Chapter 24
Nate
New York, evening…
As I neared the art gallery in SoHo, I tried my best to keep my mind blank and my emotions in check.
The steel bars around my heart were solid, and there was nothing Joanna could do to hurt me.
She’d inflicted all the pain she could already, and the past was the past. As Casey had told me in London, I needed to stop letting that hurt define me.
The simple act of handing this wedding gift over was a step in that direction.
As a throng of hipsters in slouchy shirts and tight pants clicked past me on Grand Street, the gallery came into view. A party appeared to be underway as the crowds spilled from the brightly lit art fete to the sidewalk.
With the box tucked under my arm and the warm June air rushing by, I walked through the open doorway.
I scanned the crew quickly in the overstuffed gallery—packs upon packs of women in black with long, dangly earrings, and men with goatees and sideburns, nibbled on cheese and crackers and drank wine and champagne, probably discussing the fleet of paintings on the white walls—images of surreal still-lifes.
Not my favorite style. I liked Casey’s taste in art so much better.
Hers came from her heart. A heart I wanted to protect, to care for, and to cherish.
The momentary thought of her brought a flicker of a smile to my face, and I hoped that image would feed me as I sought out the too familiar figure of my ex-wife.
She hadn’t mentioned a party was on the agenda tonight, but who cared?
It was probably a send-off before her Chicago exhibition. No big deal. Nothing I couldn’t handle.
I felt a clap on my back out of nowhere.
I startled, but turned quickly, and ice crystallized in my veins at the sight of Claude—the tall, lanky, bearded-and-mustached much-older man she’d been fucking while she had my last name.
Memories snapped cruelly in front of me, slamming me back in time to the day I’d discovered their affair.
Her hands had been dirty with clay from the sculpture she’d been crafting in the small studio we’d fashioned for her in one corner of the apartment.
I’d parked myself on the living room couch, clicked on the touchpad on her laptop to look up movie times, and was greeted with an email exchange from a few hours before, when I’d been at work on a Saturday.
The note started with Claude reminiscing about their last time together: So glad you could stay late with me.
But my bed is lonely without you spending the entire night in it, wrapped in my arms where you belong.
When can you manage another night that lasts into the morning?
She’d replied: Soon. He heads out of town again on Tuesday. Can’t wait to see you all day and night then. I will be counting down. I promise.
I had blinked, rubbed my eyes, and read it again, shock vibrating in my system. I’d walked into the studio, grasped the doorframe, and said in a dead voice, “So you’re looking forward to me leaving town?”
Her jaw dropped, and her cheeks flamed red. But that marked the end of any shame on her part. That night she moved out, and shortly after she married the guy.
Claude held out his hand, brandishing a huge smile. “Nate. Haven’t seen you in ages. You look good,” the man said, and I was sure my auditory processing had malfunctioned because the man couldn’t possibly be making casual chitchat with me.
I shrugged off the hand on my back, ignoring the one Claude had extended.
“Where’s Joanna?” I managed to ask as the ice inside me turned to fire.
Red flames licked my veins. My fists clenched.
It was an affront to the universe that I had to be in the same fifty-foot radius as this asshole.
The very same asshole that I’d had dinner with many, many times during my marriage.
Let’s have dinner with my professor and some of the others in the department, Joanna would say.
“She had to step out to talk to one of the organizers of her exhibit in Chicago. Isn’t it amazing that she’s going to have all her work shown at the museum?”
I grumbled something unintelligible.
“I’m so proud of her. What an honor,” Claude continued, and I was ready to deliver my clenched fist into Claude’s gut. The man brought his glass of champagne to his mouth and took a sip. A fucking sip. I wanted to grab it and knock the whole thing back.
“Yeah. Great honor,” I muttered and thrust the box at him, suppressing my desire to drop it on Claude’s foot. Or his face. Or down a sidewalk grate, for that matter. “Here.”
Claude’s eyes widened and a thin smile spread on his thin lips as he opened the box.
“Ah, at last! It’s come home. She’s going to be so happy to see this back,” he said as he dipped a hand inside the cardboard and stroked the art lovingly.
I saw red creeping in at the sides of my vision, and I had to work to curb the impulse to slug this scum.
Absolutely no shame. No regret. And not enough respect to even pretend to be ashamed.
My mind logically knew I was on the far side of his deceit, tried to show me pictures of happier times.
I took deep breaths and focused on images of the good things in my life—my nieces, Kat’s new dog, my work, and Casey.
Most of all, Casey. Her heart, her laughter, her strength.
But the images faded back into righteous anger as Claude spoke once more, in a patronizing tone, “Thank you for all you’ve done for Joanna. You are truly a prince among men.”
I bit my tongue, sucking down the invectives I wanted to spew. Instead, I fixated on one simple fact, letting it echo in my brain, and fuel me with bravado.
They deserve each other…and I deserve better.
I shook my head and raised my chin, glad to be taller than this man.
“No, Claude. I’m the one who must thank you,” I began and Claude cocked his head and raised a curious eyebrow.
“You did me a great service by taking Joanna off my hands. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you for fucking my faithless ex-wife while she was also your student, immoral as it was. It was the best thing anyone ever did for me. Because you gave me my freedom. You, sir, are truly the prince.”
The color drained from Claude’s face. It was a priceless moment, and I flashed back on something Brent had said.
Go out on a high note. I walked out of the gallery and into the New York City night.
I wanted to pump my fist in victory. To savor the vindictive joy at having reeled off the right zinger at the right time.
Instead, the latent anger inside me raged on, higher and faster.
Because it didn’t change the fact that I’d been a fool.
Gritting my teeth and breathing out hard through my nostrils, I desperately wished to feel nothing.
Not a single thing. But every time I entered their orbit I was sucked under by my own anger and the residual shame.
Those were nothing, though, compared to the utter self-loathing that welled up at having chosen the wrong fucking person to love.
I was an idiot for marrying her. My radar had malfunctioned, and I hated that it was simply out of the question for me to ever trust again, to feel again, to love again.
There was a woman I desperately wanted to let into my heart, but I didn’t know how. Joanna had made it impossible for me to love.
And I couldn’t help but hate her for it.
When I reached the red light at the crosswalk, all that anger coiled in my chest, rising up inside me. Tightening, like a hard metal spring with no give. I wanted to eradicate the side effects of the past, but I’d had no luck doing that. I didn’t know if I ever would.
I cocked my arm and slammed the streetlamp with my fist. It hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, reverberating into my bones. I cursed loudly.
“Are you okay?”
I swiveled around to see a young woman in running shorts and a T-shirt, her hair in a ponytail, a look of concern on her face as she bounced on her sneakered feet.
“Fine. Sorry,” I muttered.
“Hope your night gets better,” she said, and picked up the pace, running across the street, returning to her evening jog.
“Me too,” I mumbled to myself as I shook out my hand, the pain still echoing in my knuckles. There was a message there. I’d be living with the echoes of my failed marriage for the rest of my life. But I was ready to try to move past the pain.
Casey
He sounded empty when I’d called, his voice terribly hollow.
The Joanna effect, I reasoned. Surely, it would dissipate soon.
It had to. I waited outside his building, fidgeting with the silvery pendant I wore as I stood under the navy-blue awning.
I ran my thumb over the smooth, stone surface.
Worry flooded my nervous system—worry over him, over me, over us.
Soon, I spotted him turning the corner onto his block.
My heart rose as the tiniest sliver of a smile formed on his face when he saw me, then it fell when he was close enough for me to see the scrapes on his hand.
“What happened?” I asked as I reached gently for his right hand. The knuckles on his index and middle fingers were cut open, the skin snarly and scratched up.
“My fist met a streetlamp. They did not agree,” he said, chuffing out a humorless laugh.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” I said, immediately segueing into Nurse Casey mode, as my brother had called it when we were kids.
Though Jack was older, I was usually the one who’d tended to his scrapes and bruises from the baseball games he’d played in.
Grasping Nate’s other hand, I led him past the doorman, through the lobby, up the lift and to his apartment with its view of Central Park.
I parked my hands on his shoulders, pushing him down on his couch.
“Stay here.”