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I used to think I was intelligent. Then I tried to live in the world. The real one, not the removed-from-reality penthouse where I didn’t even get my own mail from a box.
Nash studies me; I look away. I don’t have much dignity anymore, but I’d rather not see myself through his eyes. He slowly sweeps his fingers up my arm, over my throat, and then gently cups my jaw, turning it back to him. My breath hitches and my heart squeezes when he forces me to catch his gaze. “No shame in not knowing something.”
The simple touch undoes me. That’s new also. I knew the love of my parents briefly and my grandparents longer—but as kind and caring as they were, they were not demonstrative. Richard, well, we only made love a few times, and aside from that, occasional kisses to my cheek as he left for his travels was all I got.
My skin is still electrified from where Nash grazed me so lightly. Like it’s waking up. Am I really so starved for human touch? It’s probably a good thing Richard and I had no kids. Would I even know how to love them?
Nash teaches me how to make scrambled eggs. He doesn’t say anything about the bits of shell in them while we eat at the kitchen counter.
“What are your plans for the day?” he asks, after swallowing the last of his coffee.
“I don't have any. Maybe Fifi and I will explore Brazen Bay some more.”
“Alone?”
I shrug. “I’m used to exploring cities alone. I used to go to the museums and galleries in New York by myself.”
“I thought all socialites traveled in packs.”
“I didn't really fit in with the social groups. At any age.”
He’s waiting for more. In that quiet way he has, I can feel him pulling at the things I don’t want to talk about. How pathetic I am, for starters. But he’s quiet and watchful and I find myself telling him about my grandparents, their deaths. Richard. How it was difficult to maintain peer relationships when I was in school. How even as a married woman, I was alone most of the time. “After we got married, he wasn’t around very often.”
Not even holidays, though at least now I know why. He was with Pauline and Daniel, their son.
“Did you love him?”
“No.”
“I see.” He gets distant but pretends he isn’t as he picks up our plates and takes them to the dishwasher.
“It wasn't like that. He didn't love me either. We were friends. I knew what I was getting into. At least, I thought I did.”
“You married a man you didn’t love.”
“He offered me...”
His frown, the dark slash of his eyebrows, seems so strange on a face that doesn’t fluster often that I don’t finish my sentence. I just blink at him.
“What? What could he offer you that was worth that?”
“Why are you so angry about this?”
“I’m not angry,” he says in a perfectly controlled, perfectly angry voice, then lets out a breath of male frustration. “I’m not angry.”
Well, he’s something. I feel it coming off him in waves. “You’re disappointed in me.”
“I don’t have any right to that feeling either. Look, it’s none of my business.” His movements are choppy, not his usual laidback almost lazy way.
I don’t know why I care so much what he thinks of me. I’m not even that same girl anymore. But it hurts. “He was kind to me.”
Nash stops wiping the counter, his back to me, and his head hangs slightly.
I go on speaking to his back. “Richard was my friend. I thought. We never pretended to love each other. We just didn’t want to live life alone. I thought.” My hands start shaking, the remembered ache of loneliness so visceral. “I didn’t want to be alone, Nash. I know you don’t understand that because you’ve never been alone a day in your life. He offered me my only chance at a family, so I took it.”
Nash turns slowly. “Your only chance? Why would you think he was your only chance?”
My heart hiccups at the look of him, the stillness of his expression. “Please don’t make me say it.” Not when he looks so virile and delicious, and I’m just a lump shaped like a woman who’s never really felt like one.
