in front of Jackie’s and go get two large orders of fries. I sit on the hood of my car and eat, the food warm in my cold fingers. I know what’s coming. I knew it since I handed my card to the cashier, and I’ve accepted it, which is why I don’t move a muscle when a Jeep Grand Cherokee rolls into the parking space next to mine.
I just stare straight ahead and eat another fry. I feel him watching me. Is this what he wanted? Either I know him better than anyone on this earth or I don’t know him at all. There is no in-between.
Nicholas leaves his car. Out of the corner of my eye I see that he’s clutching a dented blue box of invitations, and my throat burns like I’ve swallowed acid. “Naomi,” he says.
I can’t do this. “Please don’t. You win, okay? It’s over. I’ll end it so you don’t have to.”
He sits down next to me, car creaking under his weight. He balances the box carefully on his lap, and just having it this close makes the splinters of my heart prick my chest walls. We’ll never sit down and address them together. Our loved ones will never open them and smile, and say, They’re really getting married, then. They’re really going to do it. We’ll never face each other across a flower-strewn aisle and promise ourselves to each other forever.
“What do you mean, ‘over’?” Nicholas asks, quiet and throaty. “Don’t tell me you’re trying to break up with me after all we’ve been through. That’s not happening.”
“Isn’t that what you want?”
“No.” His fingers slide under my chin, raising me to eye level with him. His gaze radiates an emotion I’m convinced he doesn’t feel, and it’s agony. “Sweetheart …”
My eyes cut to the box on his lap and I want to throw it. “Stop. I don’t want to hear anything else. It’s not necessary.”
“Oh, I think it’s very necessary.”
“It’s over. Just leave me alone.”
His eyes are smoldering. “Naomi, if you say one more time that we’re over, I’m going to lose my mind. I’ve been going crazy all day, not knowing where you went. You didn’t answer your phone, and when you drove away your driving was jerky and all over the place. Do you have any idea what that did to me? I was on the verge of calling up hospitals when I saw the credit card charge.”
It’s ridiculous that I feel guilty for worrying him. “I want you to go away. Please.”
“Because of this?” He taps the blue box, and I flinch.
“Because I’ve had a change of heart.”
I’m off the car before I know what’s happened, caged between the cold metal of the hood and Nicholas. There’s no room to dodge around him, nowhere to go. My senses reel, overpowered by him, collapsing into his touch to meld us perfectly together. His dark stare glitters with fear and fury, and something else that takes me another half second to translate. Need. Deep and burning. If I weren’t pinned, my knees would buckle.
He places his hand over my thumping, traitorous heart, commanding every nerve ending, every desire. I am wide, wide awake. He shudders an exhale and his face descends so close that I think it must end with a kiss, which is why I close my eyes.
“Your heart is mine,” he says.
Nicholas opens the box and removes an invitation. An RSVP card falls out and tears away, pinwheeling across the parking lot. “I’ve kept one of these folded up in my wallet for months,” he tells me. “I’d take it out and look at it sometimes, and I’d smile because I was so excited to marry you. But then I stopped being happy when I looked at them.”
“Because you stopped wanting to marry me.”
He hands me the invitation. “How do you feel when you hold this?”
“Sad,” I reply truthfully.
“Read it. Tell me then what you feel.”
I’m so empty, you could hear the wind blow through me. But I sit back down on the car, Nicholas hopping up beside me, and have to read the fancy curling script twice before it digests.
I haven’t given these invitations a second glance since they arrived in the mail, and my response is the same flare of annoyance. Nicholas observes my reaction and nods. “Exactly. Do those look like they should be our invitations? Are those our words? Does any of that feel representative of our marriage? Your middle name isn’t even on here.”