Chapter Five
Jess
The first thing I do the morning of the ball is check Instagram. It’s become a ritual over the past week and a half, a sick one, but one I can’t seem to break. I fully realize I am the absolute worst, but I can’t help myself. I had another stellar day of writing after my last DM conversation with Nick, locking in almost eight thousand words. I also had an upsetting epiphany—the words started flowing the minute Nick Matthews slid into my DMs and started poking at me. The sparring led to a spark, and even if I don’t like it, I need it, creatively.
I need to get this book done, and I need it to be good. And so I open the app and look for his response. My last message to him was cutting, maybe even slightly below the belt, but I was so sure it would lead to a fiery response from Nick, and my fingers have been itching to give it right back to him. I sent it a few days ago, hoping it would reignite this battle he himself started.
@itsjesscarrington: Of course you’re running away. It’s what you do best.
Except, once again, I have no new messages when I click into Instagram. I open the thread anyway, as if I haven’t been fruitlessly hoping for his response—and been disappointed each time. Of course there’s nothing there. Only my last message to him, with the little note of being seen.
Shit.
He saw it and he didn’t respond, and so despite the stellar start I had with my manuscript, I can’t help but feel like I’m right back where I started. The words were flowing better than they have in longer than I’d like to acknowledge, but once Nick stopped responding to my DMs, they dried up like an unwatered Christmas tree.
What the hell am I supposed to do now? Alyssa’s flight lands in two hours and then we’re leaving to head to a picturesque inn in the woods upstate. The ball is tonight. I need to get words down. And I need the safety of stoking the combative flames of this thing with Nick.
It was a life jacket, this conversation with him. It allowed me to focus on the irritation instead of wallowing in the hurt. But now he’s ripped the shield away, leaving me vulnerable and exposed. The last thing I want to be in the presence of Nick Matthews is vulnerable and exposed.
I toss my phone and it lands somewhere in the rumpled sheets of my bed, where I will leave it so I’m not tempted to keep refreshing my messages. I pack my overnight bag, checking the weather outside my window every few minutes. It’s been raining a ton over the past few days, but it has yet to turn to snow. I’m hoping it will hold off for just enough time to let me get to the hotel safely.
Turns out, I was hoping for the wrong thing.
Alyssa texts me an hour after I’m packed and ready to go to tell me her flight is delayed.
But delays happen all the time, especially during the holiday season and with the weather as temperamental as it is. Surely it won’t take long before she’s on the plane and headed my way. Because if she isn’t going to be heading my way, I seriously need to rethink my plans for this whole evening. I don’t think I can make it through this without her, without someone unequivocally on my side.
I don’t think I can face him alone.
I try to kill some time by writing, pushing to keep up the steady pace I set for myself when I first got this new idea, but nothing is coming. I swear, it’s like some magical force has invaded my brain and is keeping me from knowing where this story needs to go next.
A force named Nick Matthews.
No. I will not let him have that kind of power over me, and I will certainly not let him have that kind of power over my writing. So sparring with him inspired this second-chance romance I’m currently working on. That doesn’t mean I need him to be a part of my daily life in order to finish it. I have enough memories of sparring with Nick to last a lifetime. It was our love language.
I close my eyes for a minute, harkening back to the years when Nick and I were blissfully happy. Our relationship could be baffling to those who didn’t know us well, the way we lovingly insulted each other, the way we teased and chided. But it worked for us, because we were always equals. Equally talented, and on a similar career trajectory.
Until we weren’t. After that, everything changed.
But I push those memories out of my head, insteadpulling up some of the good ones. The way we complemented each other. The way our give and take translated perfectly from our relationship as critique partners to our relationship as lovers.
We clicked in bed our very first time, the tension so deliciously taut between us that when it finally snapped, it was explosive. But it wasn’t just our off-the-charts levels of physical chemistry that made the sex so good, it was the way we really listened to each other. I’d never been with a man before who obeyed when I asked him for what I wanted. Nick seemed to take pleasure in giving me pleasure, a phenomenon I haven’t experienced before or since.
Not that I haven’t been with anyone else. I’ve dated several people, even managed to have a sort of long-term relationship with an investment banker named Alex. But in the long run, we were just too different, our life philosophies so unmatched, that the breakup felt like a relief.
My text alert pulls me out of a reverie I don’t want to be caught in, thinking about Nick and the good times.
Alyssa:Bad news babe, my flight is now full-on canceled. They’re saying no flights are leaving the airport until tomorrow evening at the earliest. I’m so sorry
Shit. I guess I should have been expecting this, but I had been holding out hope for a Christmas miracle.
Me:I totally understand. Get home safely!
Alyssa:Are you going to be okay?
Me:I don’t think I have much choice at this point. I don’t think I can just not show up.
Alyssa:I feel terrible that I won’t be there for you, but I know you can do this! Go into that ball looking like the total fucking snack you are and don’t pay Nick Matthews one lick of attention!
