My One and Only(55)
Nick turned to me, jaw clenched, eyes hot with anger. “You never believed we’d work, and guess what, Harper? You seem to be right. Good for you. I’ll be at Pete’s. Go back to the restaurant. Have fun with your waiter.”
At those words, I yanked off the wedding ring from my right hand and threw it at him, and the ring…my beautiful, lovely, special ring…bounced off his chest, went into the gutter and rolled into a storm drain.
“Nicely put,” Nick said, and with that, he got into the cab, and not two seconds later, he was gone.
I didn’t remember going back inside, but obviously, I did, because some time later, I was sitting on the kitchen floor, shaking so hard my teeth chattered. I didn’t fully realize I’d called anyone till I heard the groggy voice on the other end, the voice of the one I knew would help me. “I need you to come get me,” I whispered. “You okay?”
“No.”
“I’m on my way.” No questions asked. Probably, no questions needed.
I filed for divorce the very next day, sobbing for only the second time in ten years, sitting in Theo’s office. But it was for the best. Sometimes the heart needed time to accept what the head already knew.
Nick and I weren’t going to make it.
CHAPTER TWELVE
BY THE TIME WE STOPPED for the night after yes, visiting the world’s largest penguin statue, I was a little fried—from sitting in the wind and sun all afternoon, and from the memories of our brief, doomed marriage. Nick, too, was quiet, though polite.
The town we stopped in was microscopic, only one intersection (no stoplight), a town hall, a church, a hamburger stand called Charlie’s Burger Box and adjacent motel with four units, all unoccupied. Nick paid for both our rooms.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said.
“No problem,” he answered.
“Make sure you check out the dinosaur footprints,” the clerk told us, giving me a wink. “Real big. And mind the forecast. Might get some snow later tomorrow.”
“Will do,” Nick and I said in unison. We glanced at each other, then looked away.
“Where are you folks from?” the clerk asked.
“New York,” Nick said as I said, “Massachusetts.”
“Oh, yeah? I went to Harvard.”
“I went to Tufts Law,” I answered, and we had a lovely chat about the wonders of Boston, while Nick stood silently, only contributing an eye-roll as the clerk and I anticipated a Red Sox sweep of the Yankees during an upcoming series. As Charlie’s Burger Box was the only restaurant in town, we ate there, the Harvard-educated clerk amiably doubling as the cook as he told us about working as an investment banker amassing and losing millions, then coming back home to Montana. “Never been happier,” he said. “You folks enjoy.” He passed us our tray of burgers and fries, then went back to the motel.
Nick and I ate at the picnic table at the edge of the small parking lot. Coco sat next to me, statuelike, waiting, waiting for a bite of burger, inhaling it with a snap of her cute little mouth. Occasionally, a pickup truck rattled down the road, but otherwise, we didn’t see many people.
“So is this what you pictured for your drive across country?” I asked, wiping my mouth with a paper napkin.
“Pretty much,” Nick said, not looking at me.
“Really?”
“Except for bringing you to the airport, yes. Small towns, farmland, the heart’s blood of our great nation and all that.”
“Said the boy from Brooklyn,” I added. “Who, as I recall, couldn’t get along with a simple sheep.”
It was true…one of the times Nick had visited me the summer I worked in Connecticut, we’d gone to a petting farm in the country. A sheep, assuming that Nick had some of those snack pellets in his pocket, kept ramming her nose into his groin, which made me laugh so hard I actually fell down.
I smiled at the memory and glanced at Nick. He wasn’t smiling back. Eyes somber, mouth grim. As if it required physical effort, he dragged his eyes off me and resumed staring at the endlessly flat landscape in front of us. “If we leave by eight, we should be able to make it to the airport by early afternoon,” he said.
We’d make it a lot sooner if he’d managed to hit the speed limit, but I kept those words to myself. “Great. Thanks.”
He nodded. Conversation over, apparently. Which was fine.
Since Nick wasn’t talking, I took out my phone and texted a few messages…one to Carol with a cc to Theo, saying I’d been delayed and would call them tomorrow. I had both their home numbers, but it didn’t feel right, calling on a Sunday evening. They both had families, had a hard-and-fast rule about not working on weekends (unlike myself)…they were normal, in other words. I sent another message to BeverLee and Dad, letting them know the same. Another to Dennis, just in case he worried. I felt a pang at the thought of him back on the Vineyard without me. Our relationship had been…well, comfortable. The thrum, the connection, the depth of emotion I’d had with Nick hadn’t been there with Dennis, and I’d always thought that was a good thing. More mature, more lasting, more stable. Guess it showed what I knew. Dennis hadn’t wanted to marry me, end of story. I wondered if he was feeling at least a little blue, too. I rather hoped so; what would it say if he wasn’t missing me at all?