Nathan’s shoulders slacked as the tension faded from his body. His shirt was still wrinkled from where her hands had gripped his shoulders in the shed. He pushed off the counter and moved closer, preserving enough distance to stay out of reach.
“I’m jealous of his friends, his career. The way he walks into a room and assumes everyone will like him. How it never occurs to him they won’t.”
She ran a hand through her hair, dislodging the dahlia. Nathan watched her yank at the hair clip for a moment, and whispered, “Stop. Let me.” He started untangling her hair, a few strands at a time, like he was doing to her insides—unfurling truths from places she didn’t know existed. She closed her eyes when his fingers brushed the shell of her ear.
“I’m jealous of how easy it is for him to let other people do things for him. He delegates every second of his life. Every burden. How do you do that and not float away?”
Nathan stroked her back and she leaned into it. “I’m angry,” she whispered. “I’m fucking furious at myself.” Her eyes burned and she closed them until the pressure passed. “This wasn’t supposed to be my life. And now I don’t know who I am without it.”
He set the hair clip on a table. “What life were you supposed to have?”
Rachel thought of Lyric. “There was a woman at the party tonight. A former classmate. We were a year apart.” She wrapped her arms tight around her waist. “She didn’t recognize me. She looked right at me and saw the First Lady of Oasis Springs and not Rachel Thomas, because I buried her. I gave her up and I grieved for her because it was the right thing to do. I became a wife. And a mother. And that should be enough.” She met his eyes, desperately searching. “Why isn’t that enough?”
Bobbi had once told Nathan he had a hero complex, but he didn’t believe her. He’d never wanted to be someone’s savior. And Rachel didn’t need saving. She was strong and brave. Brave enough to be vulnerable with someone who was practically a stranger without expecting the same in return. She leaned into him after her confession, dazed but content, as if he’d done enough for her by existing. But it wasn’t close to enough. He wanted to make things better. Solve her problems. Be her hero.
He also wanted to kiss her again. It was all he could think about. In the car. At the door. As he pried that pin from her hair, he’d wanted to press his face into all that softness. But that wasn’t what she needed. If he was being honest with himself, he didn’t know how to help her. He had no idea what it was like to stare down the end of a marriage. But he did know how it felt to lose something that was a part of you, and how lonely it was when no one knew or cared.
“Let me show you something.” Nathan grabbed the tablet hidden underneath his sketches. His stomach coiled in protest as he pulled up his Instagram account. He hated this moment—that sliver of space between someone’s eyes hitting his drawings and the reaction they thought he wanted. When he’d shown them to his ex Nina, she’d said all the right things, compliments that a good girlfriend would give early in a relationship. But he’d seen her true feelings the second she’d looked at the screen: confusion and amusement. This is what he does in his spare time?
That was the last time he’d shown it to anyone he was dating. But this was different. Rachel wasn’t his girlfriend. Friend also seemed inadequate. Rachel was a feeling. She was the reason he woke up every morning and checked his phone with his heart in his throat. She was the flutter in his chest when he drove by The Stand. She was a spark that made him want to draw again. He wanted to fill the empty sketchbooks he’d been ignoring for months with renderings of her face.
Rachel saw the first drawing and whispered so softly that he could barely make out the words. “What did you say?” he asked.
She pointed to his username. “FireBird84. That’s you?”
He nodded, and she started scrolling—stopping to study each picture. He tracked every beat of her reaction: faint gasps, wide eyes, and soft smiles. “It’s just fan art,” he said, filling the painful silence. “They’re characters from the Phoenix Prophecies, a fantasy series I read in junior high.”
“I know those books. Faith loved them.”
His face warmed. “It was a long time ago. The main characters are based on Greek mythology, but they’re ethnically ambiguous. So I started drawing my version as Black and brown people, and it kind of took off. I do other stuff now, but this is mostly what I post online.”