“I can’t.”
“You’re hiding something.” I blurt it out—I feel the words topple out of my mouth like stones tumbling down a hillside.
“Yes.”
My heart sinks. Pangs. “If you try to tell me you’re having an affair, I’ll just laugh. And then murder you in your sleep.”
He snorts. “Not in a million years, my love.” He gives me his eyes, open and frank, at least in this. “Never.”
I know it’s true. My heart knows it. “Then what?”
He shakes his head. “Not yet.”
“Adrian, please.”
He sets the bowl on the coffee table—the spoon clatters noisily. His eyes are gray, almost silver. Turns to face me, those eyes heavy, hiding something. Sadness, I can see it. Panic. Desperation.
For the first time since I met him, I don’t get what I ask for.
“Nadia…” He ducks his head. Seems to have trouble breathing. “Not yet. Please. I love you. More than I can ever—more than I can ever fucking express. I just…”
I palm his cheeks. “Make me a promise and I’ll let it go.”
“Okay?”
“You ask me for help, if it’s something I can give. Anything. My last breath, you ask for it—I’ll give it. You love me; you’re mine and no one else’s. You don’t leave me. Promise.”
This is, suddenly, everything.
One of those moments that are etched into your soul, a mile deep.
He blinks. Tugs away, ducks his head. “Everything I do, Nadia, I do for you. Never doubt that.”
“Adrian, you didn’t—”
A harsh sigh. He visibly rallies, gathers himself. Looks me in the eye, clear and strong. “I promise. Whatever you can do, I will let you do. I’ll ask. I’m yours. Totally. More now than when we exchanged rings. Forever, I’m yours. I will never…” he falters here. “I won’t leave you. I swear on my soul.”
“Okay.” I clutch him to me, and I feel him breathing hard. “Okay, Adrian.”
“Okay?”
I nod against his shoulder. “Okay.”
I want to hold him forever. As if to let go, now, is to somehow let go in some deeper metaphysical way I cannot truly grasp. But I do. I let him go. “Go back to work, babe. I can feel you needing it.”
“Just a little more. Then I’ll come to bed.”
“I work—”
“Seven to three tomorrow, noon to midnight Wednesday, seven to three Thursday and Friday, off the weekend.” He smirks. “I know your schedule before you do.”
I laugh. “Yeah, yeah. Creeper.”
He pauses at the door to his office, which I can see from my place on the couch. “Nadia.”
I pick up my book. Smile at him. “Yeah?”
“You’re cute. I like you.”
“You gonna keep me, then?”
He laughs out loud. “Yeah, babe. I know a good thing when I snag it, and I ain’t letting go of you.” His words are light, but I feel like if I were closer, I’d see a heaviness behind them.
I feel the pilot light of my panic furnace kick on. Whoomp. Just a simmer, at first. But it’s growing. And the more he dissembles, the higher the dial will go. He knows he can’t fool me, not for long. So now he’s not even trying. He’s still not talking, not sharing: I still can’t get through.
I know him, though.
He can’t hide anything from me for long.
But for the first time, I wonder if I want to know.
If maybe this is something I’m better off not knowing.
“Beaches!” Tess garbles, around a mouthful of mint chocolate chip ice cream.
“Hell no!” I shout from the couch, flipping through Netflix. “I need the opposite of sobbing my eyeballs out. Dumb and Dumber?”
“‘Hey, you wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world? AAAAAHHHHHH!’” She does a gratingly accurate impression of Jim Carrey in that scene, to the point that I throw a throw pillow at her face from across her living room.
“Is that a yes or a no?” I ask.
“Nah,” she says, batting it aside. “Seen it a bazillion times. Far and Away?”
“‘Tell me you like my hat, Shannon,’” I quote, in a terrible Irish accent. “Nuh-uh. Eat, Pray, Love?”
She brings over the gallon of ice cream, hands it to me, and returns to her kitchen, where she peruses the wine rack in her pantry. “Josh, Joel Gott, Jordan…Decoy, Duckhorn…”
I twist on the couch, to stare at her. “Tess McAlister. Do you have your wines alphabetized?”
“No,” she says, her voice defensive and sullen. “Maybe. Yes. Shut up. I was bored, okay? Clint was in Milwaukee for two damn weeks, and I was bored out of my fucking mind. So I alphabetized the wine. And the DVDs we haven’t watched in like,