Chapter Eight
A Renaissance painting of us invents itself in midair, capturing my bafflement and Nicholas’s triumph. The second hand trickles at the slow drip of two million years, and then—
“What do you mean, ‘ours’?”
“I bought it.” His eyes never leave mine.
This—
But—
I—
!!!
The world flips as Nicholas turns our mind game on its head. I’m lost. It makes no sense whatsoever that he would buy a house and expect me to move in. We’ve been fighting for custody of the squat white rental. We’ve been fighting to push the other one to wave a white flag and get lost forever.
“Are you malfunctioning?” he asks, mildly entertained.
He’s twelve steps ahead of me. He’s twelve steps above. Behind. Everywhere. I don’t know where to turn and I don’t know what his objective is. He’s right, I’m malfunctioning. My circuit board is smoking. I have a house.
No, I don’t. I hastily remind myself that I don’t have anything that’s part Nicholas. He doesn’t belong to me, so neither does this. He’s termite Midas. Everything he touches turns to rot.
The only lucid thing I can think to say is, “I take it you won the coin toss.”
“Yes.”
“But.” Speech is not coming easily. My brain is continuously rejecting messages coming in from my eyes and ears as impossible. “A whole house?”
“I tried to buy half of one, but couldn’t find any that are gaping open on the side or missing a roof.”
I barely hear the joke. “How. Why. I don’t—”
“I bought it from one of the guys you work with. Leon. I ran into him a few days ago and got to talking about the sort of place I wanted to live in, and he told me about wanting to move out of the place he’s in now, and we realized we both wanted the same thing and could help each other.
Turns out, he’s actually pretty cool. He let me play with his bow saw and we’ve got plans to build a couple of chairs. ”
“Leon?” That’s what I’m stuck on right now. “You bought this house from Leon? Leon Duncan?”
He chuckles. “I’ll let him know you haven’t forgotten his last name yet. He’ll be shocked.”
Great, they’ve been swapping stories about how rude I am. Maybe blanking on Leon’s last name is the reason he didn’t say a word to me about this all day. What a Judas.
“He knew this was the surprise and he let me think I was about to get murdered!”
“You really need to stop telling your coworkers I’m out to murder you.” Irritation flits across his features. “Doesn’t give me a good rep.”
“We’ve never discussed the kind of house we’d buy together,” I sputter. “I wasn’t involved here at all.”
“I wanted it to be a surprise.”
“You wanted.”
He just stares, not getting it. “This isn’t the sort of surprise you spring on your fiancée!
Couples do this shit together, Nicholas!
One of them doesn’t go behind the other one’s back to do something of this magnitude.
First you get rid of your car and bring home that—that behemoth over there—” He’s laughing, which exasperates me even more, but I forge on: “I’ve asked you where you’ve been.
You’ve refused to tell me. Do you have any idea what that’s like? ”
“Yeah!” he cries. “I do. I don’t know where you’ve been all year, Naomi. Your body’s here, but your head’s somewhere else. You’ve gone and left me all alone.”
If anyone’s been left alone, it’s me, fighting the War of the Roses all by myself. No way am I vaulting into that pool of lava, so I pick a milder topic to complain about instead. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”
He shrugs. “So?”
I cast around for another complaint. What comes out of my mouth boggles even me. “I’ve always wanted a front door that’s painted purple. The color of magic.”
“That’s a terrible reason to reject a house. Naomi, I bought us a house! Take a beat here and let that sink in. How many of your friends can say their boyfriend bought them a house?”
1. He’s not my boyfriend, he’s my fiancé. (Sort of.)
2. He didn’t buy this house for me. He bought it for himself, without asking or wanting me to be a part of that process.
Am I supposed to be grateful that he’s letting me tag along after he made all the decisions?
If we’re supposed to spend our life together as equal partners, this doesn’t bode well.
3. My only real friend is Brandy, and at this moment in time she thinks I’m bleeding out in a ditch.
This is madness. I should go back to the white rental house now that he’s apparently living here, but I can’t give in yet.
The war’s still on. He’s trying to pull the wool over my eyes, but I know we’ve simply relocated to a different battlefield.
I’m not going to tell myself what I’ve been inwardly repeating for months now: It could be worse.
That’s what I’ve been doing. Justifying staying with him by reminding myself it could be worse. Look at her. Look at him. Look at those people. They’re alone and have nobody. They’re in terrible relationships. They’re so unhappy. It could be worse. That could be me.
Except, it is me. I’ve been unhappy.
“Okay,” he huffs. “Except for the front door, which isn’t purple, what do you think?”
Truthfully? There are a lot of dead, dirty leaves and it’s out in the middle of nowhere and I so badly want it to be mine.
I barely registered there was a house here when we pulled up, but after hearing him say the word ours, it was like the lights of a stage washed over the scene and made it all so beautiful I could cry.
It’s the sort of place I’d like to settle down with my one true love—that is, somebody who isn’t Nicholas.
I want Leon to take back the house and save it for me to buy myself someday when I’m in a relationship that’s loving and healthy.
With a man I love at least eighty percent.
Sharing it with Nicholas now will spoil it, the same way that some of my favorite movies we’ve watched together are now tainted, and so is the band we used to listen to together, Generationals.
One of their songs was playing on the radio during our first kiss and after that, it became “our band.” We’ve even seen them in concert.
Now I can barely stand to listen to their music without resurrecting a thousand unwelcome feelings.
This property will forever be known as the house my ex-fiancé bought without my participation. It’s the future Mrs. Rose’s house, not mine. Which chafes a little.
“I don’t want to live here.”
He’s losing patience. “I don’t really care what you want, to be honest. I don’t like you again yet. But I’m going to. And you’re going to like me again, too. This house is going to save us.”
“Save us?” I don’t bother downplaying the ghastliness of his assertion. “I thought we were trying to kill this thing?”
His expression is so scornful, I flinch.
“Naomi, if the point were a meteor hurtling straight toward the earth with the power to destroy us all, you’d still miss it somehow.
” He turns his back on me and marches determinedly inside the house.
He’s going to be a mountain man, come whatever, and I’m just along for the ride.
I think I see his new angle. It’s even more disturbing than trying to get me to leave him.
It’s cheaper and easier to mold me into the kind of woman he can stomach marrying rather than break up with me. If he does, he’ll have to field a hundred surprise dates his mother sends him on to find the next broodmare contender.
My baby oven and I have been primed and vetted.
I’m already familiar with his odious parents, who haven’t managed to run me off yet.
A compartment of my brain reluctantly hosts a glossary of dental terminology.
I tolerate his satanic ritual of removing a banana wholly from its peel and laying the banana on the bare table without a plate, touching everything with his fingers and setting it down between bites.
I’m an investment. If he pulls his stock now, he’ll bleed money and lost time all over the place.
He’ll be starting over, two years of his youth down the drain.
But I’ve got news for Nicholas Benjamin Rose: if he thinks I’m not the biggest waste of time that’s ever happened to him, he’s got another think coming.
For long moments, I merely stare at the part of the house that ate him up.
Details I still haven’t noticed properly are swimming to the forefront for attention—the wooden roof shingles all bowing at their centers; the dingy welcome mat with a Scottie dog on it; the silhouette pacing behind the wide leaded window.
He wanted nature? He’s got it. English ivy swarms the chimney, trying to work its way down inside the house.
The air is fresh and crisp. I don’t hear any traffic, any sound of human civilization.
The house he’s bought on his own, guaranteeing it will never feel like ours, sits up on a crest between two gently sloping valleys, and I think he’s picked a hell of a hill to die on.
We’ll both be buried here. Our ghosts will haunt it, torturing each other and any misguided home buyers hoping for a country experience.
I’m still trying to orchestrate plan A, and Nicholas is subverting my efforts with plan C. Only one of us can win, but I’m no longer certain what the winner keeps and what they lose.
–
My favorite thing about the house that’s mine but not mine is that it’s dim and small and cozy, which doesn’t sound appealing when I put it that way, but each room has a very particular feel to it, which makes my imagination go bonkers.
The living room is exactly where you’d want to relax in a comfy armchair with grandchildren strewn at your feet in a semicircle as you read them old stories of faraway lands.
Swashbuckling pirates and flying trains, masked bandits and elvish royalty.
The books are leather-bound, spines crackling in your aging hands.
You sit quietly in front of a flickering fire with your soul mate as raindrops patter the glass, more contented than a cat stretched out on a windowsill.