Nick’s front door opens just as I’m about to turn the knob.
“Hey!” he says, a huge smile spreading across his face. “I didn’t think I’d see you tonight—I was just heading out for ice cream.”
“Ice cream?” I cock my head.
“Yeah—you got a problem with that?” He smirks. “I was stressed about your conversation with Isabella and thought I’d eat my feelings.” He laughs.
I smile. “That’s why I’m here—I wanted to talk to you about what happened at the house earlier today. It was pretty awkward.”
“I know.” He grabs my hand. “I’m sorry about the whole boyfriend thing. I totally overstepped,” he says, and looks down at his cowboy boots. “It’s just that . . . Jacks . . . I think I’m falling in love with you.”
Suddenly I forget what had seemed so important as I’d driven to his house—the questions I had for him about how he acted. All I can think of is what Nick just revealed. Involuntarily I flash back to when James whispered that he loved me for the first time in my ear right before we fell asleep in his bed, his breath tickling my ear. I push the memory aside and let Nick’s declaration sink in, let his words settle in my chest.
Thankfully he keeps talking. “And I know this is selfish, but I wanted her to know it.” He looks back up. “I wanted you to know it.” His gaze is so intense, it feels like he’s looking through me.
The truth is, I’ve been falling too. I can tell by the way I rush to text Nick when something funny happens, like last week when I’d been in Starbucks and discovered a sock stuck to the back of my pant leg, the dryer sheet failing to do its job. I know by how my stomach flutters when his name comes up on my phone, and he’s calling me sometimes four or five times a day—just to hear my voice. I was sure of it when I couldn’t sleep at night and I’d think of him first, wishing he were beside me to wrap his strong arm around my waist. It’s been a long time, but my heart still remembers the feeling of the first gasps of love.
I tilt my chin up and kiss him, deciding not to be scared. “For the record, I’m falling in love with you too,” I whisper, the words feeling foreign as I say them out loud. James was the only man I ever loved until now. But James was the past. Nick is the future.
Nick pulls me in for a deeper kiss. I lose my balance, and he catches me before I stumble, causing the moment to pass. And I’m grateful, because I don’t want to have the conversation. To dissect what it all means.
“Come on, let’s go eat the shit out of our feelings,” I say as I laugh awkwardly. “I could go for some mint chip—and let me guess, you’re a rocky road kind of guy.”
“Nope.” He shakes his head, a smile playing on his lips.
“Chunky Monkey?”
“Try again.” He closes his door and rattles the knob to make sure it’s locked.
“Pistachio.” I frown, and he gives me a blank stare. “What?” I ask.
“Pistachio, really?”
“Fine, I give up.”
“Vanilla,” he says proudly.
“Vanilla?” I squint at him. “I would have never guessed that. It’s so—”
“Boring?” he says, taking my hand.
“Maybe a little,” I say.
“I like that it’s predictable, easy, never disappoints.”
I laugh. “Kind of like you?”
“Maybe,” he says before kissing me, his lips soft.
As we’re pushing through the front doors to go outside, Nick’s arm slung over my shoulder, a woman with wiry short blonde hair and cutoff jean shorts nearly collides with us. “Sorry,” she says, looking up from her phone and glancing from me to Nick, her eyes widening at him.
“No problem,” I say, and she gives me a once-over, then hurries toward the elevator, her barely-there shorts rising up in the back with each stride, her pumps clicking against the floor.
“Did you see the way she looked at us?” I ask once we’re out on the sidewalk. “Do you know her?”
Nick nods. “She was one of Dylan’s roommates. They never got along very well.” He frowns. “I haven’t seen her in months.”
After we order our ice cream cones and settle on a bench outside Baskin-Robbins, I recount my conversation with Isabella to Nick. He said he wanted to know how it went, and I decide that if we’re going to have a real relationship, I need to share. But still, it feels weird, talking about my ex-mother-in-law with my new boyfriend. In between licks of my mint chip, I tell him how she fired question after question, some curious, some accusatory, and how I’d tried my best to hold my voice steady as I revealed the ugly truth about James. About me. About our marriage.
At first it seemed that she held me somewhat accountable for James’s indiscretion. And I didn’t argue the point—I had accepted that I wasn’t an innocent party in our union. I hadn’t cheated, but I’d betrayed him in my own way. But as I told her about my journey to Hana, how Nick had helped me find a bit of closure to fill the gaping hole James’s death had created inside me, she began to soften.
She left two hours later. Her tears had finally dried up and were replaced by forced acceptance. “I’m sorry he did this to you,” she said as she stood and grabbed her things. “I always prided myself on my close relationship with my son—I wish he had trusted me enough to come to me. Obviously I didn’t know him as well as I should have.”
“We all have secrets,” I said as we walked to the door. “Some are just bigger than others.”
“True,” she pondered. “I have one more question.”
“Anything.”
“How do I move on from this? Because it’s not like I can call and yell at him for being so irresponsible—for being so selfish! I feel like I have nowhere to place all this anger I’m feeling.” She gave me a sad smile. “If I’m being totally honest, I had really wanted to direct it your way, but it’s not as simple as that, is it?”
“No, it’s not.”
“So then, what?”
I thought for a moment before speaking. “I think you let yourself love him just the same. He was your son. And he loved you. That will never change.”
“And you? Do you still love him? After all this?”
I thought back to standing on the cliff in Hana—the closest to James that I’d ever be again. In that moment I’d felt no anger, no resentment. Only love tinged with regret. I nodded. The next part I don’t tell Nick, knowing it would bother him.
“I will always love him, Isabella. But I’m also ready to move on. I hope you can understand that.”
“I can,” she said softly. “You know, I was wrong about you, Jacks. You’re much stronger than I ever gave you credit for.”
I laughed lightly. “I think we may have both been wrong about each other.”
Isabella hugged me one last time. “Take care of yourself,” she said, grabbing the box of James’s things I’d put aside for her, the wedding album sticking out of the top, and walked out my front door without looking back.
Nick kisses my forehead lightly after I finish telling him the story. “I know that conversation wasn’t easy. But for what it’s worth, I’m proud of you—I think you did the right thing by telling her the real story. She deserves to know.”
“The truth will set us free, right?” I whisper as I rest my head on his chest, his steady heartbeat comforting me.
The next morning, the pressure of Nick’s lips on my mouth prods me awake.
He moves in for a deep kiss that sends a shiver through my entire body. “See you later, sleepyhead.”
“Can you stay a bit longer?” I pat the bed next to me. “Maybe do what we never got around to because I passed out. Sorry about that.”