“God, Jacks! How can you say that? That because you didn’t greet him at the door in a kimono holding a martini, you deserve this? Marriage is fucking hard. We all make mistakes, and a lot of them. But that doesn’t mean bad things should happen to us as a result.”
“What if I didn’t disclose everything to him before we got married? If there were things I held back? Would that change your mind?” I had never told Beth what I withheld from James. I knew she’d insist I tell him, that she’d tell me what I know now—that a secret like that could break a marriage in half.
“Jacks, none of us tell the person we’re going to marry everything. We all have secrets.”
“Even you?” Beth tells her husband everything. She once asked him to take tweezers and pick an ingrown hair out of her ass, and he did it. (Apparently this is a thing?) I cringed when she told me—I had never even peed with the bathroom door open in front of James.
“Yeah, there are things Mark doesn’t need to know. But you know them all! Because you have to love me no matter what.” She laughs.
My stomach rolls. Would she forgive me for not having the same faith in her? Although not telling Beth had nothing to do with not trusting her. I didn’t confide in her because I knew I’d made the wrong choice by not telling James. And when you fuck up like that, sometimes it’s easier to let the guilt fester in the darkness of your soul, rather than bring it out in the light.
I’d wanted to confess to Beth so many times that I hadn’t told James until it was too late. When she’d had her first baby and I’d held his tiny body in my arms. When I watched James—his eyes swimming with melancholy behind his phone as he videotaped Beth’s kids tearing into their gifts on Christmas morning. When the clock would strike 2:00 a.m. and I’d still be up, sipping James’s whiskey, wishing I could turn back time so he’d love me the way he used to. He never said his love had changed, but I could tell. He looked at me differently. And since I found out about Dylan, I’ve wondered if my omission was why he’d strayed. Was he trying to hurt me the way I’d hurt him?
I make a decision to tell Beth the truth about why James had come to resent me when I get home from Maui. Clean slate.
After we say good-bye, the knock comes. It’s timid, like whoever it is worries I might actually hear it. I sigh, wishing I’d put the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door. I open it just a crack so I can tell the turn-down service no, thank you, but it’s Nick, and he has a pink drink adorned with one of those silly umbrellas in his hand.
He smiles.
I frown. Is he here to talk about what happened earlier? Because I’m not sure I want to discuss it.
“You look upset. Did I wake you?” He studies my face.
“No, not at all. I was awake,” I say. “What’s that?” I nod toward his glass and wave him inside. As he walks past me, I grab a hoodie and put it on to cover my skimpy pajama top.
“Don’t worry, it’s a virgin POG,” Nick says.
“A what?”
“It’s fresh-squeezed passion-fruit juice, orange juice, and guava juice, but without the vodka.” He bends the straw toward my mouth. “Try.”
I take a sip, the flavors of the juices blending together perfectly. It’s sweet but not too sugary like so many froufrou drinks I’ve tried. “It’s delicious.”
“I brought it for you.”
“Thanks,” I say, taking the drink from him.
Nick glances around the room, and I cringe as I follow his gaze. My shoes are strewn across the floor; my towel from the shower I took this morning is still draped haphazardly over the back of the desk chair. And then our eyes fall on my lacy black bra and inside-out panties, the crotch staring us both in the face.
We stand there, neither of us knowing what to say about my underwear. I resist the urge to scoop it up and toss it behind the chair, not wanting to draw more attention to it. Before James died, I would have instantly filled this awkward moment with words, any words. That had been my thing—to ease tension out of situations like a masseuse kneading someone’s sore muscles. Before, I would have laughed awkwardly, then told Nick stories to distract him—like how I’d walked in on the housekeeper yesterday and she’d screamed. Or how I’d been on the lanai last night and stared down at a couple practically having sex on their balcony. But I don’t. Instead, I just stand here in the thick of the embarrassment and absorb it.
Finally, thankfully, Nick speaks. “I hope it’s okay that I’m here. I needed to talk.”
Here we go.
“Let’s go outside.” I motion for him to follow me onto the lanai.
We sit side by side in chairs and stare out at the ocean. The sun is low in the sky, a sunset fast approaching.
“Can we talk about things? Is that okay?”
I start to tell him that no, I don’t want to rehash the fact that my husband was playing the newlywed game while in Maui. But there’s something about the way he’s not looking at me, like he’s afraid he’ll be left alone with it if I don’t listen.
“Of course,” I say, taking another sip of my drink.
“I was down at the bar for a while, but I had to leave. I was listening to all of the conversations going on around me—about regular things. Someone’s house was in escrow, but they worried it might fall out. Another guy’s niece had just scored the winning goal in her soccer game, and he was watching a video someone had texted him. I had thought being around all that activity would make me feel better. Give me hope that I could eventually be someone who was talking about things other than my fiancée dying. But right now I worry that won’t happen. That I’ll never live a normal life. That I’ll never be me again.”
I know exactly how Nick feels. He’s desperate to feel normal. It’s all I’ve wanted since James died. Like when I went to Beth’s for taco night and forced myself to engage in the conversation, to laugh when my niece told a story about the new class hamster named Ollie; or when I walked to the coffee shop last week and sat at a table next to a gaggle of preschool moms planning a Star Wars–themed birthday party, desperately wanting to do something regular like that again. It’s as if the world has kept spinning without me, and I’m not quite sure how to get back on the ride. Or if I even want to. “I know exactly what you mean.” I lean over my chair and hug him. It’s an instinct. To make him feel better. But when he squeezes me back, my body tenses, unsure of how to respond to a man’s arms around me that aren’t James’s. It’s foreign, and I feel almost suffocated by them. I try to cover my discomfort by moving over to the railing and making an observation about a luau we can hear down below, but I know Nick felt it. “I’m sorry. It’s just strange hugging someone else,” I finally say, my back still to him.
“Phew!” he says. “I thought maybe I smelled?”
I turn and face him. “Talk about not feeling normal. Apparently I can’t even hug someone anymore without feeling awkward.”
We laugh quietly at ourselves. It feels like the only choice.
“I miss her,” he says. “It feels like I have a huge hole inside of me—where she used to be. I keep seeing things and think, ‘Oh, I need to tell Dylan about this.’ And then I realize I can’t.”
“I miss him too,” I say. I miss how he’d wrap one of his legs around mine when he slept. I miss the way he sang off tune to any Eagles song—didn’t matter which one; he couldn’t control himself if he heard their music. I miss when he’d make me chilaquiles with homemade salsa on Sunday mornings. Suddenly it occurs to me that it’s been years since he did any of these things. The parts of him I miss the most were gone long before he was.
“Does that make us fools?” he asks. “To miss the people who fucked us over so badly? Especially now that we know they were playing house over here?”
“This might surprise you, but I don’t think so. Just because they did a bad thing—several bad things—doesn’t mean we can’t be sad they’re gone.”
“Can I ask you something kind of strange?”
“Why not? I’m abnormal. You’re abnormal. Maybe it will seem normal when you say it.”