Chapter Five
Moving on
Nina
Matthias mumbled something which I promptly ignored.
“Oh. You didn't share that you are you married,” I said breezily, keeping a smile plastered firmly on my face, even though it took some effort.
“Technically,” Matthias muttered.
“It doesn’t work like that,” I snapped. “Yes or no?”
“Shit. I’m sorry, bud,” I heard Danny say, but I ignored that too and kept my eyes firmly locked with Matthias’.
I knew the answer even before he said it.
“Yes.”
He’d said I was pretty, and we’d joked about skiing together. The words had been innocent enough, but I was not stupid goddamnit. And I had not misunderstood the way he looked at me or how his voice had deepened when he murmured silly pieces of information in my ear.
Asshole, I thought but did not say, and kept smiling casually.
“Your wife’s name is Jackie?” I asked and raised a brow in a way I hoped would look quizzical and not as if I wanted to take the nearest fork and stab it into his thigh.
“Jaqueline,” Danny drawled when Matthias just looked at me. “Fancy name for a fancy lady who did not want the name Jones. Jaqueline Charmaigne.”
I hadn’t changed my name either, although that had been since I was known as Nina Petrie in the office, so it was easier to keep it. From the tone of his voice, I got the impression that Danny was not a big fan of Matthias’ wife. I did not care about that, though, and felt how my eyes widened in surprise.
“You married Jackie the –”
Shit.
I cut myself off and tried frantically but unsuccessfully to come up with something witty to say.
“The what?” Matthias asked when the silence stretched into a void full of uncomfortable tension.
“Nothing,” I said breezily.
“Nina.”
The way he said my name clearly indicated that he'd caught on that I held something back and that he wouldn't give in until I'd shared what that something was.
“I should probably tell you that I went to Brown,” I murmured.
“Brown?” he echoed as if he didn’t know the name of the rather well-known college, which also was the college his wife had attended. “You knew Jackie,” he stated.
“No.”
“Yes, you did,” he insisted.
“Not really,” I said defensively.
“What does that mean?” he said, and I could tell that he was just as frustrated as I was.
“Let’s talk about something else,” I said and reached for my glass.
“Why?”
Our gazes locked, and finally, I sighed.
“Because I lived three doors down the hall from your wife the first year and no, we didn’t exactly know each other, but we knew of each other, and we also didn’t like each other.” I took a sip from my wine and added quietly, “At all.”
Matthias raised his brows in surprise, but that only made me wonder if he knew his spouse at all, or if she'd perhaps changed dramatically. It had been a long time ago, so she probably had, I decided.
“I’m going to go to the restrooms. When I get back, we won’t talk more about this,” Matthias said with a sigh.
“Fine,” I agreed amicably.
“Fine,” he grunted and walked away, followed by a wildly gesturing Danny.
“Jackie the what?” Jacob asked and poured me some more wine.
I sighed and glanced toward the restrooms.
“Everyone called her Jackie-the-jackal, okay?” I said quietly. “I’m sure she grew out of it, but back then, she was such a condescending snob. My best friend was there on a scholarship, and Jackie never let Layla forget that. Then Lay met her husband, who happened to be the guy Jackie had told everyone she would eventually marry. We all thought Jackie would have a stroke.”
“Yikes,” Jacob muttered.
“Long time ago and we were just kids,” I said with faked indifference. Remembering how she’d insulted my best friend still pissed me off. “Layla got a better offer from Yale, so she transferred for her second year, and I did too.”
“Just like that?”
“I had really good grades.” I made a small face and added with a bit of emphasis, “Excellent ones, in fact. Money wasn't an issue. My mother made some calls.”
Before he could ask more about my transfer, Matthias came back, and we tried to pretend that nothing unusual had happened. The rest of the evening was stilted and weird, and I seethed inside even as I laughed at a silly joke Jacob made.
So, Matthias was married. Of course, a man like him would be, but what the hell was it about men and not honoring their goddamned vows?
When we got back to the house, Matthias muttered a goodnight and walked straight into the guest house. I hugged Jacob and thanked him for dinner, which I hadn’t paid for. I let Matthias do that and figured it was a small price for him to pay.
“I’m leaving early tomorrow morning,” I said quietly. “I’m saying goodbye now, and I’ll get on the early ferry back to the mainland.”
“Nina...”
“I was flirting with him, but Jacob – he was flirting with me too. His vows apparently mean nothing to him, but I’m not that woman. I know I messed up a little with my colleague, but it’s not who I am.”
“I’m going to have a good long talk with my son tomorrow.”
“Not about me, Jacob. Please don’t make this into a big deal.”
“Okay,” he sighed when he saw that I meant what I’d said.
“It was a nice weekend. I needed to get away, and you gave me that,” I said and hugged him again.
“Will you come back?” he murmured.
I probably wouldn’t be back in a long while, and definitely not if Jackie-the-jackal was in attendance, but I didn’t want to say that to Jacob, so I settled for a vague, “Maybe.”
“I’ll visit you instead,” he said. “I’m not sure what’s going on with Matty, but you should –”
“He’s married,” I said calmly. “You are always welcome to visit, Jacob. You know that.” I took a deep breath and added, “He isn’t.”
***
Matthias
“Get up,” his father grunted and gave him a shove that almost pushed him off the ergonomically superior mattress his goddamned baby-brother had insisted on hauling across from the mainland.
Matthias was barely awake and squinted in the sudden light when his dad pushed the curtains apart.
“The fuck?”
“We’re gonna have a little talk you and me,” Jacob barked, and walked away.
Shit.
Matthias knew that voice uncomfortably well.
It was the voice of a very, very pissed off father.
He’d known this would happen and had tried to avoid it by walking away the evening before. It hadn’t worked, apparently, and now he was at the ripe age of fifty-two clearly about to get the kind of lecture he hadn’t been on the receiving end of in many years.
A pair of jeans with holes on one knee and a ratty old tee would have to do, he decided. If his dad yelled loud enough for the windows to rattle and neighbors came running, they’d just have to ignore his less than immaculate appearance. He smiled at the thought, but the humor drained out of him when he realized who would be the most likely to come running.
Double-shit. Nina.
Matthias winced when he remembered how the light had gone out of her eyes the evening before. She’d kept her cool and acted as if nothing unusual was going on, but he’d seen the difference the second Danny had mentioned his wife’s name.
Going to the island to save his father from some young gold-digger had ended up being a couple of the best days he’d had in a very long time, and he’d let himself forget his life on the mainland. Had allowed himself to feel young and carefree again.
A small voice in his head told him that he should have said something about his messed-up family situation during one of the long talks about everything under the goddamned sun, but he hadn’t, and now it was time to deal with the consequences of being a moron. It would start with a furious father who clearly wanted to rip him a new one, which he probably deserved, and then he’d sit down with Nina and try to explain.
Jacob was alone in the kitchen when he walked in.
“Nina left with the morning ferry,” Jacob said, and added sourly, “Sit.”
“Left?” Matthias asked and walked over to bring down a cup to get himself some coffee.
She hadn’t even said goodbye.
“Sit your fucking ass down, Matty,” Jacob roared.
Matthias sat his goddamned ass down and tried to defuse the situation.
“Can we be –”
“You’re still married?” his dad yelled, not interested in being defused at all.
“I don’t –”
“I thought you split up six months ago for Christ’s sake?”
“Jackie moved out seven months ago,” Matthias confirmed.
“And you’re still married?”
“Yes.”
“What the fuck?” Jacob asked, which Matthias realized was a highly relevant question.
He just didn’t know what to answer.
“It’s complicated,” he stalled.
“Do you love her?”
Matthias was pretty sure he knew the answer to that question but didn’t want to say the words out loud because that would make them real, so he shrugged.
“Okay, let me re-phrase that,” Jacob snapped. “Jackie walks into a room. Do you want to drag her right back out of there and pull off her clothes?”
“Jesus, Dad,” Matthias said and winced.
He knew the answer to that question too, but did not need a lecture about Viagra or whatever the fuck.
“What’s going on, Matty?” Jacob asked quietly when they’d glared at each other for a while. “I don’t get it.”
Ah.
Time for the standard reply he’d given just about anyone he knew already.
“We’ve been married a long time, Dad, and I guess all marriages have their ups and downs. I work too much, and we don’t have that much in common anymore.”
“You always worked a lot, and you never had anything in common,” Jacob retorted.
“What?”
“Never got why you married her, Matty. I’ll be honest and tell you that I never liked her much, but you loved her, so I was happy for you. Still never got why you chose Jackie.”
“We –” Matthias cut himself off and stared at his father.
He couldn’t remember a single reason that explained why he’d married his wife. There had been reasons, and their marriage hadn’t been bad. Not while the kids were in the house, anyway.
“Why haven’t you divorced?”
“I haven’t had fucking time to think about that shit,” Matthias snarled, angry at the whole situation but mostly feeling like an idiot. “I work eighty-hour weeks, and we’ve opened the new factory, so –”
“Jesus,” Jacob hissed. “You’re blaming the Minnesota factory? What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” Matthias muttered, and added defensively, “Jackie says she wants to think about things.”
“Seven months is a lot of time to think.”
“I know.”
Jacob raised his hand in an impatient gesture but got up to pour coffee, which they drank in silence.
“Matty, this is gonna hurt some,” he said finally.
“Dad...”
“Son, you need to take a good fucking look at yourself and figure out if you like what you see. I don’t.”
What the hell?
“Dad, it’s –”
“You look ten years older than you should, and you’re also ridiculously out of shape.”
“What?”
“You work too much, you say? So, work less.”
Nina had said the same thing.
“Someone has to run the fucking company,” Matthias snarled.
“Doesn’t have to be you,” Jacob retorted and put the cup down forcefully. “Life is fucking short, and you have some choices to make. If you want to work on your marriage, then don’t mope around and wait for your goddamned wife to come home from another day at the spa where the only thing she’s decided upon is the color of her nails.” His eyes sharpened, and he added, “But I saw a part of you this weekend that I haven’t seen in a long while, and you should think about that too. If you don’t want to be married to Jackie, then get the damned admin out of the way.”
“She’s Simon and Susannah’s mother.”
“She’ll be Si and Suzie’s mother regardless of her marital status,” Jacob retorted calmly.
Matthias thought about what to do and tried to come up with something to say that wouldn’t sound as foolish as he felt, but his mind was blank.
“I don’t know what to do,” he admitted.
“Matty,” his dad said gently. “Just decide what you want. Either way, it’ll be fine, but you have got to move on.”
“Yeah,” Matthias sighed after a while.
“You used to run,” Jacob said. “Start doing it again, son. It’ll clear your head.”
“Okay,” Matthias heard himself say.
“And Matty?”
“Yeah?”
“If you decide to proceed with the divorce...”
“Yeah?” Matthias repeated when Jacob just looked at him.
“Brace.”
“What?”
“Just saying.” Jacob smiled grimly and put a hand on his shoulder, squeezed it gently, and added, “You should get yourself a really fucking excellent lawyer.”
***
Nina
“He was married?” Layla said, brows high on her forehead.
“Yup,” I said.
“And then the other one was married too?”
“Uh-huh,” I confirmed.
“Shit.”
“Double-shit, actually,” I snorted. “I’m off men.”
“Nina...”
“I am,” I insisted. “I’ve washed enough tighty whities to last me a lifetime.”
“Dave wears –” She cut herself off, and I saw laughter in her eyes, but she pushed it back and got up from the couch. “I’m going to get some more wine.”
“I’m a little bit not sober at all,” I informed her.
I never got drunk, except when shit hit the fan, and it was just Layla and me.
So, yeah. Now I was slightly beyond mildly inebriated, but since she was spending the night at my place, so was she.
“Totally,” she said.
“You should only drink because you’re happy. Not to get happier,” I said for no reason at all.
Someone had said that to me that back when I was a teenager, and I’d thought it was utter bullshit. My parents had always told me that I should only drink when I felt like it, only something that tasted good and only for as long as my dignity was intact, which had made a lot more sense to me.
“Are you unhappy?” Layla asked.
I didn’t have to think about that, so when she returned with the Prosecco, I raised my glass.
“I’m not unhappy, Lay,” I said.
“I know. Bellini?” she asked and wiggled the small plastic tub she’d brought.
A real Italian Bellini should be made with puréed white peaches, but that was hard to find. When the girls were toddlers, I realized that the puréed peaches from the baby food section were a reasonably okay and completely effortless substitute. I’d served my whole swanky neighborhood baby-Bellinis for years, and they were famous, but they didn’t know what a Bellini tasted like when you had it with a group of friends, squinting against the Italian sun. They wouldn’t miss that taste of sweetness and bubbly laughter. The other women had looked recipes up on the internet and asked more than once where I bought ripe peaches. I just winked and shared that I had secret sources.
“God, yes,” I said with a sigh.
She plopped a spoon of peach in each glass, topped it up with Prosecco, and used the spoon to stir it a little.
“What are you going to do now?” she asked.
“I’ll build a deck,” I stated and gestured toward my abysmal backyard. “When spring comes, I’ll plant some lavender.”
“Plant lavender?” she echoed.
“Come,” I said and heaved myself out of the couch. “I’ll show you.”
We stood on the dirty patio, sipping Bellinis and talking about lavender and other low maintenance plants. The cool breeze cleared my head, and I smiled.
“Nina,” Layla said quietly. “You really are happy, right?”
“Yeah,” I said with a sigh. “I really am. It’s a lot easier to be lonely when you’re actually alone.”
“Oh, honey...”
“Don’t feel sorry for me. It wasn’t bad, being married to Dave. It just wasn’t good, or... not good enough, at least.”
“Are you lonely?”
“A little.”
“You could date –” She raised a hand when I wanted to protest. “Casually, Nina. Not to get laid or whatever.”
“I don’t want to. I think I need some time, and it’s a bit clichéd, but I’m figuring stuff out about me. Silly things perhaps, but you know... how I used to like pink, and how much I like to wear dresses.”
“I remember,” she said. “You used to wear the prettiest things, and I never got why you stopped.”
“It wasn’t deliberate, Lay. Somehow I just forgot. The kids, and Peaches, and I was always so busy. So, I ended up getting a bunch of black and gray suits for work, and mom-jeans for weekends.”
She choked on her Bellini but shook her head as she swallowed.
“You never had mom-jeans.”
“Almost, but I went shopping the other day, and you know what?” I took a deep swig of wine and gestured with the glass. “I like low-slung jeans, and I don’t have your curves, but gravity hasn’t hit my ass too bad, so I got a pair that looks pretty awesome.”
“It’s all the running.”
“True,” I said. “And I got a pink water boiler.”
“Kitchen Aid?”
“Smeg.”
“Good choice,” she said sagely and raised her glass in a toast. “So, except buying pink stuff and assalicious jeans, what are you really going to do next?”
“I’m going to just live my life without planning too much for a while. I’ll get the deck done and plant some stuff. Go to work. Run. Get a haircut.”
She looked at me searchingly, but then she narrowed her eyes and pursed her mouth.
“You really do need a haircut,” she said.
“Fuck you,” I said succinctly, even though she had a point since my hair had looked the same for years.
It was simply cut straight off at a length that let me put it in a neat twist at my neck when I worked, but I could do something different.
“Fuck you too,” she retorted sweetly.
“Excuse me,” a deep voice rumbled, and both Layla and I squealed loudly. “Sorry,” the voice said. “Didn’t mean to scare you. My mother sent me over with...”
The voice turned out to belong to a tall, muscular man who trailed off and stared at us.
We stared back at him, and I didn’t turn to check if Layla’s jaw also had dropped, but I suspected it had because holy smokes how hot the man was.
His straight hair was a little too long as if he’d missed his latest appointment at the hairdressers. It was a steely gray color similar to what I’d seen in magazines on what they called mature models, and it suited him fantastically well. His goatee was gray too, and he had lines around his dark brown eyes. His shoulders were so broad I wondered if he walked sideways through regular doors.
“Whuh,” I said after a short and uncomfortable silence.
“Hey there,” the man said. “Sorry. My mother asked me to stop by and give you this.”
I looked at the jar he held out and realized who he was.
“You’re Mrs. Moretti’s handsome and successful son,” I blurted out, realized what I’d said and tried to backtrack. “According to her, of course.” It occurred to me that I might have just told the man that I thought he was ugly, so I added, “And, um, according to me too. Obviously.”
“What?” he asked with a chuckle.
“Layla?” I said desperately.
“Yes,” she said weakly. “Me too.”
“What?” the man repeated.
Oh, dear Lord. We were acting like starstruck fools, and one of us had to get a grip. Since Layla kept staring at him, it had to be me getting that grip, and immediately.
“I'm so sorry,” I said with what I hoped was calm and adult somberness. Luca Moretti was a police detective, after all, so drooling whilst under the influence might not be a good move. “We were just a bit surprised. I'm Nina.”
“I know,” he said with a grin. “I’m Luke.” He barked out a short laugh and added, “Mrs. Moretti’s handsome and successful son.”
“Sorry about that,” I mumbled. “Your mother has talked about you.”
“Yeah,” he said with a wince. “She does that.”
The look on his face told me that he wasn’t too happy with his mother’s matchmaking attempts, and I couldn’t hold back a small giggle.
“We’re drinking Bellinis,” I informed him. “Can I get you one?”