Page 72 of We Could Be So Good
“It’s just a cold.”
“Jeanne just got over the flu. I wanted to burn all her things in a giant bonfire like inThe Velveteen Rabbit.”
Andy laughs, which hurts both his throat and his head, but it’s worth it. “Excuse me, we don’t talk about that book.”
She goes silent again. “How have you been, Andy? Other than being sick.”
“I’ve been really well,” he says immediately. “Everything is good. What about you?”
“Better. Jeanne keeps reminding me that I’m twenty-five and rich and beautiful and it’s my job to have as much fun as I can manage, so I’ve been giving that a go.”
Emily has always liked going out. It occurs to Andy for the first time that maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t have suited one another as well as they once thought. Andy could stay home seven nights a week and count himself a lucky man. Eventually either Emily would have gotten bored or Andy would have gotten exhausted. It’s a strange realization.
“You should come over for dinner,” Andy says, making himself say the words before he can think better of it. “You and Jeanne both. Nick’s a good cook. And did you know your friend Linda moved in next door? We could invite her, too.”
“Wouldn’t that be awkward?”
His instinct is to deny it, but— “Who cares? A lot of things are awkward, right?”
“True,” she says dubiously.
“Look, if you want to say no, that’s fine. No hard feelings. But why don’t we see if we can be friends? If we can’t, we can’t. No harm done.” He takes a deep breath. “And I think Nick would like it.”
“You want to make Nick happy,” she says, and it isn’t a question, so he doesn’t try to answer. “Okay. Tell me when and I’ll be there.”
***
“I invited Emily for dinner,” Andy says when he hears the door open. “I told her you were a good cook.”
“Dinner tonight?” Nick comes over to the sofa and looks bemusedly down at Andy.
“A week from Saturday.” He half expects Nick to make a joke, to say that Andy must be feverish if he’s inviting his former fiancée to dinner with his current—whatever he and Nick are to one another.
But Nick just nods. “Okay.”
“She called and I answered the phone. We talked for a bit. It was nice.”
He examines Nick’s face for jealousy, but there isn’t anything there except maybe a trace of worry. Andy doesn’t know if Nick isn’t jealous because he knows Andy isn’t hung up on Emily or because he doesn’t particularly care.
In general, he doesn’t know what Nick is thinking when it comes to... whatever it is they’re doing. He knows Nick cares about him, obviously, but he’s known that for as long as he’s known Nick. He knows Nick wants him, and he also knows that the... affectionate aspect of this thing is sort of unprecedented for Nick. But he doesn’t know what it means when you put all that together; he doesn’t even know whether itdoesmean anything.
Maybe if he knew what Nick was thinking, he’d have a clue as to what he’s thinking himself, because he’s pretty much at sea. All he knows is that he sees Nick and his heart acts like it’s magnetized, pulling at his chest like that’s what it’s meant to do.
If he were sleeping with a woman, he’d know it was serious—headed for the altar, or at least in that direction. Or would he? People do fool around without it going anywhere, even if Andyisn’t usually one of those people. Andy likes certainty; he likes knowing where things stand. For as long as he can remember, he’s wanted to get married and have a family. It doesn’t take any great feats of introspection for him to understand that he’s craving something he didn’t have enough of as a kid, but that doesn’t bother him because there’s nothing wrong with wanting a wife and kids and a nice house somewhere green. These are all very normal things to want.
Whenever he’s dated a woman, it’s been with that end in mind. He’s looking to settle down in a very predictable and defined way. It’s something every girl he’s dated understood as the goal as well, which made things incredibly easy, he now realizes. If he had to start every date with an explanation of his goals and dreams, with the hope that his goals matched those of the person sitting opposite him at the refined but slightly boring sort of French restaurant he always chose for first dates, he’d never date anyone.
When he looks at Nick, merrily puttering away in his kitchen, he has no idea whether Nick views what they’re doing as fooling around or as a prelude to something else. Because he can feel it, that possibility ofsomething else—there might not be a wedding or a house in Connecticut, there might not be children and a Labrador and the settled vision of life he’s always longed for, but Andy knows in his heart that he could hold on tight to Nick and keep doing what they’re doing and have that beit.
He’s pretty sure this ought to frighten him more than it does.
Chapter Eighteen
Maybe something in that accounting report actually stuck in Andy’s head, or maybe being away from the office gave him some perspective, because when Andy goes back to work, all he can think about is that empty space on the fifth floor.
Somebody could do something with that; somebody really ought to. And for the first time since starting to work at theChronicle, Andy thinks: maybe.
When he thinks of his name going on theChronicle’s masthead after his father retires, he feels faintly sick. He feels the way he did after his mother’s funeral, when he had to clean out the refrigerator, dumping pickles and mayonnaise and turkey into the trash can, and then going out for a sandwich, because the idea of actually eating the contents of his dead mother’s refrigerator seemed impossible. That night he cried because he didn’t have any jars of mayonnaise left that his mother had touched. It was not a good month.
