“Stubborn teenager! You apologized in a text message, Nick. Two words—I’m sorry.” Briefly I put my hands over my ears and took a deep breath. It was seven years too late for this, and I hadn’t come here to fight. “Look, it doesn’t matter anymore. Yes, I filed for divorce and left for Europe without talking to you.
Because you were right—the marriage was a mistake.”
Nick shrugged. “For what it’s worth, I disagree. And I tried to tell you that but you divorced me too fast.”
I fisted my hands in my lap so tight it felt like my fingernails might slice my palms. “We would have divorced anyway, Nick. We were young and stupid.”
“I was stupid. You were just mad. And I don’t blame you for that.”
I cocked my head. “But you blame me for other things?”
The air between us grew charged. Nick leveled me with his eyes. “In the end, it was you that decided we were done.”
“You cheated on me.”
“You lied to me.”
“You lied to me first.”
“That wasn’t the same.”
“Wait, you guys lost me.” Lou picked up his beer again and turned to Nick. “Let’s start with you. What did you lie about?”
“He lied about sex, for one thing.” I crossed my arms, grumpy at the memory. “When we were freshmen in college, he told me he was a virgin like I was.”
“I had to, or she wasn’t going to sleep with me.” Nick threw his hands up. “I had to have her, Lou. I’m sorry I lied, but I was in love with her and I had to have her. At least I came clean when it was over.”
Lou nodded, as if he was the arbiter of what was fair in this fight. “OK. Sort of a douchey move, but possibly understandable, give the…circumstances.” He gestured vaguely toward my chest. “And what did you lie about?”
“Wait a minute, what circumstances?” I sat up taller, narrowing my eyes at him.
“I think he means the circumstances protruding from your ribcage.” Nick’s grin lit up his face.
“The legs too,” added Lou. “And the face. Did anyone ever tell you you look like young Lauren Bacall?”
“Exactly.” Nick shook his head. “I was nineteen and in love with the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. I could not be expected to behave.”
I blushed, but anger won out a moment later. It was just like Nick to make me mad and then flatter me right into forgiving him. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. That does not excuse you.”
“Well, you lied about Paris.” He turned to Lou. “Her junior year she told me she hadn’t been accepted to this exchange program she’d always planned on doing. But she’s such a bad liar, I figured out the truth.”
“I didn’t want to go that year. You didn’t have a problem with me staying behind at the time.” Probably because you spent a good part of that year screwing me from behind.
“Then the following year she told me she hadn’t even applied, another obvious lie. But she stuck to it, and I had to hear the truth from her friend Mia.”
“Because I didn’t want to leave you, asshole.” I’d been angry at Mia for weeks about that, but she said she’d only caved and confirmed what Nick suspected when he promised her he’d encourage me to go. Mia thought I was crazy to forego the opportunity to study in Paris for a guy.
“Leaving me wouldn’t have necessarily meant breaking up. We could have stayed together.”
“Ha!” I poked him in the chest. “You cheated on me every summer we were apart. You think you’d have been faithful with an ocean between us?”
Nick’s chin jutted. “I didn’t cheat every summer.”
I rolled my eyes. “Two out of three. And I bet there was a spring break I don’t know about, and maybe a Christmas vacation, and probably even a Martin Luther King Day too.” I turned to Lou and sniffed, feeling superior. “He can’t keep his hands to himself, he never could.”
As if to prove my point, Nick’s hand clutched my thigh. “Coco, come on. Two times I kissed other girls, that was all. And you broke up with me so often, I never even knew when we were together and when we weren’t.”
I removed his hand. “That’s because you were such a flirt.”
“That last year, I was totally faithful to you. I swear it.”
“Uh huh, right up until Mia told you about Paris. Then you ran out and screwed someone else.”
Nick looked away without denying anything or defending himself, and the night of his confession came back to me like a knife to the gut. I’d screamed myself hoarse, slapped his face, and shoved him out of my apartment. Then I threw every gift he’d ever given me out the window into the parking lot. I remembered how he’d watched, silently huddled on the hood of his truck in the dark.
Lou drained his beer. “Wow, this is really sad, you guys. So then what happened?”
“We broke up,” I said, teeth gritted. “But the next night he showed up at my apartment with a bottle of whiskey.” And I didn’t say no, like I should have. Like I never could where he was concerned.
Nick’s eyes met mine. “We got back together.”
I lifted my chin. “We got drunk is what we got.”
“We caught the red-eye to Vegas.”
“We got tattooed, and we got married. Two idiot decisions.”