Heart of the Matter - Emily Giffin [94]
She feels herself falter, but forges on. “When we were standing by my car . . . I saw Romy. She was watching us. She saw us together.”
He nods, looking worried, but pretending not to be as he says, “Well. That figures, doesn’t it?”
Valerie isn’t sure what he means by this so she says, “Do you think it’s a problem?”
Nick nods and says, “It could be.”
This is not the answer she hoped for. “Really?” she asks.
He nods and says, “My wife knows her.”
“They’re friends?” she asks, horrified.
“Not exactly . . . They are more . . . acquaintances,” he says. “They have a mutual good friend.”
“Do you think it will get back to her?” Valerie asks, wondering how he can stay so calm, why he isn’t rushing to the phone to do damage control.
“Maybe . . . Probably. Knowing this town. These women. Yeah, it’ll probably get back to Tess eventually . . .”
Valerie turns over the nickname in her mind, no less troubling than the full form of her name. Tess. A woman who throws Frisbees to dogs, sings eighties songs into her shampoo bottle, does handstands in the fresh summer grass, wears her hair in French braids.
“Are you worried?” she asks, trying to gauge exactly what is going on in his head—and more important, his marriage.
Nick turns to face her, resting one arm along the back of the couch. “Romy didn’t see us like this,” he says, touching her shoulder and leaning in to kiss her forehead. “We were just standing there, weren’t we?”
“Yeah . . . but how will you explain being there in the first place? At the school with us?” As soon as the question is out, she realizes that they have officially become co-conspirators.
Nick says, “I’ll have to tell her that we’re friends. That we’ve become close . . . That Charlie called me when he got hurt at school. And that I came over. As his doctor and your friend.”
“Has anything like this ever . . . happened before? Have you ever become close to a patient? Or a patient’s family member?” she asks.
“No,” Nick says quickly. “Not like this. Nothing like this.”
Valerie nods, knowing she should move on. Instead, she presses him. “What will she say? . . . If she finds out?”
“I don’t know,” he replies. “I can’t even think about that right now. . .”
“But should you?” Valerie says. “Should we talk . . . about it?”
Nick bites his lower lip and says, “Okay. Maybe we should.”
She gives him a blank stare, indicating that it is his conversation to begin.
He clears his throat and says, “What do you want to know? I will tell you anything you want to know.”
“Are you happy?” she asks—one of the questions she vowed not to ask. She did not want this night to be about his marriage. She wanted it to be about them, only. But such a thing is not really possible. She knows this.
“I am now. At this moment. With you.”
She is flattered by this answer—she is overjoyed by it. But it is not what she’s asking and she does not permit the evasion. “Before you met me,” she says, her stomach in knots. “Were you happy before you met me?”
Nick sighs, indicating the complexity of the question. “I love my kids. I love my family.” He gives her a sideways glance. “But am I happy?. . . No. Probably not. Things are . . . complicated right now.”
She nods, recognizing that the conversation they are having is one she would have scorned before now. She has heard clichéd versions of it many times before—in movies and from acquaintances and so many places that no one example comes to mind. She can
hear it, though, she can picture the “other woman” asking hopeful questions, pretending to be concerned, all the while plotting her coup. The man playing the victim, actually believing that he is the victim, when he is the only one breaking promises. And always before, she has thought, with respect to the cheater: grow up, be a man, suck it up or get a divorce. But now. Now she is asking questions, looking for shades of gray, explanations, loopholes in her once ironclad conscience.
Nick continues earnestly. “And I just can’t help the way I feel about you . . . I just can’t.”
“And how is that?” she asks, before