behind my headrest as he turns to check the rear and backs out. He’s so close, I can smell his aftershave, and my heart pangs with an emotion like homesickness. It’s not the same aftershave he’s been wearing lately. It’s Stetson, which I gave to him as a Christmas present. Wrapped in gold foil paper he kept for so long, I can still hear the crinkling.
I love it, he’d said with a big grin. The scent of Stetson will forever link directly to the memory of that grin, and the adoration I’d felt for him. What if someone I date in the future wears Stetson, and I have to think about Nicholas and his grin every time I look at another man’s face? He’s invaded so many of my levels, there’s no getting rid of him.
Later, after he opened his present, I saw the sort of grooming products he kept in his medicine cabinet and blushed at how nice and expensive they were. The price of his cologne rendered my gift an embarrassment. But he wore the Stetson every day from then on, even when his grin faded and our relationship transitioned from Before to After. He used up every last drop and didn’t throw away the bottle.
“Did you get to finish eating?” I ask timidly.
“We’d literally just gotten seated when I texted to ask where you were. They lost our reservation and Mom went ballistic. Made the manager cry.”
I can imagine. Deborah Rose has never exited any establishment without introducing herself to the manager.
“What’d you tell your mom?”
“That you were having car trouble and I needed to go pick you up.”
Oh no. I loll my head from side to side. “I don’t want to go to the restaurant. Please don’t make me go. I have a headache. I have cramps. And blood clots. They’re the size of golf balls.” I begin to list more ailments but he pats my knee.
“All right.”
I straighten in my seat. “Really?”
“Yeah, I don’t want to go back there, either. Dad left us to go sit at the bar because he couldn’t wait for a table. And Mom …” He shifts. A dark look creeps over his expression. “It’s better if you two aren’t in the same room tonight. She’s had too much time to obsess over that comment you made about never having kids.”
The fact that I struck a nerve with her makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. Anyway, I stand by it. Nicholas’s and my DNA are incompatible for procreation. Mother Nature would never allow it.
I reply with a noncommittal “Mm.”
He swings another look at me. It’s fleeting, and the car’s so dark that I can’t be sure, but I think he’s a little bit sad. The notion makes me itchy.
“We never discussed kids,” he says at length. “That’s probably something we should have done before we got engaged.”
“At the time we got engaged, only one of us was prepared for the proposal to happen, so you’re taking the blame for that one.”
He huffs a laugh. “That’s fair, I guess.”
I don’t want to talk about this. It’ll only make both of us sadder, because there’s no way we’re having kids together. Pregnancy for me at this point would indicate immaculate conception. “I didn’t know you could drive a stick.”
“I’ve told you before. You probably just weren’t listening.”
I don’t want a lecture, either. You Never Listen is the title of a story about my many flaws and failings. There’s no safe ground here.
I try again. “It feels great to be running away from Sunday dinner, not gonna lie.”
He almost smiles. I can see it flirting at the edges of his mouth. “It’s a shame we didn’t get to show my parents your new car.”
“You would hate that.”
“I’d record their reaction on my phone. Messing with them could be fun, Naomi, if I were in on the joke, too. You forget, I know better than anyone what it feels like to be smothered by Deborah Rose.”
I study his profile. He keeps his eyes on the road, but he must be aware of the heaviness of my stare. “You’d mess with them?”
“Of course. They’ve earned it. I mean, they’re my parents and I love them. I’m grateful to them for a lot of things, but they’re also a huge pain in the ass. When I asked you to marry me, I kind of …”
His lips press together.
“What?” I hedge.
Nicholas swallows. “I kind of hoped we’d be like partners in crime, sort of. When Mom’s trying