Chapter 29
Twenty-Nine
The fact Nash sits next to me with his arm draped around the back of the bench but says nothing for two full songs lets me know he thinks this is funny as hell.
Out of the corner of my eye, he slips his phone out of his pocket, clicks around the screen, and puts it up to his ear at the same time mine starts ringing.
“This why you got a phone?” I answer, looking at him. “So you can talk to people sitting right next to you?”
“Partly,” he says to me and into the phone. “And so my crazy wife can explain exactly what just happened and why she’s sitting alone stewing.”
“I thought you were sleeping with Sunny.” That’s humiliating. “Happy now?”
He laughs, loud, so loud it penetrates my chest and rattles my ear.
“I’m not sleeping with her,” he says. “We are close though. I met her while I was leading a tour. She was yelling at some kids who were trying to steal a sweetgrass basket at the market. Rattled off the history of the Gullah community better than any historian I’ve ever met.
I introduced myself. She told me she was between jobs as a janitor. Yelled it, really.”
I can picture this.
He continues. “I hired her. Single mom with three kids—all boys.” His eyebrows raise at how wild that must be. “She does tours part-time. Does this once a week.” He points a thumb over his shoulder to the building. “And works two nights with an after-hours cleaning service.”
I have lost all self-control, because I ask, “Why were you with her last night?”
“Why does it matter?”
At my irritated look, he laughs.
“I’m not sleeping with her, Rue.”
That doesn’t answer my question, but I believe him.
“Fine.” I end the call and fold my arms over my chest. “She’s still insane.”
Pocketing his phone, he stands and extends an open-palmed hand.
I make a defiant sound. “No.”
He doesn’t have to tell me what he’s doing; I know. Know exactly what he’ll do and what it’ll feel like when he does. The way I want to tells me I cannot. I’ve made a promise to another man; dancing with this one is off-limits.
“Why not? You scared?” He gestures with his hand. “C’mon. Just one dance with you not fighting me.”
“I’m not scared.”
Not a lie, I’m terrified. Terrified that Jonathan’s wrong and what I’m feeling right now isn’t pre-wedding jitters, but a rightness I’ll never be able to replicate with anyone else—even Jonathan, the man who’s everything I’ve always wanted.
The dulled music from the community center surrounds us. I chew my lip, knee bouncing as my eyes go from Nash’s palm to his face.
When he says, “Please, Rue,” it’s different—a plea—and I’m softened. To him.
As much as I should say no, I want to say yes.
I want to dance with him right in this parking lot.
And, maybe, if I can make it through a dance with him, I’ll feel nothing and prove Jonathan right.
Maybe this is jitters and stress. My life is falling apart, of course I’m crazy and confused.
I’ll dance and this will pass and then we can find the gold and get divorced.
Also, it checks the box of bravery that Bennie insists I need.
And I’ve apparently crossed over to the level of lying where I’m not even honest with myself.
I stand and put my hand in his. “Fine.”
He wraps one arm around me and tucks our intertwined hands between us.
I angle my head so I’m looking over his shoulder, and for the first time tonight, I follow his lead, swaying my hips with his. This isn’t the Shag, we’re just dancing.
“Not so bad, now is it?” he says into my ear.
“Worse, actually.”
He vibrates with a laugh before tightening his grip and pulling me flush to him. Awareness follows at every point of contact.
“I’ve missed dancing with you,” he says easily. “Isn’t it weird that it only took three months of us being together to make something I’ve missed for eight years?”
I grip him a little tighter. “It was ninety-nine days,” I correct him.
“Was it?”
It was. “Four days of May, all of June, July, and August, then three days of September.”
I know I’m not wrong because I relived our days together for years. Analyzed them like tea leaves, trying to predict his return.
“Ninety-nine days then.” We sway. His palm slides down the line of my hip before slipping to the small of my back. “Ninety-nine days and I still don’t love the idea of you marrying someone else.”
I let out a breath. “Okay, well I don’t think that’s your concern.” A rumble of thunder rolls across the night sky. “Just like the fact you have a ring to do the very same thing isn’t my concern.”
“And what if I told you that ring wasn’t for anyone else?”
My chin jerks back so I meet his eyes. “You just collect stunning rings in your drool-worthy nightstands?”
“Ah,” he says knowingly. “So you do think it’s stunning.”
I pin him with an annoyed look as his fingers tap a line up my spine.
“Humor me,” he continues. “If the ring wasn’t for anyone else—” He releases me to twirl, then pulls me back to him. “If I told you that I saw it one day years ago and it reminded me of you, so I bought it on the off chance you’d show up one day.”
I stop dancing and drop my hands by my side. “Did you?”
“If I did?” he asks. “Hypothetically.”
He did. It’s all over his face and supercharges the energy in the air.
Inflates it with yearning. So much yearning that I’m betraying Jonathan by simply having the thoughts I’m having, even though not one of them is sexual.
Every single thought I have toward Nash right now is centered around the bone-breaking wish he never left to begin with.
I bat my tongue around my mouth. “I’d tell you that you wasted your money.” Thunder rolls and the air fills with that classic rain-on-dirt smell that comes right before the sky opens up. “And remind you that I’m engaged and the history book on you and me closed after ninety-nine days.”
His lips tug to one side. “Then I’d ask what this guy has that I don’t.”
“The ability to sit still, for one,” I snark.
“I’ve been here for three years.”
“He’s in Fontain.”
“I can be in Fontain.”
I scoff, voice raising slightly. “Then why haven’t you been? Huh? If it’s just that easy, Nash, why didn’t you come back?”
“You told me not to,” he counters, heat creeping into his voice. “Remember that? I think what you said was, ‘Grow the fuck up and never come back.’ Ring a bell?”
I glare at him. “And yet you forgot to do the most important part.”
He laughs; I want to claw his face off.
“You’re beautiful,” he says.
“You can’t say that!”
“Why not?” He’s genuinely confused. “You are. Maybe more beautiful than when I met you. Your bangs are longer.”
I blow said bangs out of my face, flustered yet again.
“We’re fighting, for one,” I remind him.
In a smooth motion, his arm is back around me and we’re dancing like we never stopped.
I don’t know how he does it, what silent superpower he has buttoned up beneath his loud shirts, but as much as he makes me want to scream, me in his arms feels as right as the weight of an old brass bookend.
“Let’s not fight then so I can tell you you’re beautiful.”
“And you’re annoying.” There’s barely a trace of my irritation. “You know that?”
He twirls me. “Yet here you are.”
Here I am, and—damn him—in this parking lot, I feel more for Nash in mere minutes than I have in two years with Jonathan.
Jonathan will give Bennie and me a good life; I don’t have a single doubt about that. Our days will be without stress and filled with consistency. Time will pass so easily. I’ll give Bennie everything I told Cap I wanted her to have.
But there won’t be this.
There won’t be me feeling part beast because the man looking at me drives me completely mad. There won’t be tongues on fingers and phone calls when we’re sitting right next to each other.
Jonathan will give me a steady life; Nash will set me on fire.
Jonathan will solve problems; Nash will hold my hand through them.
Jonathan will drop Bennie off at school; Nash might hate me for her existence.
With the next roll of thunder, the first drop of rain lands on my shoulder. I tilt my head back and close my eyes, my body doing whatever Nash tells it to as he moves.
A second drop—gentle and delicate—kisses my forehead. The third my cheek.
I don’t know the last time I’ve stood in the rain, and though the drops are small and hardly anything, there’s a magic to them. A nostalgic quality that both takes me back to being a kid filled with freedom while holding me captive with its nowness.
“It’s raining,” I say with a scrunched smile.
There’s a funny angle to Nash’s lips. A different meaning to the way his eyes dance.
More drops fall.
“What?”
“Please don’t marry someone else,” he says, dragging his hands from my body to my face, bringing us close enough I could count every drop of rain spitting on his skin. “And please let me kiss you.”
I still.
Because I want to. Even though I’m with Jonathan. Even though I loved Nash and he left. Even though he has no idea Bennie is his.
My “You can’t” sounds like please do.
Instead of backing away like I should, I follow his lead.
When his lips part, so do mine.
When his hand on my face tightens, my grip on his neck does the same.
And when he starts to close the inches between us, I lift my chin.
I can’t kiss him, but I will.
I want to.
Until a hacking cough plummets me back to reality.
“There you kids are,” Cap says, appearing from thin air. “Rain’s here.”
“It is.” Nash steps away from me and looks at the sky.
Around us, senior citizens scurry about with umbrellas and cries about the weather even though it’s barely started raining.
All the while, my heart pounds hard enough to crack ribs. I was going to kiss Nash.
“Haven’t danced in years,” Cap says, ignorant of my impending come apart.
I was going to kiss Nash.
I wanted to. I wanted it more than I want to find the gold I’m here for. I wanted it like it would solve every problem.
I don’t say a word.
Not as we drive.
Not when we drop Cap off at the marina.
Not as Nash parks in front of his house, and the rain pounds so hard on the truck’s metal roof that it’s hard to hear.
We sit there, so much electricity buzzing between us that the smallest spark of a match would cause an explosion. I want him so badly it makes me hate him.
Hate myself.
Hate the universe for putting me in this situation.
He’s white-knuckling the steering wheel, I’m white-knuckling the handle of the door.
I’m furious.
At me.
At him.
At Jonathan for not being here.
At my mother’s tumored brain.
“What are you thinking?” he asks.
“Nothing.”
Rain pelts against the truck like a million hammers trying to crack it open.
“Bullshit.”
“Bullshit?” I grip the handle tighter, glaring at him. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
He releases his hold on the steering wheel and works his tongue over his lower lip. “Means it’s bullshit.”
“Fine.” I cock my chin, rain making everything feel like chaos. “I was thinking I wish we never would have happened. That what you want to hear?”
“Bullshit.”
I let out a sharp groan. “You’re bullshit.”
“Really?” He laughs the word out. “I’m bullshit? I’m not the one hiding engagement rings, pretending I don’t want what’s standing right in front of me, and selling half-truths to anyone with an ear.”
“Half-truths?” I demand. “Says the man who can’t answer a question straight to save his life.”
“Well, maybe if the woman asking the question wasn’t so scared to ask what she really wants to know, I’d be a little better at it.”
“Oh, don’t even,” I shoot back. His eyebrows lift in his silent where’s the lie?
look that fills me with fight. “You want the full truth? How about this, Nash—I hate that I told you to leave and you didn’t fight me hard enough to stay.
Hate that you got in this stupid truck and drove away eight years ago and I had to tell everyone you were dead because it was better than admitting you were alive somewhere without me. ”
The rain roars.
“I hate that I got engaged to someone else because you didn’t come back. Because you chased fun, and even after all that, all I want to do right now is crawl across this seat and wrap myself around you.”
He is so still and the rain is so deafening and my skin is so hot.
I need to get out of here, and yet, I keep going.
“I hate how you couldn’t bother to do laundry and now you have a whole perfect house and own a fucking frother.
” When I think I’m done, I’m not. “I hate the postcards you sent. The way you look at me.” I let out an empty laugh.
“And mostly, I hate how much I don’t hate you. Happy now?”
My whole body is shaking, and I don’t trust myself to stay in this truck so close to him. I push the door open, rain drenching me instantly as I step into the street.
He follows suit.
“Rue.” My name is a beg on his lips, one that I’m not equipped to handle.
I stop—briefly—and at the sight of Nash in the rain, looking at me looking at him with the same amount of want I feel across every cell in my body, I know I can’t marry Jonathan.
Drenched after the two-block jog to my car, I don’t register a single thing for the ten minutes I drive. It’s the relentless rhythm of rain, the pounding of my heart, and my repeated what the hell am I doing here? before I make the wet walk of shame to the shed.
I call Jonathan—driven by guilt and the need to confess everything then end it all—only to get his voicemail followed by a short text reminding me his service is bad.
I scream at the phone—this isn’t jitters, this is so much bigger than that—but text have fun!
Then, on a futon I shouldn’t be on, I rip my wet clothes off and imagine the man I can’t have doing everything he’s not allowed to, but I so desperately wish he was.