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He nods. “This was my room.”
Nate is sitting on the edge of the bed, and she goes to sit down next to him. His T-shirt is hiked above his waist, and she can see the hair there leading downward from his belly button. She moves toward him, reaches out to touch him there.
Her eyes focus on the bulletin board above his desk: newspaper clippings and ribbons, lots of empty tacks where things used to be, things that are long gone now. She wants to tell him she likes his room, but he tenses, even at her touch, and she can feel that he is annoyed—or maybe embarrassed, or maybe both. It isn’t exactly about her, and yet she doesn’t say anything, takes her hand away.
“We don’t have to talk about it, Nate,” she says.
“You obviously want to.”
She takes a deep breath in. “I just want to make sure you’re doing okay,” she says.
Nate is quiet. “I’m fine,” he says.
“I can tell.”
“Mag, I can understand that you are freaked out. I get that. If this were your parents’ house, and I walked into all of this, I think I’d freak out a little too.”
When it was her dad’s house they were visiting, Maggie had been so worried that her father would drink too much, say something inappropriate. The worst thing he did was speak with a little too much detail about his most recent girlfriend, Melinda. And yet it had been tame in comparison to Maggie’s fears, hadn’t it? Maybe because Maggie had told Nate everything about her father a long time before they went to Asheville. He knew her whole story—everything that could potentially cause friction— and so, when it all went well enough, it created a sense of relief.
“If this were my parents’ house, you’d deal,” she says.
“So you’re dealing?” he said.
She shrugs. “You’re a better person than me.”
She is trying to make a joke—to bring him back to her—and it works for a second. He smiles. Then his smile disappears. “Please don’t feel weird. This is all fine. This is what they want. I accept that. Sometimes things just don’t work out. Sometimes, it’s easier to separate . . .”
She looks at him, worrying that he’s missing it—the bigger picture—and wondering if he is missing it for his parents’ sake, or if he would also be capable of missing it for them. “Something just feels off about it,” she says. “The divorce party. I think something else is going on.”
“What are you talking about?” he says.
“I’m not sure yet,” she says. “I’m not sure I can explain it. I just have a bad feeling.”
“A bad feeling?”
“Yes. I have a feeling that it is not as simple as them both wanting this.”
He looks down at her hand, turning it over. There is no engagement ring there. She hadn’t wanted one. Now she almost wishes she had one. She wishes she had something to look down at, as proof that they promised to be in this together. Because, right now, she is feeling outside of it, of them.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“For what?”
“For putting us here.”
Maggie shakes her head, trying to take this out of the realm of the two of them. This is Nate’s family’s weirdness, not his. Nate has always worked hard, so hard to be good to her, to be there for her. It is unfair to even worry in her own mind, now, about whether that will be the case. Because of his parents? Because of any
thing he says about why they’ve chosen to end things?
“I’m the one that should be sorry,” she says. “It’s your family.
You know them better than I do, and I shouldn’t be rushing to judgment.” She makes herself meet his eyes. “I just feel a little overwhelmed by everything . . .”
But suddenly she doesn’t want to say even to herself what the everything is. The part of him that she is seeing now too. It has taken Georgia to point out that Nate gets absent, doesn’t want to deal. How could Maggie not have picked up on that before now? Has she not noticed? Or has she been too scared to acknowledge that she has and what it may mean?
“You know,” he says, “let’s just lie down for a while . . . take our clothes off for a while.” He smiles at her. “If we get some sleep, this will all feel less weird. Plus when we wake up, we’ll be that much closer to out of here. Sound like a good plan?”
She nods. “Sounds good.”
