My One and Only(54)

By the time I reached our apartment building, Nick was already inside. I could see his dark head in the fourth-floor window—our bedroom. I let the door slam behind me and stomped up the stairs, wanting Nick to know I was primed for a fight. Opened the door to our apartment, walked briskly through the tiny kitchen and went into the bedroom.

He was furious, crackling with energy.

And he was packing.

Every thought was immediately sucked from my head. My mouth opened, but no sound came out. I watched as Nick packed with brutal efficiency. Jeans, in. Sweaters, in. T-shirts, socks, boxers…into the suitcases we’d been given for a wedding gift, suitcases that hadn’t yet been used.

The last time I’d watched someone pack this way was on my thirteenth birthday. He was leaving me, and terror rose up so fast and hard, I thought I might faint…gray speckled my vision and my legs wanted to buckle and my neck wasn’t strong enough to hold my head.

And then, just like that, something inside my heart shut off. My vision cleared. My legs and neck worked just fine. Maybe—maybe if I had fainted, or flung myself on him, if I’d begged him to forgive me, if I’d sobbed out how much I loved him—maybe we would’ve made it through that night.

But I wasn’t really the sobbing, flinging type.

“So I guess till death do us part…that was just for fun?” I said. It was the wrong thing to lead with. Obviously.

He didn’t deign to look at me. “I’m staying at Peter’s tonight.”

“For longer than tonight, from the looks of it.”

“How long have you worked there, Harper? Two months? Three?” He moved to the minuscule closet and swept out his shirts, hangers and all. “You never, never found a second to tell your best buds that you were married? Not once? In three f**king months?”

“Maybe I would have, Nick, if you’d come around. Ever.” My voice was cool.

“No wonder that douchebag was kissing you,” Nick went on. “Why not? You’re free and clear, right?” His eyes dropped to my na**d left hand, and his eyes seemed to flinch at the absence there. “Jesus, Harper,” he said, and his voice broke, and the case against him took a serious blow.

I bit my lip. “Nick, look. I’m really sorry, I am. It’s just…I just felt so freakish—”

“Freakish?”

“Well…yes! It’s just…you’re never here, Nick! You didn’t want to listen to how lonely I was, you didn’t care, all you do is work—”

“I’m trying to build a life for us, Harper!” he yelled. “Working so we could have a decent future!”

“I know, but, Nick, I just didn’t expect it to be all or noth—”

“I have to do this! I thought you understood!” He threw a pair of shoes into the suitcase. “No wonder you’ve been so…distant. You’ve been—”

“Me? Me, distant, Nick? Seriously?”

“—playing around with some 30-year-old loser who’s still waiting tables, trying to figure out what he wants to be when he grows up.”

“Not that I was playing with anyone, Nick, but could you blame me? You’re the one who was on fire to get married, and before the first week is out, you barely remember to come home.” I was yelling, too, both of us runaway trains, unable to stop.

He slammed the bureau drawer closed.

“Nick,” I said in one last effort to stay calm, to make him see, to make him stay. “Nick. Look. It was stupid and immature—”

“Stupid and immature, okay, so that’s a start, Harper. How about deceitful? How about manipulative? How about unfaithful?”

“I didn’t cheat on you! That guy, he just…kissed me. I didn’t want him to, he just did!”

“Right.”

My jaw clenched. “Okay. Believe what you want, Nick. You haven’t listened to me for months, why would you now, right?”

Ivan of the Cabbages banged on his ceiling. “Quiet, eediots!” he yelled. Nick continued stuffing his clothes into a suitcase.

“You erased me, Harper,” he said. “I don’t even exist in your life.”

“Right back at you, Nick,” I bit out.

“How can you say that?” he barked, slamming closed the lid of the suitcase. “Your picture is all over my office! Everyone knows you at my firm. You’re all I ever talk about!”

“And why is that, Nick? Because it makes you look good to have a little wife tucked away at home?”

“This is pointless,” he said, moving into the bathroom. He clattered around, grabbing his toothbrush, razor, shaving cream. He was leaving me. After that full-court press to convince me to marry him a month after college graduation, after countering all my fears with assurances that we’d last forever, after all I’d put up with since our wedding day, Nick was leaving me. The first major bump in the road, and the whole “for better or worse” clause was just flushed right down the toilet. My chest felt so tight I couldn’t breathe, and my face was burning hot.

I should’ve known. I should never have believed.

He yanked open the front door and banged down the stairs, suitcase in tow. I followed wordlessly. My brain was a roaring mess. A cab—shit, he must’ve called a cab, he was really leaving!—turned the corner and slowed in front of our building.