Chapter 14
“I really can’t even see where the hole was,” I remark, peering at the fence and trying to see where Nico patched it. We’re both sitting on the ground up against a tree, so we have a pretty good vantage point.
“You’re only saying that because you can’t make it out well enough in the dark,” he counters. “Look at it tomorrow morning, and you’ll see it’s still a mess.” He pauses and takes a sip of beer, considering. Finally he admits, “I think it’s better than nothing.”
“You mean now that it’s fixed, a cow can’t wander through it?” I tease.
He pushes his hair back, and I sort of love that my needling makes him mildly huffy. We’ve been out here for a few hours already, and I’m relishing his company after a few days of missing him in the mornings because Anita wanted to drag me to all her favorite other places.
“I never said a cow could ‘wander through it,’” he counters.
“But once the fence has a small hole, there’s a chance it could grow?”
“No,” he says succinctly, not taking my bait.
“Or the cows might start to wonder if there’s a chance to get their freedom back so they start trying to push against it?”
“Obviously not.”
“Or,” I keep going, trying to keep the delight out of my voice, “smaller animals could come in and taunt them, and then the cows would resent you for keeping them penned up when they’re so used to roaming.”
His laugh is modulated by his attempt to pretend he isn’t laughing. It makes me want to get a full-throated version out of him.
“It’s like a reverse Cinderella,” I continue. “Instead of the mice and birds helping her get dressed, they come to mock the cows for being hidden away.”
“Okay, first of all,” he says, finally breaking and now turning toward me, a point ready to be made, “mice and birds can always get through or above the fence. They wouldn’t need a hole to get in and see the cows.”
“Because the unrealistic part of my idea was the way they got in, and not the anthropomorphization of animals.”
“Second of all,” he continues, as though he didn’t hear me, “I already told you I wasn’t fixing it to keep anything out. It’s the principle of it.”
“Do the cows know about your principles?”
He puts his head in his hand in feigned frustration. “You’re relentless.”
I can hear the affection in his voice, and it warms me. I’ve certainly been called “relentless” and a whole host of similar adjectives by the men around me. But it usually hasn’t been meant as admiringly as I know Nico means it.
Even as I know the night is getting later than we’d normally stay up, I can’t think about sleep yet. I’ve loved sitting out here under the stars and trading stories and barbs and playing twenty questions just to pass the time. It’s easy. It’s always so easy being with Nico.
“You know,” I say, “this started by me complimenting your fence-mending skills. I was trying to say you did a good job, and you were trying to talk me out of that opinion.”
“That’s true.” He’s so unabashedly self-effacing, and it always throws me a bit.
“I think it made the trip to Saturnia worth all the effort, since we did eventually get the supplies,” I say, chuckling, and he groans again.
“My car would disagree with you.”
“A few scratches won’t hurt anyone!”
“They literally hurt a car,” he says with a laugh. “The whole point of a car is to not get scratched.”
“I thought the whole point of a car is to drive from point A to point B.”
He sighs that amused sigh, and I love it almost as much as one of his laughs.
But as though the grove is sighing along with him, a heavy gust of wind blows. I close my eyes against the dust, and I can feel a slew of prickly leaves fall.
I try to brush them off and open my eyes. Nico’s sitting close enough where I can see him notice that something is still in my hair.
“Did I not get it all?” I ask, pawing again at whatever spots I seem to have missed.
The side of his mouth curls up, the one with that adorable freckle right above his lip. “No, you’ve still got a few in there,” he says, pointing to one side of my head.
I brush it again, and I can tell from his expression that I haven’t made any headway, even if I was hoping my short hair couldn’t possibly contain more than I’ve already brushed out.
“I know I’m going to be sleeping on the ground anyway, but I really don’t need to resemble an olive tree,” I whine. “Can you help me?”
He nods and leans toward me. He gently picks one leaf out of my hair, then another. A third appears to be a bit more lodged in there, so he’s careful about disentangling it.
But when he’s done, he’s moved into my space enough that we’re even closer than before. And he doesn’t move his hand.
I can feel my heart rapping against my rib cage at his nearness.
I’d been lulled out of the high alert my body always feels around him by our easy evening of banter and lightness.
But now, when he’s so deliberately close, the feeling’s come roaring back, and his hands on me have stunned me into sensory aftershock.
The premise that he’s touching me to help me get something out of my hair is rapidly fading as time starts to tick away and we’re still not moving.
I want to hear that sigh again, but this time with my name on his lips. I want that hand to stay in my hair while he twines his fingers through my strands. I want his mouth against mine.
I’m trying to remember why this is a bad idea.
Is it a bad idea? Two consenting adults who clearly have some attraction between them—why can’t I just kiss him?
But I hesitate, knowing that I’ve felt this precipice before with him, and every time I’ve been left wondering if I misread things.
Why has he pulled away every time it seems like there’s something between us?
Is it because of his ex-wife? Does he wish she would come back?
Is he scared I don’t want him? Am I projecting?
Screw it, I’m not a nervous wallflower. Maybe I’ve become too soft while away from my restaurant. I’m never this wishy-washy.
I lean in and press my lips to his.
For a second, his fingers stay in my hair, and I can feel his satisfaction breathing me in, the pressure of our mouths together delicious without even taking a taste. My whole body is fizzy like a carbonated drink.
But then he pulls back from me with a different sigh, this one weary, and I hate the sadness I see written all over his unsurprised face. I instinctively reach out and put my hand on his chest, wanting so badly to comfort whatever I’ve broken by putting my unfiltered thoughts into action.
He closes his eyes and puts a hand on top of mine. For a long moment, we breathe again together, and I can feel the steadying of his pulse along with the rise and fall of his chest.
Until finally he opens his eyes again, a wistful smile playing on his lips. His fingers slowly push my hair back behind my ear, and he traces its curve and down, until he’s lightly holding my jaw.
“The problem for me,” he says quietly, “is that if I really started kissing you, I’m not sure I could stop.”
I sharply inhale, his words cutting through me with the realization that I’ve opened a dam, and I’m not sure if we’re going to be able to undo it.
“How do you know,” I mumble under my breath, as though if I speak too loudly, all my thoughts are now going to come tumbling out.
He reaches up his other hand until he’s got my face cradled. I have the strange sensation that I’m about to be broken up with, even though we’ve barely ever even touched. Why am I aching even more than when I was actually broken up with a few weeks ago?
I can no longer tell whether it’s my heart beating fast or if I feel his underneath my hand. Or maybe both of ours started feeding off each other while I listened to him say the words he clearly didn’t want to, after what I’ve so bluntly made impossible for him to now not admit.
“You’re leaving, Kit,” he says finally, and my heart squeezes at that realization of what should have been so much more obvious to me.
“And whenever I’m with you, I start to think I could .
. .” He exhales, stopping himself before he says more than either of us is ready to hear.
He takes a deep breath and starts over. “I really felt invincible once. And then she left. She left, and I broke, and I can’t do that again.
I’m happy now, I really am. I’m happy with my trees and my dog and this ridiculous town.
” He pauses again, and I can see that sentiment play out across all his beautiful features.
That peace that he’s finally found, and how hard-fought it is.
And I want, more than anything, more than even to kiss him, for him to know I would never intentionally hurt that.
“I understand,” I whisper, and I have to shut my eyes tight to stop an inexplicable tear that’s threatening to fall. He pulls my body into his, wrapping me up in his arms, my head against his chest. I can now hear that steady heartbeat, so alive and so consistent, just like he is.
“Of course I want to kiss you,” he says softly.
“I want to kiss you so badly that sometimes it seems impossible not to. But I can’t kiss you and then watch you leave.
Because I really meant it when I said I wanted for us to stay friends.
But also selfishly, I want when you leave for my heart to be intact.
And I don’t think either of those things are possible if I start kissing you. ”
I pull back to look him in the eyes again.
They’re searching mine, hopeful that I can somehow close this can of worms I insisted on opening.
Me, with my unceasing need to scratch at every itch and fling wide every door.
I couldn’t just let us be. I could no longer ignore that palpable feeling I knew was coursing between us.
But I’ve also never had a friend like Nico.
I’ve never had a friend who looks at my tough exterior with admiration and then slides beneath it to find the soft underbelly.
At a time when I should’ve been anxious about my restaurant and raging to get home, he’s given me humor and hope, and mornings to look forward to.
I need to close the can of worms.
“I want both of those things too,” I agree. “You don’t have to explain it.”
The sigh I get now is relieved. Whatever weight I placed directly on the center of his chest with my actions has at least been lightened somewhat.
I put my head on his shoulder, and he clasps my hand in his. We sit that way for a long time, backs still up against a tree, holding on to each other, but as friends who can’t be anything more. We’re friends, because at this moment in each of our lives, we both really need that.
And that’s going to have to be enough.
When I wake up in the morning with my head still on his shoulder, Nico offers to show me where he mended the fence.
It’s a glide away from the secrets we spoke in the night, and I’m happy to play along.
And so I go closer to the fence with him and marvel at the talent of putting something back together, even when the seams are showing.