15. Nina
— ? —
Nina
“These are the boundaries.”
I’m sitting across from Adrian at the small table I bought at an estate sale, the one with the wobbly leg I keep meaning to fix. The cottage is quiet around us - just the distant cry of gulls and the tick of the kitchen clock I found at a thrift store last week.
He’s listening with the focused attention of a man who knows his marriage depends on getting this right. His hands are folded on the table in front of him, deliberately still, like he’s afraid any movement might spook me.
“You can come to appointments. As the baby’s father.” I tick the items off on my fingers. “You can visit the cottage. When I invite you. You can be part of the pregnancy - but not part of my life. Not yet.”
He nods, and his hand moves like he’s going to reach for me - instinct, muscle memory, ten years of habit - then stops himself. His fingers curl into his palm instead, knuckles going white with the effort of restraint.
I watch his hand and think about all the places it’s been. The small of my back when we dance. The curve of my hip when we sleep. All the ways he knows to touch me, all the nights I’ve spent in this cottage pretending I don’t miss it.
“Is there anything else?” he asks quietly.
Yes. Stop looking at me like that. Stop making me remember what your hands feel like. Stop being someone I want to forgive.
“That’s everything,” I say.
“Okay.”
“You don’t get to ask where I’ve been or who I’ve talked to. You don’t get to check my phone or my bank statements. You don’t get to follow me around town trying to reassure yourself.”
“I wouldn’t-”
“You did.” I hold up a hand when he starts to protest. “I’m not saying you would again. But you did once, and that’s enough for me to need the boundary. If we’re going to rebuild trust, it has to be based on actual trust. Not surveillance.”
He swallows hard. I watch his throat move, watch him absorb the words like blows.
“Okay.”
“And you don’t get to ask me to come home.”
“What if you want to come home?”
“Then I’ll tell you.” I lean back in my chair, putting another inch of distance between us. “But it has to be my choice, Adrian. My timeline. Not because you’re ready for things to go back to normal, but because I’m ready to believe that normal is safe.”
He’s quiet, and I watch him process, watch the gears turn behind his eyes as he accepts the terms of his own rehabilitation.
“What do I get to do?” he asks finally.
“You get to show up. Consistently. Without expectations.” I meet his eyes.
“You get to become someone I can trust again - not through words, not through gifts, but through time. Through being there when you say you’ll be there.
Through asking questions instead of making assumptions.
Through proving that you’ve actually changed. ”
“And if I do all that?”
“Then maybe - maybe - we have a chance.”
He reaches across the table. Takes my hand.
His palm is warm and familiar, and my body remembers him before my brain can object. The way his thumb traces across my knuckles. The way his fingers interlock with mine like puzzle pieces finding their match.
“I can do that,” he says.
“We’ll see.”
***
Adrian
The oncology waiting room is built to be endured, not remembered.
I’m sitting in a plastic chair that’s designed to be uncomfortable - everything in hospitals is designed to be uncomfortable, like they want to make sure you never forget where you are - and I’m watching Cole flip through a magazine he’s not actually reading.
Three hours. That’s how long today’s treatment takes. Three hours of sitting in this fluorescent purgatory, waiting for the chemicals to do their work, hoping they’re killing the cancer faster than they’re killing him.
I shouldn’t be here. Cole didn’t ask me to come - Nina mentioned once, casually, that he’d said the waiting room was lonely. That’s all. A throwaway comment. But something about it stuck in my brain, needled at me for days, until I found myself offering to drive him.
“You don’t have to do this,” Cole said when I showed up at his apartment this morning.
“I know.”
“Nina didn’t ask you to.”
“I know that too.”
He’d stared at me a beat, something unreadable in his eyes, then grabbed his jacket and followed me to the car.
Now we’re sitting three feet apart with nothing in common but her, and the silence is so thick I could choke on it.
“The magazines here are shit,” Cole says finally, tossing aside a copy of Good Housekeeping from 2019. “You’d think they could spring for something from this decade.”
“Budget cuts.”
“Right. Because cancer treatment isn’t expensive enough without up-to-date reading material.”
I snort despite myself. Cole glances at me, surprised, like he didn’t expect me to have a sense of humor.
“You know what the worst part is?” he continues. “The TV. It’s always tuned to some cooking show, like watching people make soufflés is supposed to distract you from the fact that your body’s being pumped full of poison.”
“What would you rather watch?”
“I don’t know. Something honest.” He leans his head back against the wall. “A show about people who are scared shitless and don’t know if they’re going to make it. At least that would feel accurate.”
“Depressing, though.”
“More depressing than watching Gordon Ramsay yell at someone about risotto while you’re wondering if your organs are going to survive another round?” He laughs, and it turns into a cough that shakes his whole frame. “Doubt it.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything. The silence stretches between us again, but it feels different now. Less hostile. More like two people sharing a foxhole.
“Why are you here?” Cole asks after a while.
“Nina said-”
“I know what Nina said. I’m asking why you’re here.” He turns to look at me directly. “Because last month you thought I was fucking your wife. Now you’re driving me to chemo. That’s a hell of a pivot.”
The bluntness catches me off guard. But I suppose dying gives you permission to skip the small talk.
“I was wrong about you,” I say.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s part of one.” I stare at the opposite wall, at a poster about hand hygiene that’s probably been there since the Obama administration.
“I spent weeks building a case against you. Collecting evidence. Telling myself a story where you were the villain and I was the justified husband protecting his marriage.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m sitting in a cancer ward watching you flip through Good Housekeeping, and I feel like the world’s biggest asshole.”
Cole laughs again - a real laugh this time, surprised out of him. “That’s surprisingly honest.”
“Yeah, well. I’m trying something new.”
“Honesty?”
“Something like that.”
He’s quiet for a moment, processing. Then: “You know she never stopped loving you, right? Even when you were being a paranoid dickhead.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” He shifts in his chair, wincing slightly.
The chemo makes everything hurt, Nina told me.
Even sitting. “Because I’ve known Nina for twenty years.
I’ve seen her through every disaster, every heartbreak, every moment where she should have given up and didn’t.
And I’ve never - never - seen her as wrecked as she was when you packed that suitcase. ”
The words land like a punch to the gut.
“She called me that night,” Cole continues. “Three in the morning. Crying so hard she could barely breathe. And you know what she said?”
I shake my head. I don’t trust my voice.
“She said, ‘He didn’t even ask me why.’ Over and over.
Like that was the part she couldn’t get past.” He looks at me, and there’s no hostility in his expression anymore - just exhaustion and something that might be pity.
“Not that you suspected her. Not that you packed a bag. The part that broke her was that you never asked.”
“I know.” My voice comes out rough. “I know that now.”
“Do you know why she kept my secret?”
“Because you asked her to.”
“Because she’s loyal to a fucking fault.
” Cole shakes his head. “That woman would walk through fire for the people she loves. She’d lie to protect them.
She’d carry impossible weight without complaining because that’s who she is.
And you-” He stops. Takes a breath. “You looked at all that loyalty and saw betrayal.”
“I was wrong.”
“You were scared.” He waves a hand dismissively.
“I get it. Fear makes people stupid. But here’s the thing you need to understand: Nina doesn’t forgive easy.
She’s not built that way. Whatever trust you broke, you’re going to have to rebuild it brick by brick.
And even then - even if you do everything right - she might never fully believe in you again. ”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because I’m dying, Adrian. I’ve got seventy percent odds and no guarantees, and I’m spending my numbered days watching my best friend’s heart get broken by a man who should have known better.
” His voice cracks slightly. “So if you’re here because you feel guilty, or because you want to look good for her, or because you think driving me to chemo is going to earn you points-”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“Then why?”
I think about the question. Really think, because Cole deserves better than a rehearsed answer.
“Because you matter to her,” I say finally.
“And I spent weeks treating you like an enemy when you were going through the worst thing a person can go through. And even if I can’t fix what I did to Nina, I can-” I stop.
Try again. “I can at least not be a complete piece of shit to her dying best friend.”
Cole stares at me. Then he laughs - a genuine laugh, surprised and almost delighted.
“That’s the most honest thing you’ve said yet.”
“I’m trying.”
“I can see that.” He settles back in his chair, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. “Okay. Fine. You want to drive me to chemo? You want to sit in this depressing waiting room and watch Gordon Ramsay yell about risotto? Be my guest. But you’re buying lunch after.”
“Deal.”