“I’m sorry about them,” Nina said quietly, once Carly was out of earshot. She looked almost as miserable as he felt. “And about him, especially. I don’t know what his problem is. I’ve tried to talk to him about it. I warned him before you came, but you know how stubborn he is.”
“It’s okay, Neens. You can’t fix this. I love that you tried, but it’s not your job, okay?”
She nodded, her eyes watering. “We really miss you. I really miss you.”
Nick swallowed. “I miss you, too. Come here.”
He pulled her into a tight hug and kissed the top of her head. When she pulled away, he saw tear tracks streaking down her cheeks.
“Come back soon?”
Nick opened his mouth to answer but couldn’t find any words. How could he promise that? When he didn’t know where his life was going, and when this was what coming home felt like?
“I—I’ll try.” Even as he said it, the promise felt like a lie, but she looked reassured by it, and her hopeful little nod made his heart splinter. He gave her another quick hug, inhaled the scent of chicken one last time, and left the house.
He found Carly in the front seat, still radiating anger.
“Let’s go back to Sydney,” she said, once he was buckled in.
“I’ve got a better idea.” He didn’t want to be driving right now. “Let’s go find a hotel and get very, very drunk.”
Chapter 18
Thirty minutes later, they found themselves at the front door of a tiny sandstone cottage surrounded by a rambling garden full of wattle bushes and stone statues of horses. Leura House was a charming-looking B&B, and even if it hadn’t been, it was the only place on the mountain that had a room available at short notice. The affable middle-aged man who checked them in was all too happy to provide them with toothbrushes and a few other essential toiletries and only looked slightly curious when Nick hauled three plastic bags full of clinking liquor bottles into the lobby.
The horse theme continued as they walked up a creaky stairway. On the wallpaper, stallions raced, and a series of watercolor ponies kept them company as they climbed. Once they turned the key and let themselves into the last bedroom in town, Carly was entirely unsurprised to find several horse figurines over the fireplace.
“The Australian tourism industry sure loves a theme,” she muttered, taking in the small rearing horses on either end of the mantle piece.
“I think they’re trying to encourage horsing around,” Nick deadpanned, and behind his back, Carly rolled her eyes. They’d both calmed down a little on the drive back up to Leura, though she could feel the aftermath of the adrenaline that had shot through her body as they’d left his parents’ house, like a lingering exhaustion in her muscles.
“Whereas my place in Freshwater doesn’t care what you do, as long as you shell out some money?” she replied, sitting down on the bed with a grateful sigh. She kicked off her shoes with a groan.
Nick snorted as he joined her on the bed, and she laid back until her head landed on a lumpy throw pillow. She reached behind him and pulled it out to find it was shaped like a horse’s head.
“This is disturbing. Haven’t these people ever seenThe Godfather?” She frowned at the pillow and tossed it on the floor, then laid back on the firm mattress. Next to her, Nick had lain down and closed his eyes with a deep, heavy sigh. She looked over at him, tracing the sharp lines of his face and studying the dark creep of his five o’clock shadow. She kept waiting for the usual self-recriminations that followed an outburst like the one she’d just had, but they hadn’t arrived. Nick’s parents, and especially his dad, had had it coming, the way they’d talked about Nick. That pointed question his dad had asked about her parents had rankled her, but she knew it wasn’t really about her—it was about his son, and the irritating but unavoidable truth, which was that Nick Jacobs was remarkable.
“I’m sorry I lost it back there,” she said quietly, even though she wasn’t, really.
Nick opened his eyes and looked at her for a long moment, his face unreadable. “It’s okay,” he said finally, even though it didn’t sound like it was, really.
“Wanna get drunk?”
“I really, really do. Let’s get drunk in the name of science and wedding planning.” He climbed off the bed, reached for the bags of liquor, and began lining the bottles up on the antique wooden desk by the window.
“But we don’t have our spreadsheet!”
“We’ll make do. We can take notes on quantities and stuff, and Heather can enter all the data into her system when we get back.”
“Sounds very scientific,” Carly nodded, getting off the bed to join him. Together, they surveyed the bottles. Nick had gone a little nuts in the liquor store, and they had an entire bar cart to work with. Gin, vodka, tequila, and bourbon. Tonic water, a half bottle of prosecco, bitters, and small bottles of sweet and dry vermouth. Carly had had fun in the flavored liqueur section and had cajoled Nick into buying a few little fruity flavors in brightly colored bottles.
Nick stepped into the bathroom and returned with two glass tumblers. “What’s your poison?”
“I like whiskey,” Carly offered. “It’s what I drink after a really bad day. And champagne after a really good one.”
“Well, today was a really bad day,” Nick said, reaching for the bourbon.
Carly watched as he unscrewed the cap and deposited a heavy pour in each glass. “I don’t agree with that. It was a really bad night. But before that, it was a really good day.”
