Fairy Dust and Jazz

twenty six

Chapter twenty six

The Man Who Can’t Be Moved

‘How can I move on

When I’m still in love with you?’

Pretending to acknowledge the elephant in the room, I told him about why I was wearing a saree. I didn’t want him to think it was my thing now, but it kind of was.

“It’s a married thing,” I told him. “Women wear sarees after... getting married.”

“You’re twenty one,” he told me. “You can wear whatever you please.”

Nathaniel always had that way about him, of justifying what society said one should do. He wasn’t judging me, no; he was just telling me exactly what I needed to hear. I was twenty one. I was allowed a mistake or two. I was allowed to wear jeans. I was allowed to get a divorce.

“I don’t know. I think I like it,” I realized sitting there with him on that bar stool. “And you look like you’re doing well.”

“You mean better than before?” he did that thing again, that thing with being too obvious and too much of him all at once and too out there. Something told me he knew I liked that about him. Something told me nothing had changed, even with two years and more between us. “Yeah, generally works better when you’re sober.”

I had to laugh. Why did he have to be so delightful, still? How did he know how to make every dire conversation less so? “Listen, Nathan, I’m sorry.”

“No,” he firmly stopped me, his hand on mine now, his eyes full of problems I couldn’t solve. “I’m sorry. None of this was you. None of my issues were because of you.”

“I know. I wish I could have helped. I wish I’d walked over to you that night and stopped you.”

“I wish that every day,” he revealed as he drank some of his water, again. “I wish you could’ve helped, but in the end, you did help.”

I wanted to ask him how. I wanted to know how I’d helped, and if so, why he didn’t reach out and thank me and save me from my misery, as he had once upon a time.

“I thought getting married would save me so many issues,” I told him after inhaling deeply. “I’m a writer for Femme.”

“Wow. I didn’t even know you wanted to be a writer.”

“I was studying journalism, Nathaniel,”

He smiled then. “True. Still. You never... told me that.”

“You never told me many things, too,” I reminded him gently, the music suddenly touching my ears. “Your club is unbearably beautiful. I’ll do an article on it.”

His eyes brightened at my suggestion, his grip on my hand suddenly heated. “Please write awful things to make up for the way I treated you.”

“I wouldn’t ever do such a thing,” I promised him, my other hand clasping him before squeezing and letting go. “Such a petty way of taking revenge.”

“What isn’t petty about a revenge scheme?”

“Murder.” I told him wickedly.

His eyes still crinkled when he laughed, his face still young and beautiful. I was afraid he wouldn’t be the same person. I’d been afraid of so many things, of this, of us, every single day. Was that the reason I’d managed to screw up so badly?

“I feel like I owe you some answers,” I started.

“Don’t worry about it,” he sounded rueful as he went on to say, “I know you’ll tell me when you’re ready.”