You Deserve Each Other(44)

I study his profile. He keeps his eyes on the road, but he must be aware of the heaviness of my stare. “You’d mess with them?”

“Of course. They’ve earned it. I mean, they’re my parents and I love them. I’m grateful to them for a lot of things, but they’re also a huge pain in the ass. When I asked you to marry me, I kind of …”

His lips press together.

“What?” I hedge.

Nicholas swallows. “I kind of hoped we’d be like partners in crime, sort of. When Mom’s trying to sink her claws into me and I can’t get away on my own, you’d have my back. The two of us, a team.”

“I wanted that, too,” I manage quietly. Past tense. “I didn’t know you did. I’ve felt second place for a long time.”

“I never wanted you to feel like that. But … you didn’t step up. You didn’t become my partner. You left me to fend for myself.”

“Yeah, kind of like when your mother openly insults everything about me and you say nothing,” I say waspishly. “That sound she makes when I say yes to dessert. Tut-tut. Looking down on me because of where I work, and the fact that I only have a high school diploma. A million other things.”

I gaze miserably out my window, but all I see is the reflection of Nicholas, stretched and rounded. The lights of Beaufort are far behind us, and now we’re traveling through a black expanse of nothingness until we reach Morris.

Talking has gradually relaxed my body. Coming down from the high of going full Ricky Bobby running from nonexistent fire has left me with a headache that I’m not making up this time.

“My mother’s difficult,” he says. “It’s hard to stand up to her; she’s had my nerves twisted since childhood. I don’t know how to do it alone.”

I feel for him, I really do, so I stroke my thumb over the back of his hand. Just once. “I know it must be hard to have her as a mom sometimes. She runs off all your girlfriends and then gets on your case for not being married with five kids already. You’re not alone in that, either. Imagine being the poor daughter-in-law who’s supposed to supply those five kids.”

A passing car’s headlights illuminate Nicholas’s smile. Another car following right behind flashes by, and by then the smile has vanished. I know he’s wondering if I’ll ever be Deborah’s daughter-in-law. I’d have to be crazy to voluntarily marry into his circus, and he knows it. If this goes bust like we both anticipate, he’ll need a mail-order bride. I’m the only woman in the country dumb enough to try my luck with Deborah’s offspring.

My mind keeps rerouting back to the incident at the stoplight. I see myself through Nicholas’s eyes, standing on the other side of the street, hands over my face. Knees bent. A royal mess-maker. I hear what he’s going to say during our next argument so clearly, it’s like it already happened.

You cut off your nose to spite your face. Got rid of a decent car, willingly, and now you have to drive around in this piece of junk you don’t know how to operate. You’re so backward, you’d try to catch honey with flies. Wow, you sure have stuck it to me.

Real Nicholas hasn’t said any of this. But Imaginary Nicholas is an amalgamation of realistic predictions based on callous things he’s said to me in the past, so I easily hear his voice shape those words. It’s not fair to be hurt or angry over something he didn’t even say, especially since the words I put into my own head are all true, but knowing he potentially could say it—and probably will—is enough to make me sink into a dark silence that I don’t rise from for the rest of the ride home.





Since neither of us had dinner, we both head straight to the fridge when we get home. Or some version of home. I’m still thinking of it as Leon’s place, just with our stuff in it.

The bare shelves of our refrigerator wink back at us.

We each rush to blame the other. “Did you not go to the store?” he says, like it’s to be expected. “You forgot to go to the store,” I say, as if we’d already decided he’d make a grocery run and he’d neglected to do so. Then we frown at each other. Our methods aren’t covert anymore. Our bullshit radars are fine-tuned.

He checks the microwave clock. “There’s still time for you to run to the gas station for frozen pizza.” He hands me his keys.

“I’m all pizza’d out.” I hand the keys back. “When you go get us some burritos, I want the chicken and cheese, not beef and cheese.”

We commence a fierce stare-down. I’m doing him a big favor by staying here with him in this house that’s probably haunted, saving him from miserable dinners with his mother where she’ll criticize every single restaurant employee in the most devastatingly personal way possible. “Go get the burritos and I’ll be nice to you forever,” I say.

“Go get them yourself and I’ll be nice to you forever.”

Not worth it. “Nah.”

“Don’t you want to see how the Jeep drives? You’ll like it better than the Saturn.” His lips twist. “Much, much better than the … ah … what kind of car did you trade it for?”

“It’s a monster, and I love it like it’s my child. Besides, I can’t go anywhere because I’m still shaken up.”

I’m not shaken up, because being far removed from Deborah has revitalized me. He can tell.