Page 117 of Lucky Night

That love you love? That swooning romance? It’s all you, Nick. I never would have written those books if I hadn’t fallen in love with you.

She can’t believe how incredible it feels to say all this. And to think back to loving him. How totalizing it was.

She smiles now, remembering. Almost—almost—feeling it again.

It was fantastic, she says. Awful, too. It wasn’t all rainbows and sunflowers. I felt this distance. From the real world, from my family.

She sips her drink, remembering how she would come home from being with Nick and sit in the chair in their foyer, that crappy yellow yard sale chair. She would take off her shoes and look down the hall into the kitchen, seeing Tom, the boys, all from a distance. She’d just had wrong sex, with the wrong man, whom she loved, wrongly. It made her an alien. A visitor in her own life.

Estranged from her friends, too. There was so much she couldn’t tell them. So much, they didn’t really know her. Nobody did. It was intensely lonely.

That’s why you stopped? he asks. The distance?

He’s not angry anymore. That’s something. It’s almost pleasant to be sitting here with him, discussing her great, dead passion.

Yes and no. That was nagging at me, for sure. But I realized I had to knock it off when you suggested we meet more often. Maybe you don’t remember, I think we werein—

I remember, he says. I…

He stands abruptly. Then he sits down.

Why would that make you stop? he asks. Isn’t that—wouldn’t that have been what you wanted?

Oh no, she says. You just wanted more sex. But I was barely hanging on. To see you every week? I would have lost myself.

He’s up again, walking to the window. Walking back.

None of this makes any fucking sense, he says. You kept sleeping with me, foryears? Most people would have endedit.

I almost did. And I would have, if I couldn’t have, you know, persuaded myself out of the emotional side of things.

Persuaded yourself, he repeats. Persuaded yourself to fall out of love with me. How?

I wrote, she says. A lot. Letters to myself. Letters to Tom, confessing what I’d done. Which I tore up, immediately. I made myself feel really bad about it. I explained to myself, over and over, that there was no way forward. That I didn’t want to blow up my life, or yours. That we were too different. It took a long time. It was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

He nods. Listening. But does he get it? Does he have any idea how she felt, loving him? He’s read her books. Maybe he does. But even there, she didn’t captureit.

Not even close.

He was in her bones.

Anyway! she says. Gradually I was able to detach myself from the big feelings, and go back to appreciating what we have.

How long did it take to, to stop?

Six months or so, she says. No, probably more like a year.

So, two years you were in love with me, he says. Not one.

I guess that’s true, she says. Though the second year, when I was trying not to be in love, that felt different.

It’s so easy to tell him these things. The thought of him finding out used to provoke shudders of horror. Terror! She didn’t realize baring herself—I bared my heart to you—would feel so powerful.

She glances at the television. Brian is listening to something in his earpiece, nodding, looking grave. Powerful? She’s delusional.For all her fear, all the very bad news, she still can’t believe they’re going to die here.

Nick is pacing again, agitated.

What if—I mean, what if I’d loved you, too? he says. Loved you and been afraid to tell you? Wouldn’t you have wanted to know?

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