He doesn’t respond.
He doesn’t even move.
I’m not even sure if he breathes.
He stands next to me, staring at the picture for what feels like a millennium.
“Sorry.” He shakes his head and places the frame facedown on the empty spot on the shelf. “She’s not my fiancée anymore. It’s been about a year actually.”
When I came to his house tonight, I was prepared for an all-out brawl—with words, of course. I spent the afternoon envisioning the many comebacks I’d throw at him and the way his skin would burn with embarrassment when I owned him in front of his guests. I prepared for every possible scenario.
But I can say, with one thousand percent certainty, that I did not prepare for this.
“Oh my god, Nate,” I say, all bad history between the two of us forgotten in a moment. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
“Of course you didn’t.” He lets out a humorless laugh. “How could you?”
Resentment colors his words, but for once, I don’t think it’s directed at me.
“What happened?”
The question slips out before I think better of it. I’m sure I’m the last person he’d want to confide in about this, but for some reason I can’t put a finger on, I can’t let it go.
He walks back to the couch, and for a moment, I think he’s not going to tell me. I don’t like it, but I understand it. We aren’t friends.
The quiet whoosh of the dishwasher punctuates the uncomfortable silence looming over us. But just as I open my mouth to change the subject and pretend this never happened, Nate’s hoarse voice cuts through the room.
“She called everything off the morning of the wedding,” he says, and I’m sure I heard him wrong. “Her maid of honor came to tell me. I was already in my tux. She wasn’t ready to settle down and didn’t think we wanted the same things. She didn’t want the kids and suburbs. Which is fine. I just wish she would’ve figured that out sooner. I haven’t heard from her since. Not even an email. That part hurts.”
Despite the way things ended with us and the joy I find in pissing him off, a fire ignites inside me at the idea of someone other than me hurting him. My heart breaks for the kid I knew who wanted nothing more than a family of his own and the thought of him losing it when he was so close to having it all.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” The urge to go track this bitch down and give her a piece of my mind is almost too much to handle. “The day of the wedding?”
He nods but doesn’t say anything. He leans back in his seat, his gaze trained on me as I try to process this information.
It’s a familiar feeling, this dynamic between the two of us. Nate sitting quietly, taking in everything and carefully observing while I shoot off the handle. He was always the calm one of the two of us. My body is physically incapable of holding emotions back. Even if I manage to stay silent for a moment, it all comes rushing out sooner rather than later. For better or worse, I wear my mangled, battered, and partially black heart on my sleeve.
“I don’t know her and maybe she’s a very nice human, but I really hope she gets a mosquito bite on the bottom of her foot every day for the rest of her life and that every restaurant she goes to is out of her favorite item.”
Some people believe in good vibes only, but I don’t subscribe to that BS. I believe in all vibes at all times. There are a lot of garbage humans on this planet who deserve nothing more than a truckload of negative energy sent their way in the form of the smallest, most annoying punishments possible.
Petty vengeance is one of my greatest strengths . . . something the man sitting across from me can vouch for.
“It’s okay.” Nate attempts to wave off my curse, obviously not privy to how they work. “It’s probably for the best anyways. This house was going to be my gift to her, but since we weren’t married yet, I was able to keep it. It might not be everything I assumed it’d be, but I joined the HOA, made friends with my neighbors, and I’m still loving living here.”
“It’s not okay, though, Nate. She can’t just change plans and break your heart like that,” I tell him, more upset for him than he seems to be. “What’s wrong with these people who think they can walk all over us? Why are we supposed to be grateful for the scraps they throw us?”
I don’t realize I’m yelling until Nate approaches me and, with a painstaking gentleness, takes my hand in his like I’m some wild animal to be tamed.
“I appreciate your passion.” His eyes never leave mine as he speaks. “But why am I getting the feeling that this isn’t about me and Elizabeth anymore?”
I clamp my mouth shut.
My skin heats as Peter’s face flashes in my mind. The way he looked down at me—literally and figuratively—as he broke the news. Approximately ten million strangers have watched the video of me freaking out in the run-down parking lot outside my apartment, but other than Ruby, I haven’t told anybody what happened that night. The story is on the tip of my tongue. The anger and resentment have spent so much time building up inside me, they’re begging for a release.
I just don’t know if Nate is the person I can trust to hold my pain.
“Are you okay?”
I know this should be the moment I pack it all in and head back to my childhood bedroom, go lie down and pretend that everything is normal. But instead, looking at Nate, I remember all those times I confided in him sitting beneath the willow tree in my backyard, and the way, as he’d listen so intently, no problem felt too big. With him by my side, nothing was insurmountable.
“You really don’t know why I came back home?” I know he has this entire act of being above social media and everything that the rest of society seems to enjoy, but I’m having a hard time believing that of the millions of people who watched my downfall, he wasn’t first in line for the show.
“Hand to god.” He lets go of my hand, holding it over his heart and raising the other in the air. “I have no idea.”
I’m still not sure this is a good idea, but I also don’t care anymore.
What can I say? Self-preservation has never been my thing.
“I didn’t want to leave LA,” I tell him. “I had to leave.”
Nate’s eyes snap to mine and his mouth opens and closes before he decides against saying anything at all. He did this when we were kids, always allowing me to vent and rant without interruption.
“I doubt you know much about my time in LA, but I met my ex-boyfriend, Peter, when I was in school.” I start at the beginning of my story. If I’m going to tell it, I’m going to tell it all. “He was the teaching assistant in my writing class. He was older, smarter, and so freaking handsome. Everyone had a crush on him in that class. He, she, them, didn’t matter. He was just so damn charismatic that everybody was drawn to him. When he started directing his attention to me, it was like the sun was shining all its light on me.”
All my friends had been so jealous. Not only did he think I was an exceptional writer, but he also made it more than a little obvious that he liked me for more than that. It sounds desperate and stupid, but I wasn’t used to this attention. Almost all of my friends modeled for extra money and two of them ended up dropping out of school because they became so successful at it. It’s not that I don’t think I’m pretty—I very much like myself—but when I was with them, people weren’t tripping over themselves to ask me out.