his car keys and gently tosses them to his niece, who giggles as she catches them.
It’s true that he’s never spent much time on his own.
He went from his childhood home to his college dorm to his first apartment with Kathryn, and he forced himself to pick up a dozen new hobbies this past year to reduce the amount of time he spent in the house.
He joined a pickleball league. Took glassblowing classes.
Burned his hand. Quit glassblowing. Started swimming early in the mornings at the UCLA pool.
Anything to keep the loneliness from catching him.
Lexi taps a finger on her chin. “There is this new ice cream place we like just down the street,” she says, and Audrey can’t finish her curry fast enough.
He tries his best to be optimistic about the upcoming quarter, to be hopeful about this new living situation. Because maybe he’s no longer a husband, but he’s still a brother. An uncle.