She pointed a finger at him. “There’s the New York snobbery! I knew it was only a matter of time.”
“It’s just so . . .” He moved his head around, the namby-pamby, ineffectual gesture more accurately descriptive than any word could be.
“Hey, that’s my hometown you’re not talking about.”
“Is it?” Nick looked surprised. “I figured you were there because of acting.”
Sewanee shook her head. “Born and raised. I went to college in New York, though.”
“Where?”
“Julliard.”
Nick whistled. Then he looked at his lap. “You ever think you’d consider going back? To New York?”
Not too long ago she would have said absolutely not. The weather, alone. The expense. Her family and friends in L.A. But now? “Anything’s possible, I guess. Given everything that’s changed over the past few years, I don’t have to be in L.A. Other than for my grandmother.” She paused. Swallowed. Waited. She found she couldn’t use her voice just then.
Her phone hadn’t rung once since she’d arrived in Italy. Sewanee had wondered: that last call they’d had, where Blah had talked about what losing her grip on reality was like . . . had she rallied just long enough to say goodbye?
At her obvious vulnerability, Nick stayed silent. He simply reached over and took her hand in her lap.
“That’s why I’m doing the series to begin with, you know,” she forced out. “To pay for her care.”
“And here I thought you’d just wanted to meet me.” Sewanee chuckled gratefully and Nick asked, “I am curious, though, what would you do with the money if you didn’t have your gran to care for?”
Sewanee didn’t have a quick response. She couldn’t honestly say she’d never thought about it. Of course she had. But she had never given it voice. “I suppose I’d pay off debt. School and medical. I’m going to have to start thinking about moving, so maybe a down payment for a place somewhere more affordable than Hollywood?” She made an idle gesture at her eye patch. “Maybe get another surgery.”
“You need another surgery?”
“No.”
“Then why would you be getting another?”
She shifted uncomfortably. “I’m not saying I would, I . . . I mean, it’s never going to look normal. But they can do a lot now, so.” She did her best to make that last bit sound offhanded.
“Does it make it harder to do your job? With how much you have to read?”
She shook her head. “Not anymore. In the beginning, it was exhausting, getting used to reading with one eye. Doing anything with one eye. Left to my own devices, I could sleep fourteen, sixteen hours easily.”
“I can do that easily and I’ve got both of mine.”
Sewanee bumped his shoulder appreciatively. Her head found its way there, and his arm came around her, resting itself effortlessly against her side. He gave her a light squeeze when he said, lowly, “I’m truly sorry that happened to you.” There was a silence. He took a breath. “And I’ve been thinking about what I said to you the other night, about why I came up to you at the bar, and your friend, and that whole palaver, and it didn’t come out the way I . . . I didn’t get a chance to say everything I wanted to say.”
Sewanee lifted her head and met Nick eye to eye. “If Adaku hadn’t been sitting with me, if she never existed. If all you saw in that bar was this woman”–Sewanee pointed directly at her eye patch–“would you have come over–”
“Yes. And that’s the exact hypothetical scenario I was going to give you. The answer is yes, I would have come over.”
“Truth?”
“Yes, absolutely. But–”
“But.”
Nick forged ahead. “But! Ultimately, I don’t think it matters what I say, does it? Will you ever truly believe, deep down, that anything other than pity brought me over to you? Nothing I say can make that scar disappear for you. I can tell you I don’t see it and you will always see it. I can tell you you’re everything that keeps me up at night and everything I daydream about and how that makes you feel might last a day or a week or an hour. Feelings are temporary. They stick around as long as you believe in them and then they’re gone, waiting to be believed in again. If they were permanent, then we’d only have to say I love you once and be done with it for the rest of our lives.”
Sewanee stared at him. “Did you practice that?”