Nick pushed buttons that took him to the DVR list and I held my breath. This was a secret I didn’t want him to know. This was a part of our separation that was so silly and unexplainable that I actually felt ashamed.
“You haven’t watched any of these?” The yellow cursor highlighted one of the shows we always watched together… one of the shows I couldn’t bring myself to watch without him. “Or this one?” He continued to flip through the DVR while I shrunk into myself, unable to meet his eye or offer an explanation. Finally, I felt his gaze on me. The intensity of his stare burned into my skin, leaving permanent scars and disfigurement of my soul. “Kate, why didn’t you watch any of these? What were you waiting for?”
For you to come back, my mind whispered.
“I haven’t had time,” I said instead. “I’ve been really busy. It’s been a really hard school year. And I-” The doorbell rang, saving me from rambling more excuses.
I jumped up from the couch and practically ran for the door. I swung it open, surprising the poor delivery guy on the other side.
He laughed nervously and mumbled, “Whoa.”
I closed my eyes for a brief second and desperately tried to pull myself together. “Hi. Sorry.”
“You ordered pizza?” he asked needlessly. He opened his red warming case and showed me the two medium pizzas and order of breadsticks. “Twenty-three, thirty-eight.”
“Oh, right.” In my flight to get to the front door, I forgot to grab my purse. “Hold on a sec.”
“I got it,” Nick said from behind me. He reached around my waist, grazing my side as he went and handed the guy some cash. “That’s all yours.” I could hear the polite smile in Nick’s voice as I stood there frozen and confused.
The guy held the pizzas out to me and I jerked forward, taking them awkwardly. “Thanks,” I mumbled, but he was already headed back to his car.
I stepped back in the house and whirled around. “I thought I owed you dinner. You know, for helping me around the house.”
He tugged on his earlobe and wouldn’t quite meet my eyes when he said, “Yeah, well you can pay me back a different day. The pizza is my treat.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say. Nothing. There was nothing in my brain.
“It’s just pizza, Kate.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
He barely acknowledged it. “I’ll grab plates. You take all that to the couch.”
“Okay.”
I moved robotically through the living room and set the pizzas on the coffee table. I’d ordered him his meat lovers with extra mushrooms and olives. I’d gotten a supreme pizza for myself-no olives or mushrooms, extra tomatoes. I set the breadsticks in the middle.
I had just sat down when he came back holding plates, napkins and two bottles of beer. “Is this okay?” He lifted the beer in my direction.
“It’s fine.” I didn’t honestly know if drinking around Nick was the best idea tonight, but surely one beer wouldn’t hurt. Maybe it would relax me. I desperately needed something to take this sharp edge off.
He handed me my beer and a plate with a smile, then plopped down in his seat, a little closer to me than the first time. I took a breath and ordered my mind to stop reading into every little thing. It was so stupid.
I was so stupid.
“Nice,” he grinned at his pizza. “Why didn’t we think of this forever ago?”
I scooted forward, a little closer to him too, but just so I could reach the food. “I think I was trying to make a point. It’s dumb, right?”
He gave me a sideways look and a crooked smile. “I can’t confirm that it’s dumb because then I’d have to admit to being dumb too. I have too much ego for that.”
I pressed my lips together to keep from smiling, but he elbowed me in the side and I let it go, grinning at him and shaking my head. “We can be idiots.”
I thought he would laugh or smile or do anything but sober up completely and stare at me with that hot, penetrating emotion that seemed to follow him around everywhere tonight. “We can be,” he said in a low voice.