My One and Only(95)

“Hi, Den,” I said. “Listen, that’s really nice of you, but I’ll take a cab home, okay? Thanks anyway. Talk to you soon.” I hung up and sighed, then looked down at my little brown-and-white buddy. “You want to go home, Coco?” She cocked her head and froze with anticipation, as if the word home was almost too good to bear. “I know just how you feel.”

When Nick got home, it was almost four. I was staring unseeing at a copy of the New Yorker, and at the sound of his key, I lurched to my feet, nervous as hell. “Hey! How was your meeting?” I called brightly. “Everything go well?”

He didn’t answer, unfooled by my chipper tone. Instead, he dropped his gaze to my suitcase, parked there by the front door, and folded his arm across his chest. “I probably shouldn’t be surprised,” he said tightly.

“Uh, well, I need to—”

“You’re leaving me.” His voice was flat.

“Nick, don’t jump to conclusions. But yes, I have to get back. I have a lot going on.” Nick cocked an eyebrow, and my temper stirred. “It’s actually true, Nick. I do have a life separate from you.”

As if saying her own form of goodbye, Coco began leaping straight off the floor as if spring-loaded. She launched herself into Nick’s arms, and he grabbed her a bit awkwardly, unused to her forms of devotion. My dog licked his chin, unaware that the grown-ups were about to have a serious talk.

“So,” Nick said, putting Coco back on the floor. He took a deep breath, and I could tell he was trying to keep calm. “What about you and me?”

I nodded. Sat down on the couch. Crossed my ankles. “Well,” I whispered, “I think it’s a little soon for us to talk about the New York bar.”

“Right.” His gaze dropped to the floor.

The silence seemed to stretch, pushing us apart bit by bit. “Maybe you could come out to the Vineyard sometime,” I suggested, biting a cuticle. “Um…next weekend. If your schedule’s clear.”

He just looked at me for a long moment with those tragic eyes. “I’m not leaving you, Nick,” I blurted. “I just…I just don’t know how this is going to work. I don’t want to make the same mistakes again.”

In a second, he was on his knees in front of me, gripping my upper arms. “Harper, I love you.”

God, those eyes, those damn gypsy eyes. “I know. And I…I love you back, Nick, you know that. But how does that translate? I mean, everyone loves everyone, right? But so many relationships don’t work out. We didn’t, Nick, loving each other or not.”

“And she’s off,” Nick muttered, letting go of my arms.

“I’m not off,” I protested, biting my poor cuticle yet again. “I’m just being realistic. I can’t drop everything I’ve got back home just because we still have feelings for each other.”

His eyes narrowed. “I’d think that those feelings would matter, Harper. They do to me.”

“They definitely matter,” I said in a small voice. “They’re just not…they’re just not the only things that do.”

He ran his hand through his hair, then rose from the floor and sat next to me. We didn’t say anything for a minute. “Look,” he said in a gentler voice. “I love you. I want us to work. Last time, you had one foot out the door the whole time we were together. I can’t take that again, Harper. You have to decide if you want this or not, and judging from the suitcase by the door, you don’t.”

I swallowed. “Nick,” I whispered, “I think we need time to…think.”

“I don’t need to think, Harper. I know. But you…” His voice rose. “I’m in this, I want us to be together, but you…your bags are already packed. You’re leaving. Again.”

“I’m not, Nick!” I barked. “I have to deal with things at home, okay? I have a life there, and…I can’t just not go back. You’re traveling all over the planet, anyway, and I won’t throw caution to the wind and make all the same mistakes we made last time and end up miserable again. I won’t do that, Nick.”

There it was again, that look. I’d let him down, even though everything I said made perfect sense.

From the street below, a car horn honked. “There’s my cab,” I said.

“That was fast,” Nick muttered.

“I didn’t think your lunch would last for four hours, either,” I snapped. “Okay?”

Déjà vu all over again. When had I ever gotten an inch from Nick, after all? Never, that’s when.

Nick walked to the door and picked up my suitcase and laptop carrier, his movements sharp and angry. He stood back to let Coco and me go through the door and down the stairs. The ripe smell of the city greeted us out on the street, the roar and the humidity.

“I’ll see you soon,” I said briskly, turning to Nick.

He nodded.

Then, without another word, we were in each other’s arms, and I was hugging him as hard as I could, my face pressed against his beautiful neck, and he held me so close that for a second, it seemed as if he would never let me go, that he’d say something that would make everything okay.

But he didn’t say anything, and he did let me go.

SO THAT WAS FUN. MY brain decided to play Debate Team again for the entire bleeping plane ride to Boston.