1. Adrian #2
I stood there with my hands in my pockets while the hug went on.
And on. I counted - an old habit from waiting rooms - one, two, three, four.
At five I looked at the floor. At seven, the grandfather clock.
At nine I ran out of places to look that weren’t my wife folded into another man’s chest like she’d been built to fit there.
“You look terrible,” Nina said into his shoulder, her voice muffled by his jacket.
“You look old.” But his arms didn’t loosen.
“I hate you so much.”
“Missed you too, Castellano.”
She pulled back, hands still on his shoulders, studying his face with an intensity that made my jaw tighten. Her thumbs brushed his collarbone. Her eyes searched his. “You’ve lost weight.”
“Traveling. You know how it is.”
“I know how you are.” Her voice dropped, soft with concern. “You forget to eat when you’re stressed.”
“And you forget to mind your own business.” He covered one of her hands with his own, held it there against his chest. “Some things never change.”
“Someone has to worry about you.”
“That’s what I have you for.”
They were smiling at each other now - really smiling, the kind that crinkled the corners of their eyes and transformed their faces into something younger, brighter, entirely foreign to me. I’d seen that smile in photographs from before we met. I’d spent a decade trying to earn it myself.
I cleared my throat. “Should I leave you two alone?”
The words came out sharper than I intended. Nina’s head snapped toward me, something flickering in her expression - guilt? surprise? - before she smoothed it over with a practiced ease that made my stomach drop.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She released Cole and crossed to my side, threading her arm through mine. Her grip was firm, almost defiant. “Come on. Adrian’s been threatening to ruin the reduction, and I need a witness.”
“I’m not ruining anything,” I said.
“History disagrees!” She tugged me toward the kitchen, and I let her, but not before I caught Cole’s eyes following her with an expression I couldn’t name.
Wouldn’t name.
Dinner was easy. That was the problem. It was so goddamn easy that I didn’t notice anything was wrong until I was already keeping count.
“So there I am,” Cole said, gesturing with his wine glass, “standing in the middle of this monastery in Nepal, surrounded by monks who’ve taken a vow of silence, and I realize - I have absolutely no idea how to ask where the bathroom is.”
“What did you do?” Nina leaned forward on her elbows, completely absorbed. The candlelight caught the angles of her face, made her look like a painting I’d seen once and never stopped wanting.
“Interpretive dance, mostly.” Cole’s hands moved through the air, miming something between desperation and surrender. “Very undignified. I think I offended at least three of them.”
“You did not.” Nina’s laugh rang through the dining room, bright and delighted.
“I absolutely did. One of them actually broke his vow just to tell me I was pointing at the meditation hall.”
Nina threw her head back, laughing harder now, her whole body shaking with it. “That’s the most Cole thing I’ve ever heard.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You could cause an international incident in an empty room.”
“That’s not-” He paused, considering. “Okay, that’s fair. But in my defense, the signage was very unclear.”
I refilled my wine glass just to have something to do with my hands. The crystal clinked against the bottle, and neither of them noticed.
“So the monastery was a bust?” I asked.
“The silence part was.” Cole shrugged, but something shifted in his expression - a shadow passing over. “Three weeks of not talking was supposed to be enlightening. Mostly it was boring. Turns out I need an audience.”
“Shocking,” Nina said dryly.
“Hey, not all of us can be mysterious and self-contained.”
“I’m not mysterious.”
“You literally didn’t tell anyone you got married until six months after the wedding.”
The air in the room changed. I felt it like a physical pressure - Nina’s sudden stillness, the way her fingers tightened around her wine glass.
“That was-” She glanced at me, something flickering behind her eyes. “We wanted to keep it private.”
“Private. Right.” Cole’s gaze moved between us, sharp and knowing. “Nothing to do with not wanting to hear everyone’s opinions about marrying into Newport royalty.”
“Adrian’s not royalty.”
“His house has a name, Nina.”
“It’s the family’s name.” I set down my glass too hard. “Not the house’s name. There’s a difference.”
“Is there, though?”
The question hung in the air - teasing on the surface, but with an edge underneath that made my spine stiffen. Cole was watching me with an expression I couldn’t read, and Nina was watching Cole, and I was suddenly, viscerally aware that I was the outsider at my own dinner table.
“Tell him about Buenos Aires,” Nina said quickly, her hand finding my knee under the table. The touch was meant to be reassuring. It felt like an apology. “The empanadas.”
“Oh God, the empanadas.” Cole’s face transformed, the tension dropping away. “Best food I’ve ever eaten. This little place in San Telmo, completely unmarked - you’d walk right past it if you didn’t know.”
“You sent me a picture of those.” Nina’s grip on my knee loosened. “You looked ridiculous in that hat.”
“That hat was a gift.”
“That hat was a crime against fashion.”
“You kept the picture?”
“I keep everything.”
Something passed between them then - some shared memory, some private language I wasn’t fluent in. Nina’s smile softened into something tender, almost intimate, and Cole’s eyes held hers for a beat too long.
My chest ached with a feeling I refused to name.
“So,” I said, my voice too loud in the sudden quiet. “What brings you back to Newport?”
The shift was immediate. Cole’s shoulders tightened, his easy posture going rigid. Nina’s gaze dropped to her plate. Her fork scraped against the porcelain, a small, sharp sound that set my teeth on edge.
“Family stuff.” Cole reached for his wine, took a long drink. “You know how it is.”
“I don’t, actually.” I leaned back in my chair, studying him. “Your family’s scattered across three continents.”
“Adrian.” Nina’s voice was low, warning.
“What? I’m just asking.”
“It’s complicated.” Cole’s voice was careful now, stripped of warmth. He set down his glass, and I noticed his hand was trembling. Just slightly. Just enough. “Some things came up. I needed to be somewhere... stable for a while.”
Nina reached across the table and covered his hand with hers. The gesture was quick, automatic - but I watched Cole’s fingers curl around hers and hold on like she was the only solid thing in a world that was crumbling beneath him.
“Well.” I lifted my glass with a smile that felt like cracked glass. “Newport’s lucky to have you back.”
“Nina’s been saying that for years.”
“Nina’s usually right.” I looked at my wife, waiting for her to meet my eyes, waiting for the conspiratorial smile we always shared. She was watching Cole instead, something careful and worried in her expression that vanished the moment she noticed me noticing.
“More wine?” she asked, already reaching for the bottle.
The evening blurred into reminiscing. Stories from before - before she was Nina Castellano-Moretti, before she belonged to Bellevue Avenue and charity galas and a husband who built his life around her.
“Remember the apartment on Elm Street?” Cole asked.
“The one with the radiator that only worked if you kicked it twice?” Nina’s face lit up with a warmth I rarely saw anymore.
“Three times, actually. Two kicks and a prayer.”
“I thought it was two kicks and a threat.”
“The threat was implied.” Cole grinned, and for a moment he looked like a different person - younger, lighter, unburdened by whatever shadows I’d glimpsed earlier. “God, that place was a disaster.”
“It was home.” Nina’s voice was soft, almost wistful. “The ceiling leaked every time it rained.”
“You put out pots to catch the water and called it ‘ambient sound.’”
“It was soothing!”
“It was a health hazard, Nina. The mold alone-”
“I was twenty-two and broke. Mold was the least of my problems.”
“What was the most of your problems?” The words escaped before I could stop them.
They both looked at me. Cole’s expression was carefully blank. Nina’s was something more complicated - surprise, maybe, or guilt.
“Everything,” she said finally. “Money. School. Figuring out who I was.” She paused. “Cole was the only thing that made sense back then.”
The words hung in the air, heavy with meaning I didn’t want to examine.
“Remember the night you cut off all your hair?” Cole asked, and I was grateful for the subject change even as I resented him for having the power to make it.
“Oh God.” Nina groaned, pressing her hands to her face. “I was hoping you’d forgotten that.”
“Forget the hedgehog incident? Never.”
“You did not just call it that.”
“You called it that! You cried for a week!”
“I did not cry.” Nina caught my eye, her cheeks flushed. “I absolutely cried. I looked like a traumatized hedgehog.”
“You looked stunning,” Cole said quietly.
The words landed differently than the rest. Softer. More serious. Nina’s smile faltered, and something raw flickered across her face before she could hide it.
“You’re sweet.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. “And a liar. But sweet.”
“I’m not lying.” Cole held her gaze, and I watched something pass between them - something I had no name for and no right to. “You were beautiful. You still are. Some things don’t change.”
The silence stretched. Nina swallowed hard, her throat moving visibly.
“We should do dessert,” she said, her voice too bright. “I made that thing with the chocolate.”
“The lava cakes?”
“Don’t get excited. They might be regular cakes. The ‘lava’ part is unpredictable.”
But before she could stand, Cole leaned back in his chair and his gaze went somewhere far away.
“Remember the roof?” he asked.
Nina went still. Completely, utterly still - like a deer that’s just heard a branch snap.
“Cole-”
“What roof?” I asked.