You Deserve Each Other(29)

“Nope,” he says.

“Huh?”

He tucks a finger under my chin and lifts so that my mouth closes. “So beautiful,” he murmurs, eyes glittering. They’re the color of morning frost, and they’re having a laugh at my expense.

My heart starts thumping erratically from the way he’s looking at me. I’ve been tuning out my attraction to him and suddenly it comes pounding back with a vengeance, until all I notice is the adorable curl of his hair, the sensual curve of his smile, the delicious notes of his cologne. He’s gorgeous and I hate him for spoiling it with his personality.

He follows up with, “Just as beautiful as the moment we first saw each other from across the room. On visitor’s day, at the prison.”

I swallow. “I’ll be headed back to prison soon, I’m sure.”

“I hear they offer classes. You could finally learn what the word regardless means.”

“It’ll be worth it, sleeping in the same room that holds my toilet, knowing you’re not around to ruin anyone’s life. Regardless.” I pause. I want to let this go, but I can’t. “Tell me where you were all day.”

“Take a guess.”

“Cheating, I hope. Make sure you leave evidence for me to find.”

His smile bends. Dries that way. I pick up a stack of junk mail and flip through Super Saver coupons, hmm-ing approvingly over discount items. My favorite soap is two for one this week. Frozen pizzas are five for ten dollars. Nicholas is going to strangle me with his Toothless tie.

“What are you making for dinner?” he asks. Not What are we having. It’s What are you making. The laugh is gone from his voice.

I don’t glance up. “It’s in the oven.”

I hear him pivot. There’s no timer on. No red light. He pulls down the oven door and it’s just as he suspected. “There’s nothing in here.”

I allow myself a tiny smile. I deserve it, after the day I’ve had. Not knowing what my fiancé is up to. Being let go from the best job I’ve ever had. The dreadful bangs that don’t look anything like Amélie’s. “That’s what I made. A whole feast of nothing, just for you.”

He grumbles all the way into his study. The lock clicks. Thirty minutes later, he emerges and stands at the front door.

“What are you doing?”

Nicholas casts me a disdainful look, like I’ve just asked the nosiest question. I hear a car door shut and seconds later, he’s got a box of pizza in his hands. Pizza for one. Well played, Nick.

He kicks the door shut and goes back to the study. I hurry to hide all the paper plates, hoping to inconvenience him, but he doesn’t care. He takes one of the good plates down from the cabinet and smiles at me as he rolls up a slice of pizza and eats half in one bite.

When he’s finished, he leaves his unused plate in the sink for me to wash.





Nicholas and I are one for two. I won Sunday, ruining the Roses’ dinner. He won Monday by making me think I was going to die, even if that wasn’t his intention. He won again yesterday by forcing me to smell his pizza through the wall and not offering to share.

It’s fitting that today happens to be Halloween, because I’m so focused on breaking this man’s spirit that my scary eyes are like those little electricity balls in science centers that make your hair floof when you touch them. I’m going to zap everybody in a fifty-foot radius.

When a Jeep Grand Cherokee sidles into Nicholas’s parking spot, I’m settled on the porch, clutching a plastic cauldron of goodies for trick-or-treaters. Nicholas climbs out of the Jeep and wears a smug expression as he trots up the walkway. He’s hoping I’ll ask what the hell he’s up to, but I’m committed to figuring it out on my own. Last night I found his keys and noticed that the Maserati fob was missing. I plugged an unfamiliar key into the Jeep experimentally and sure enough, it’s Nicholas’s. What a bizarre purchase for him. According to the Carfax in the glove compartment, the Jeep’s not even new—it’s like ten years old and has had two previous owners. Harold would be rolling in his tanning bed.

Where’s the Maserati? I have no idea. I’m dying to know but I would rather lick a fiberglass lollipop than ask and give him the satisfaction of not telling me.

There are a couple things amiss about Nicholas today. For one, he’s wearing his old glasses instead of his contacts. I like the glasses because they fit his face well and they make him seem sophisticated and down-to-earth at the same time. Whenever I tell him this, he scrunches up his nose and shakes his head self-consciously.

Also, he’s wearing jeans and sneakers, which are outlawed at Rise and Smile.

“Skipped work again?” I surmise.

He just pats me on the head and skirts around to go inside the house. Cool. I have no idea what my fiancé has spent the past couple of days doing. He’s lording his secrets over me like a Scrooge. This is a totally normal, functional relationship we’re in.

I think about Seth and a dental hygienist going at it in the back of his car and my eyes narrow to slits.

Nicholas joins me on the front porch right as the trick-or-treaters start to arrive and doesn’t say a single word in relation to my latest effort to tick him off: I’ve added his business card to every single Ziploc bag of candy with the highest sugar content I could find. Pixy Stix. Sour Patch Kids. Candy corn. Fun Dip.