Because he’d messed up with Nora, and now she was gone.
He’d known it as it had been happening, had experienced it almost in slow motion, outside of himself. Fragments of it felt clear, acute: his mom’s handwriting, youthful even when she’d gotten older. Mrs. Salas’s fingers at the edge of that photograph, her nails pink and glossy. His parents’ faces—unlined, joyful, intense. Nora’s arms around his waist, her cheek against his chest, her hair against his chin. Her hand letting go of his.
But so much of the rest of it felt fuzzy, too fast. He’d seen that picture and it was like smashing straight into a brick wall of everything he was afraid of becoming. And then he’d told Nora he wasn’t looking for serious.
Ah, here was another crystal clear fragment: the look on her face when he’d said it. He was pretty sure his hiccupping heart had stopped right then and there, no matter that he was still standing here right now, relentlessly alive.
“I’ve had a rough few days,” he said to Abraham, which was a comically understated understatement. It was like mentioning your broken finger instead of your possible brain bleed. In fact, maybe he and that surgeon had something in common. After all, “splinting the finger” was a pretty apt metaphor for what efforts he’d made with Nora since she’d left him standing, still shell-shocked, in Donny’s apartment. A text before he’d left the building to see if she’d changed her mind about wanting to talk. A call the next morning, the day of her flight, which had gone to voice mail. When she’d texted him back a couple of hours later, her message had been brief, kind, tentative. Got your message. Hope you’re okay. Boarding flight. We’ll talk when I get back. Xo.
I love you, he’d wanted to reply, which couldn’t make any sense. Sending her a text like that when he’d all but sent her away the day before? Sending her a text like that when he was still reeling from the shock of having had the idea to type it out in the first place?
He’d written Good luck instead, and then he’d spent the rest of the day absolutely kicking his own ass for it, much like Gerald Abraham planned to kick the figurative ass of the finger splinter.
The problem was, if what had happened between him and Nora was, basically, a brain bleed, he wasn’t even sure if he should try to fix it. What he was going through now—this sullenness, this hell—this was the reason he didn’t belong in something serious with Nora. This intensity, this recklessness, this selfishness—all of it, he should’ve stopped weeks ago. He’d taken it to a place with Nora he knew he wasn’t capable of seeing through, not in the way she wanted. Not in the way she deserved.
But damn, he missed her. Like a hole right in the center of himself, a loneliness unlike anything he’d ever felt, and given the way he’d lived his life, that was really saying something.
“I’d like to invite you to dinner,” Abraham said, and Will coughed, and then stared.
He couldn’t even manage a reply.
“With Sally and myself. Let me assure you, though, that I have not fallen back into a routine.”
“Uh,” Will repeated.
“This dinner is at my home, and I am cooking, which is not something I often did during my marriage. Sally would enjoy having you with us.”
Will cleared his throat, fully aware of how absolutely ridiculous he must look, standing here in his bike helmet, staring down in shock at his boss.
“I don’t want to intrude,” he said, which he recognized was exactly what people said when they wanted to be told they weren’t intruding. And he realized that this was, actually, exactly what he wanted to be told. He wanted to have dinner with Gerald and Sally because he was confused and frustrated and lonely enough that a meal with a possibly reconciling couple sounded absolutely fine, or at least absolutely better than going back to his own place and staring into the void, thinking about how Nora would be back tomorrow night and he still had no idea what to do.
“You are not intruding because I already told Sally you were coming,” Abraham said. “I phoned her two hours ago.”
“What if I’d had other plans?”
There was a brief pause, Abraham looking up at Will like he’d just tried to splint a finger