“I still had my keys,” he finally said awkwardly. “I pulled some strings to get off the ship. I just…had to be here.”
My knees buckled. I let out a low sob and dropped my bags, and in a flash Nick crossed the room and scooped me into his arms. I felt his own tears on my hair, his body shaking as he wept with me, to the point where I don’t even know what we were crying for anymore: for Dad, for us, for the way my face still fit into that spot of his neck where it had always belonged. All the feelings I’d tried to ignore for the past two years came pouring into the empty spaces Dad had left, as if by magic an essential something was being restored to me, even though hours earlier I could’ve sworn my life would never have any magic in it ever again.
I lifted my head and searched Nick’s face. He searched back, brimming with exquisite care and worry, and something deeper—something I hadn’t seen in such a long, awful time.
So I kissed him. Our arms slid around each other in desperate sync, pressing us closer, tighter, dizzier.
He broke away. “Are you sure?” he whispered.
I silently pulled my sweater over my head, and then my tank top, and took his face in my hands. “I don’t want to be sad anymore, Nick. Please, help me not be sad. Just for a little while.”
“My love,” he murmured, kissing me again, his hands warm on my body.
*
Afterward we lay in my bed, my head pillowed on his chest.
“I’m so sorry,” he said, stroking my hair.
“Surely not for that,” I told him.
“Definitely not for that.” I could hear his smile. “But it’s wretched about your dad. I liked him so much. He treated me just like any other guy you might have been dating.”
“Dad had a good eye for people.” My voice cracked.
“I keep thinking about when I phoned to get the Thanksgiving recipes,” Nick said, running a hand down my arm and lacing our fingers. “He shouted, ‘Nancy, he’s in love with her, you owe me a steak.’”
“You never told me that!”
“If memory serves, we were otherwise occupied that night,” he said. “Anyway, he rang off by telling me I should only use the Chex Mix if I really, really meant it. I swore I didn’t have any impure intentions, and he made the most amazing noise. He knew before we even said it.”
“And you used the Chex Mix.”
“Well,” he said, “I really, really meant it.”
We were still holding hands. He squeezed mine. “Every day, I wake up and tell myself that today is the day I’ll feel normal again,” he said. “And it never happens.”
“I’ve tried not missing you. I’ve tried so hard,” I said, rolling onto my back. “But if it works, it never lasts.” I shook my head. “Sometimes I just wanted to talk to my friend Nick about my ex-boyfriend Nick.”
“And I wanted to tell Friend Bex that Ex-Bex can wear trousers with a foot printed on the bum and still look devastating,” he said. “Friend Bex probably would’ve told me to stay away tonight in case I upset you more, but I couldn’t let you leave your mum in Iowa without me here when you walked in that door. And if that was inconsiderate, or arrogant, or presumptuous…”
“It wasn’t any of those things,” I said. “It was perfect. You were perfect.”
I sat up and wrapped the eiderdown around me, suddenly feeling extremely exposed even though he’d seen it all and then some.
“That being said,” I started, “I don’t have any delusions. My dad died, and we’re both messed up about it, and I’m crazy vulnerable, and you’re probably taking extreme advantage of a bereaved lady because you’re a dangerous sex addict.”
“That would be the headline in the Daily Mail, yes,” Nick said.
“You’re off the hook, is what I’m saying,” I continued. “I loved this. I needed this. But I will not be needy about this. I’m not the kind of person who assumes that sex is a cure-all and that suddenly all our old problems are gone. Or even that this has to mean anything.”
Nick heaved himself upward and sat against the headboard.
“That’s marvelous,” he said, “except that I’ve no interest in being off the hook. I came here thinking I could just hug you and give you this possibly terrible lasagna I tried to make, but when I touched you, it was like I’d finally woken up after sleepwalking for two years.”
I can’t truly have stopped breathing while he talked, but broken ceiling fans push air with more purpose than my lungs did.
“I tried dating other people, and it felt so insincere, like I didn’t really mean it. And I didn’t. Because I am, as ever, completely, utterly, irrevocably in love with you,” Nick said, and as he quoted himself from Windsor, the tips of his ears began to vibrate, that old embarrassed tic I hadn’t seen since Oxford. “I don’t even know if you want to hear all this, and I’m certain this is the worst possible time for me to be telling you. But I learnt from you that sometimes just blurting things out leads to the best outcome.”
He closed his eyes. “And there’s one more thing I need to confess,” he said. “Which is that I believe I’ve burnt the lasagna.”
It was then that I noticed the acrid smell of charred tomato sauce floating through the flat.
“My father is dead, and you torched my dinner so that we could have sex,” I said, after he’d turned off the oven and crawled back into bed. “If you’re not being sincere, things may take an ugly turn. You know how I am when I get low blood sugar.”
Nick pressed his hands against his eyes and laughed. “Always so glib.”
“Okay, how’s this for sincere,” I said. “I am, as ever, completely, utterly, irrevocably in love with you, too.”
He sat up and pushed a stray strand of my hair behind my ear, such a familiar, comforting gesture, one he’d done a thousand times before and I never thought he’d do again. “Please don’t feel you have to say it back,” he said. “I just couldn’t not tell you any longer.”
“I have never wanted to say anything more,” I said, and it wasn’t until he tenderly wiped them that I realized my cheeks were wet again. It is amazing how many tears the human body can produce once it gets going. “I love you. And I am so, so sad. Those two things can be equally true. I learned that the night we broke up.”
“I went about us all wrong, Bex,” he said ruefully. “I took the wrong lesson away from Mum. The press might’ve been the trigger, but she was a loaded gun.” His eyes were bright with feeling. “Every day, I’ve thought that if I could do it over, I wouldn’t be so scared. I would tell Barnes and Marj and my father to get stuffed, and I wouldn’t keep you a secret from anyone. God, that last time I kissed you, I didn’t even do it properly.”
“Well,” I said, choking up again, “it turns out it wasn’t the last time. We got another chance.”
“We got another chance,” he affirmed. “And I want you to know I don’t intend to waste it. But most of all, there is something else I want, and it doesn’t involve any more talking.”
*