“No,” I admit. “I haven’t officially said yes yet. They want me forA Shore Thing. I’m thinking it over. Oh, also, I slept with Nate.”
“Youwhat?” Emma practically shouts.
Now that’s the Emma I know.
“So are you,you know…” She leans heavily on those last two words.
“Am I what?” I ask.
“Flinging?”
I let out a little half sniffle, half laugh. “No. Maybe. I don’t know.” I take a deep breath, trying again to find the right words to explain what I’m feeling. “Do you remember that silly list we made together after I came off the show and you guys basically forced me to put myself back out there to start dating again?” I ask her.
“I wouldn’t say weforcedyou. Maybe enthusiastically encouraged?”
“Right.” I give a teary laugh. “Sybil and I were talking about that earlier this summer, before I left for home. Like, sure, the list gave me all the reasons I needed to risk jumping back into the fray. But lately the list was feeling kinda limiting and depressing, and anyway, we decided it was time I just throw away the damn list and just, I don’t know, do what other people do? Follow my heart?”
“So far, this is all sounding like fabulous advice to me,” Emma says.
I swallow again. “Sure. Sort of. Except, Emma, I…” I feel my throat closing up again but clear it, drawing in a calming breath. “I think Ididfollow my heart. Too far. And now I regret it.”
She stops walking on the treadmill. “Oh shit. Are youfallingfor Nate?”
I nod, too overwhelmed with the realization to say it out loud. “Last night, when we—slept together….” I pause. How do I explain why this felt so different to me. So…beautiful. “It didn’t feel like a fling or a one-night stand,” I tell her, trying to figure out why it felt like more. “I tried not to overthink it and to just be in the moment, be okay with this just being something fun and temporary…” But the truth is, I realize as I hold the phone and take another breath: I don’t want it to be that. “Emma, when I’m around him, I just feel so… I don’t know. Seen. Held. There’s just something about him. I know it’s crazy fast and it makes no sense, I can’t explain it, it’s just… It feels like… like… like happiness?”
“Oh, Nik,” she breathes. “That’sgreat. What’s wrong with that?”
I shake my head. “Everything’s wrong with it. First off, he’s barreling toward becoming my brother-in-law. Or my sister-in-law’s brother, which is—I don’t even know what that makes him.”
Emma laughs. “It just makes him a guy.”
“A guy who’s built into family holidays for the rest of eternity, even if we break up?”
“Hmm, you do have a point there.”
“I’m thirty years old, Em,” I remind her. “And I’m hooking up with a guy who has said in a thousand different ways that he doesn’t want anything serious. How did I even get here? I mean, I have truly never met a more commitment-phobic man in my life.”
Emma sighs. “Did he tell you that? That he doesn’t want to be in a relationship with you?”
“I—well, no, not in those words exactly. At least, not since last night.”
“So maybe you should try telling him how you feel.”
“Emma!” I shout, as if she’s just told me to march naked in next year’s Fourth of July parade.
“Okay, okay, it was only a suggestion.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“More complicated than your brother marrying his sister who happens to have dated your ex-fiancé and ruined your life?”
“Yeah. More complicated than that,” I say, laughing a little despite the mess I’m in. “I mean, they asked me to come back on the show. To get a second chance at love. Which is, like, amazing and unexpected and terrifying. I will remind you again, I’m thirty. Thirty, Emma! What am I even doing with my life? Maybe thisLovedBything is the exact thing I needed. Maybe this is all meant to be.”
She lets out a breath. “How long do you have to decide?”
“They need an answer by the end of the week.”
“That’s insane.”
