Chapter Nineteen #2
When she reaches the door, I call, “Text me info about those painting parties! Nicholas and I are going to drunk-paint with you and Vance the optometrist. Also, you guys are coming over to play Dungeons and Dragons sometime. I’ve never played before, but I feel like it will be an out-of-body experience for that nerd I live with, which I would like to witness. ”
Leon looks excited. “I like Dungeons and Dragons.”
“You would, weirdo,” Brandy says, just before the door shuts behind her. Through the glass, she yells, “Just kidding! Love you! Please don’t fire me.” Then she blows us a kiss.
I leave, too, still smiling from ear to ear long after I’ve climbed into my car.
Who knows, the restaurant might only last a year.
But I can guarantee it’ll be a fun year.
I couldn’t ask for anything better than that.
For the first time in a long time, my future unfolds before me bright with promise.
I have dreams and goals and I will make them all come true.
I can do anything, even learn how to change a tire.
I should probably learn how to do that, actually.
Tomorrow I’m going to fire up the old YouTube and figure out how to do some of the stuff I’ve supposedly known how to do for ages.
I’m going to symbolically adopt an endangered tiger and recycle my aluminum cans.
I’m going to pay the library a sixty-five-cent fine I’ve owed for two years. I’m going to do three push-ups.
I come home to a purple front door and no fiancé.
Or boyfriend, depending on whether he still wants to marry me.
I’m not sure what to call him now. He’s my friend.
My partner. A selfless but complicated man who would drive seven hours because his parents asked him to, and he’s a better son than they are parents.
He texts at six thirty. Finally done. Going to go grab dinner and find my hotel. How’s your day been, Miss Backwoods Buffet?
That devious man. I’m going to kiss him so hard when he comes home.
I construct four casual, everything’s-peachy replies but delete them. They’re not the truth. The truth is this: I miss you so much. I wish you were here.
So that’s what I send him.
I’ve been awake since before three a.m. and it’s catching up.
Upstairs, I pause at Nicholas’s door. He could have locked it but he didn’t.
He could have shut it but he left it wide open, and I can’t help the heartache that overtakes me when I see the palm leaves on his blanket.
I miss that blanket terribly. I miss our headboard, and the glow of his digital clock.
I miss our bed. The piece of furniture I’ve been sleeping on has never felt like my bed. How can it? There’s no Nicholas there.
I snoop through his nightstand drawer to check if the straw wrapper bracelet is still there.
It is. He’s also got the notes I’ve packed in his lunch and the popcorn necklace I made him, stashed away like a teenage boy with a crush.
He’s pressed a stem of vitality-boosting myrtle between the pages of a book to preserve it forever.
The tight, hibernating bud of a flower inside my chest yawns its petals wide open, taking up all the room until the pressure in my expanded rib cage leaves me airless.
Something is not right. Someone is missing. I am in knots.
I cross to my side of our bed and slide under the covers. I’ll be long gone before he returns and he’ll never know.
The bedclothes are cool and there’s no dip of weight where another body should lie, but his scent is here. My eyelids are as heavy as iron doors and I finally let them roll closed, breathing in a million memories of Nicholas.
–
I’m asleep when it sinks into my consciousness that I’m not alone.
I open my eyes to the darkness, fuzzy-brained and not quite out of my dream yet.
It’s late, after midnight. There’s a man lying next to me, in exactly the place he’s supposed to be.
This is where he belongs, and yet it’s a lightning strike straight to the heart to see him here.
“What are you doing home?” I blink several times, waiting for him to disappear. I’m still dreaming.
“You missed me.”
“You came home because I missed you?”
He’s got his elbow bent on the pillow, palm under the back of his head, watching me fathomlessly. His other hand drapes across his stomach. “Yes.”
My pulse speeds up, because I’m in his room and he’s caught me. He drove home all night in the snow and the dark and found someone sleeping in his bed. This is where he belongs, but he might not say the same about whoever it is he sees when he looks at me. Which Naomi? Can he tell a difference?
He sits up, leaning over me. My vision is adjusting to the dark enough to clear the shadows from his face, and now I can see that his gaze is liquid. His lips are a soft curve. “I missed you, too,” he says, and presses those lips gently to mine.
I loop my arms around his neck and tug him closer, in case he has any ideas of retreating after one kiss.
He smiles against my mouth, closes his eyes, and I melt into the feel of him against me.
The kiss is a hungry, powerful force, but he breaks it so he can travel down and kiss my neck.
My body reacts, breaking out into an inferno of heat, sensitizing, knowing he’s the only one who can give me what I want.
Into my skin, he murmurs, “I’ve missed you everywhere. ”
“Mm?”
“Here,” he says as his lips brush where my heart beats, letting the pain and ache bleed into his voice.
“I’ve missed you here.” He kisses my mouth.
“And here.” My fingers tunnel into his hair, and his turn to fists that burrow into the mattress, lifting his body over mine. He stares deeply into my eyes. “Here.”
The word is a pale breath.
“I’ve missed you, too,” I reply, the edges of my vision going gray and blurry. Nothing else exists right now. The world begins and ends with this man.
I don’t know I’m crying until he wipes it away and his own eyes shimmer with tears.
We deepen the kiss, and it says what we don’t have to. I tug him closer, closer, until we align all over. When we part for breath, I ask, “Do you know you’re my best friend?”
“Am I?”
His eyes are sapphires held in front of a roaring flame, glinting as they’re turned.
I know every microscopic detail of his face.
I know the shape of his brows for every emotion.
He is the most beautiful man who ever lived, and at one time I couldn’t have said with any certainty what color eyes he had.
He was no more memorable than a picture hanging on the wall that I’d long gotten used to.
How many times did my gaze pass right over him, not realizing he was looking back at me? Always watching. Listening. Waiting.
“You are.” My heartbeat is painfully strong and my torso is a twisted rag. My lungs claw for oxygen. Another tear slips over my cheek, which he kisses away.
I’m falling apart, and I think that Nicholas sees.
His hand is warm as it passes through my hair. His eyes are so tender that my muscles involuntarily relax, fingers uncurling. He buries his face in my throat and inhales. “God, I’ve missed you. Naomi.”
My name trembles in the air, and speech has never been so hard to find. But he needs it. He needs me to give voice to my feelings, because he’s not a mind reader and it’s not okay that I soak up what he gives without offering myself in return. I can’t let him think he’s alone, not for one moment.
“I like it right here,” I tell him, cradling either side of his face between my hands.
“You make me happy. It makes me happy that you came home because I missed you; I’m appreciative of everything you do, for me and anybody else.
I’m lucky to be with a thoughtful man like you and I’m sorry that I’ve taken you for granted and acted like a jerk.
I’m thankful that you stayed put until I found you again.
You supporting me, and making me feel valuable, is everything. ”
He smiles and leans his cheek into my palm.
My throat constricts, more tears welling up.
I blink and splash the pillow. It’s not scary anymore to strip down like this in front of him.
He’s got me. He’s right here, and I’ve got him, too.
“Relearning you has been the best thing that’s ever happened to me. ”
He rubs a thumb over my cheekbone, down to my jaw.
“I’m thankful you’ve forgiven me,” he says.
“I’m sorry for every time I’ve ever made you feel unimportant.
You are the most important, and I’m working on showing that better.
You’re my best friend, too. I have more fun with you than anyone else, and I like how you challenge me.
I like being around you and when I’m not around you, I’m always thinking about you.
I want you to know I’m thinking about you all the time. ”
It feels so lovely to be good to each other.
Being this close and not arching into him is an exercise in restraint. I’m starving, and I can feel that he is, too. He skates a heated glance down my body and his eyes haze, chest rising and falling more deeply.
I try not to let my voice shake when I say, “Where else have you missed me?”
He arches an eyebrow and a devious grin tugs at his lips.
Actions, not words, are his reply. He divests me of my shirt and shows me where with his hands.
My shorts and underwear follow, and he shows me with his mouth.
Every little touch is magnified a thousandfold because it’s been a hundred years and counting since we’ve been skin on skin.
I’m on fire and this has got to be downright excruciating for him, so I pull him back up to me.
“Hey, there,” he says softly.
“Mine.” I don’t have the mental faculties for conversation. I’m a single-minded cavewoman. “I need you. Now.”
“You’ve still been taking the pill, right?”
“Yes.”